What Is Microsoft 365 Copilot and What Can It Do?

Dreaming, creating, and innovating are aspects of human nature. Each of us aspires to work that fulfills us, whether it is creating a masterpiece of literature, discovering something new, fortifying our communities, or tending to the sick. All of us have an innate desire to connect with the essence of our profession. Today, however, we spend an excessive amount of time slaving away at things that drain our creativity, time, and energy. We need more than just a better approach to carry out the same tasks if we want to reconnect with the essence of our profession. New methods of working are required.

The new AI-powered productivity layer built into your favorite Microsoft suite apps, known as Microsoft 365 Copilot, will free you from the boring daily chores you perform with the apps.

What Is Microsoft 365 Copilot?

An AI chatbot assistant called Microsoft 365 Copilot interacts with your emails, papers, meetings, and the brand-new business chat service. It’s a chatbot, much like the ones you’re familiar with from Bing and Chat GPT. It can be compared to an outdated Clippy that has been outfitted with cutting-edge AI. Microsoft announced the tool on March 16, 2023, and it is based on Open AI powerful GPT-4 large language models (LLMs) and combines Microsoft Graph to translate user text input into content in Microsoft 365 programs such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams.

The Microsoft 365 Copilot system combines three technologies:

Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and so on),
Microsoft Graph, as well as all your organization’s information and context.
The GPT-4 Large Language Model (LLM) parses, understands, and generates text that is human-readable.

As you will see, the Copilot system is much more than just a GPT-4 chatbot in your Office apps. And it all starts with a simple prompt in the Office apps’ Co-pilot chat window.

What Is the Best Way to Use Microsoft 365 Copilot?

You can communicate with the chatbot from any of the Microsoft 365 apps. To begin, simply enter a prompt, and Copilot will generate either a document or a response based on your natural language instruction. Here are some examples of how it can be used in various apps.

Microsoft Word: Copilot can make a first draft for you based on a question. Co-pilot can incorporate content from collaborative papers across the enterprise by using Microsoft Graph in the background. It can even make the document sound more professional or less formal.
Microsoft Excel: Co-pilot can use natural language cues to provide answers that previously required sophisticated formulae. You can instruct it to display various visualizations, forecasts, and suggestions without modifying the spreadsheet.
Microsoft PowerPoint: Copilot can build a slide deck using your outline or a Word document. Longer presentations can be simplified with simple commands.
Microsoft Outlook: Copilot can gather topics from email threads and information across Microsoft 365 in addition to promptly responding to routine communications. You can also change the tone and duration of your comments with Copilot.
Microsoft Teams: Meeting agendas and timetables can be created with Copilot. However, the chatbot will be an excellent decision-maker because it can list the advantages and cons of every debate and recommend the next steps.
Business Chat: This new service allows you to access your calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and contacts. You can improve communication by using it as a single-window solution for projects and plan issues.
One Note: OneNote will also employ suggestions to help users discover what they need by drafting plans, generating ideas, creating lists, and organizing information.

Viva Learning: It will use a natural language chat interface to assist users in constructing tailored learning journeys, identifying relevant learning resources, and scheduling time for assigned training

Benefits of Microsoft 365 Copilot

The application of Copilot in companies increases workers’ productivity and performance, which, as with other technologies such as automation, allows them to focus on more creative and less monotonous tasks.

1- Enhanced Productivity: An AI-powered copilot can automate repetitive operations, provide real-time recommendations, and generate code or content snippets, saving users time and effort. Because of the enhanced productivity, users can concentrate on more critical and creative areas of their work.

2- Improved Accuracy: Co-pilot technologies employ advanced AI algorithms to comprehend context and deliver accurate code or content suggestions, decreasing errors and improving output quality.

3- Speedy Workflow: Tasks that might normally take longer to perform can be completed more rapidly with an AI copilot, allowing users to meet deadlines and fulfill project milestones more swiftly.

4- Real-time Assistance: Co-pilots offer on-the-fly recommendations and assistance, allowing users to code or write with greater confidence, knowing that they have an AI-powered assistant on hand to aid them when needed.

5– Collaborative Support: An AI copilot can help teams collaborate by offering support and producing material or code snippets that are in line with project requirements, resulting in more efficient processes.

6- Context-Awareness: To provide users with more pertinent and contextually accurate ideas, AI copilots can grasp the context in which they are working, including the programming language, libraries, or content type.

7- Innovation and Creativity: Co-pilot solutions take care of repetitive activities, freeing up users’ mental resources so they can concentrate on tackling challenging issues, discovering novel concepts, and promoting innovation.

8- Continuous Learning and Improvement: Users requests and feedback can be analyzed by AI copilots to identify patterns that can be used to improve the co-pilots’ performance over time. –

Streamlining Business Operations with the Copilot System

With the Copilot System, Microsoft is in a unique position to offer enterprise-ready AI. More than OpenAI’s Chat GPT, which is integrated into Microsoft 365, is Copilot. Behind the scenes, a highly developed processing and orchestration engine combines the power of LLMs, including GPT-4, with the Microsoft 365 apps and your company’s data in the Microsoft Graph, which is now open to all users via natural language.

1- Grounded in your business data

LLMs trained with AI are trained on a vast yet limited sample of data. Connecting LLMs to your corporate data in a secure, compliant, and privacy-preserving manner is the key to unlocking business efficiency. Microsoft 365 Copilot has real-time access to your Microsoft Graph content and context. This means it generates answers based on your business content — your documents, emails, calendar, chats, meetings, contacts, and other business data — and combines them with your working context — the meeting you’re in right now, the email exchanges you’ve had on a topic, the chat conversations you had last week — to provide accurate, relevant, contextual responses.

2- Microsoft All-Inclusive Approach to Security, Compliance, and Privacy

Copilot is built into Microsoft 365 and inherits all your company’s valuable security, compliance, and privacy rules and processes. Co-pilot is the AI solution you can rely on thanks to two-factor authentication, compliance boundaries, privacy safeguards, and other features.

3- Secure Data Architecture: Shielding Tenant, Group, and Individual Information

We understand that data leakage is a concern for clients. Your tenant data or prompts are not used to train Copilot LLMs. Our time-tested architecture within your tenant ensures that data does not leak across user groups. Individually, Copilot shows only data that you can access using the same technologies that we’ve been using to encrypt client data for years.

4- Integrated into the apps millions use every day

Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and more productivity apps that millions of people use and rely on a daily basis for business and life are linked with Microsoft 365 Copilot. With a single design language for prompts, adjustments, and commands, an easy and consistent user experience makes sure everything looks, feels, and behaves the same way in Teams as it does in Outlook.

5- Linked into the daily apps

Google Docs The core competencies of Copilot are a productivity game-changer: Using the exact business content and context of your firm, it can already produce, summarize, analyze, cooperate, and automate. There, however, is no end to it. To convert a Word document into a PowerPoint presentation, Copilot knows how to interact with and command programs (e.g., “animate this slide”). Copilot also has a learning function. Copilot, for instance, can learn how to link to CRM systems of record with the help of Viva Sales in order to pull client information, such as interaction and order histories, into communications. Copilot will be able to execute more complex actions and inquiries as it gains knowledge of new domains and procedures.

Microsoft 365 Copilot | Features

Microsoft 365 incorporates Copilot in two different ways. It collaborates with the user and is incorporated into the Microsoft 365 programs you use every day (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, etc.) to boost productivity, improve data access, and, in other words, broaden user knowledge.

Here are some of the most undeniable additions to the famous Microsoft 365 Copilot package.

1- Copilot features in Word

Copilot is now available in Word, which means you have the finest assistant for writing, revising, accessing, and absorbing information while summarizing as quickly and precisely as possible: creating a first draft, including relevant information, adding linked documents. Knowing the receivers of the paper also enables it to add a personalized touch to each activity.

Create summaries from other text documents.
Suggested writing styles: formal, informal…
Provide evidence to support a thesis.
Sections should be rewritten, or inconsistencies should be highlighted.
Text drafts should be based on outlines or structures.

2- Copilot features in power point

Copilot in PowerPoint supports you in transforming your ideas into amazing presentations. If you’re not naturally creative, Copilot can help you tell narratives in the best way possible. It can convert textual papers into entire presentations, replete with notes and fonts to strengthen your presentation. Start a new slideshow from scratch with a basic prompt or layout. Long presentations can be condensed at the touch of a button, and the layout, text can be reformatted, and animations can be flawlessly synchronized using natural language prompts.

Create a rough PowerPoint presentation using data from another file.
Recap presentations.
A specific slide’s layout can be modified.
Reduce text and time it to any existing animations in a presentation.

3- Copilot features in Excel

Data exploration and analysis are made easier with Copilot in Excel. Forget formulas; just ask a question regarding the supplied dataset to get specific responses, correlations, and what-if scenarios. Using models to aid in your data exploration will also offer fresh approaches and techniques for your inquiries.

To get a deeper understanding, identify trends, make visualizations, and solicit suggestions.

Remove the greatest or lowest numbers from an Excel worksheet that contains a variety of data and variables. This can be very helpful to determine, for instance, the most popular items, the sources of the highest prices, or the most popular product categories among the general population.
Prepare accounting or budget drafts.
Produce graphs.
By altering one of the factors, make predictions regarding the growth and performance of sales.

4- Copilot features in Outlook

Our ability to work as efficiently as possible is clearly hampered by the time we spend handling our email. Our finest tool for improving and accelerating communication is Copilot in Outlook. Summarize lengthy and complex email threads involving numerous parties so that you can quickly comprehend not only what has been said but also the various viewpoints and unresolved issues of each. Use a straightforward suggestion to respond to an email or transform hasty notes into concise messages using other emails or content you already have access to through Microsoft 365.

Using information from other documents, draft emails.
Recapitulate message chains.
‘Clean up’ the inbox more quickly than usual by accomplishing the two goals.
Mark the most crucial information or messages.

5- Copilot features in Team

Copilot in Microsoft Teams enables you to plan more productive meetings, highlight key actions from meetings, and summarize important decisions so that everyone on your team understands what to do next. Copilot provides explicit replies to your inquiries or informs you of anything you missed in conversation.

You can use Copilot as a strong tool to assist you with routine activities like making meeting agendas based on chat history, choosing the relevant people to follow up with, and setting up monitoring meetings.

Identify a list of potential discussion points for meetings.
Create a meeting format that takes chat messages into consideration.
Those who couldn’t attend, arrived late, or wanted a summary of the meeting should be provided with meeting summaries.

6- Copilot features in Power Apps

Copilot will make it possible for programmers to collaborate with both computers and people to produce applications more quickly and efficiently. By explaining their demands through discussion, developers will create apps using natural language models.

Users will be able to create inquiries and hone their analyses more easily using Copilot’s chatbot interface.

Additionally, chatbots from Power Virtual Agents have been linked with Power Apps. Developers will find it simpler to include AI chatbots into their applications as a result.

Being part of the Microsoft 365 suite, Copilot has the same security processes as other tools in the suite, such as two-factor authentication.

Security and Biases

Copilot follows the same security procedures as other programs in the Microsoft 365 suite, including two-factor authentication. Protocols are also in place to identify and stop data bias.

Conclusion

Cloudmonte Technologies is a specialist in AI and the customization of the Microsoft 365 suite of tools. We have extensive experience enhancing intelligent workspaces designed to increase communication between departments, data sharing, and ultimately, increasing the productivity of each employee, aligning it with business objectives.

If you want to know more about our services, do not hesitate to contact our experts at(info@cloudmonte.com)