Microsoft 365 Copilot - How should you use it?
Inspire 2023 was started today and the Copilot price tag was revealed, it’s 30 dollars per user / month. Why is it worth it? Read the Blog ;)
Back in the days when we were at school, the teacher always told us not to use anyone else’s work, but yours. It needs to be your own, otherwise it’s stealing.
That "guideline" works nowadays as well. Don't use anyone else’s work but your own.
How can you make sure that the text is yours when you use Microsoft 365 Copilot?
That's simple, Copilot makes you a draft that is not ready. They are even sometimes purposely wrong, why?
Because you always need to check every text that it creates for you. You cannot just say to Copilot: “Make this presentation, the topic is this, and it needs to have this text and these, etc. etc.”
Then you save it and show it to the world as your own. No, no, no!
Copilot is, what they title name says it is. It will help you, not do it for you. It will create you some drafts, and with those, you can start doing your "official" presentation.
Remember it will help you create it, not do it for you.
Let's go through a few Microsoft programs and see what you can do with it.
Word
You can kick-start your imagination and avoid the dread of a blank page. Copilot provides an initial draft for you to refine and polish, freeing up valuable hours typically spent on writing, researching, and editing.
There will be instances when Copilot hits the mark, and other times when its mistakes are productively insightful - but anyways, it invariably moves you a step forward. As the mastermind author, you're always at the helm, steering your distinctive thoughts while guiding Copilot to condense, reconstruct, or offer commentary.
PowerPoint
Let's say that you need a particular piece of content you crafted previously, perhaps something from a week ago or even from last year. Navigating through files and folders, skimming through multiple documents to locate that one crucial piece of information can be an awful process. But remember, you have a Copilot with you. This feature effortlessly scours your past creations and intelligently extracts the relevant content you need.
The algorithm is designed to understand the context of your prompt and fetches the most appropriate content to suit your needs.
The result? Perfect presentation that tells your story as you intend it to be told. You'll spend less time hunting for information and more time fine-tuning your message, ensuring that every slide is perfectly aligned with your objectives.
So whether you're presenting a quarterly report, pitching a new project, or summarizing a research paper, Copilot is there to assist, reducing the burden of creating and helping you focus on what truly matters - delivering a captivating and effective presentation.
Excel
With the assistance of Copilot in Excel, you no longer need to wade through the numbers. With a few simple prompts, Copilot processes your data, identifies significant trends, and presents you with a comprehensive analysis that's easy to understand.
Copilot is not only your navigator through the labyrinth of data but also your expert data artist. With it, you can swiftly create high-quality, impactful visualizations that help others grasp your findings at a glance. Whether you're in need of simple bar graphs, intricate scatter plots, or advanced heat maps, Copilot handles it in seconds.
The beauty of this feature lies not just in its speed but also in its ability to make your data visually appealing and intuitively easy to understand. With Copilot, you no longer have to be a seasoned analyst or graphic designer to translate your data into professional visuals. It creates data representations that are as informative as they are elegant, ensuring your work stands out and your message gets across.
Copilot in Excel brings you the power of sophisticated data analysis and visual representation at your fingertips, turning raw numbers into insightful narratives and professional visuals in no time.
Outlook
Copilot in Outlook acts as your personal email assistant, enabling you to manage your inbox more efficiently than ever before. This feature transforms what might have been hours spent trudging through email threads into mere minutes, helping you maintain an organized, clutter-free inbox.
Every day, countless emails pour into your inboxes, many of which are of varying levels of importance. Sorting through them can often be a time-consuming and tiresome task. Copilot in Outlook is designed to alleviate this burden, freeing up your time and attention to focus on more critical matters.
With intelligent filtering and prioritization, Copilot works tirelessly behind the scenes to categorize your incoming emails. It distinguishes between high-priority messages that require your immediate attention and less urgent ones that can wait. This way, you can handle your most important correspondences first, ensuring nothing vital gets lost in the email shuffle.
Beyond just filtering, Copilot in Outlook also assists you in responding to emails swiftly. It offers auto-generated response suggestions based on the context of the incoming emails, making it easier for you to reply or even delegate tasks without having to craft every single email from scratch.
Copilot helps you keep track of follow-ups and reminders. No more missed deadlines or forgotten tasks. It effectively monitors your correspondence, alerting you of any pending actions or responses, ensuring you stay on top of your commitments.
Whiteboard
The integration of Copilot in Whiteboard can significantly elevate the creativity and efficiency of your Microsoft Teams meetings and brainstorming sessions. You can leverage its natural language processing to spark new ideas, categorize thoughts into thematic groups, develop designs that vividly portray your concepts, and even condense whiteboard content.
By seeking assistance from Copilot in Whiteboard during meetings, you can fuel creativity around specific topics. Additionally, the power of Microsoft Designer allows Copilot in Whiteboard to transform your thoughts into unique, meaningful visuals that enhance your textual content.
It further simplifies the process of gathering feedback from your peers, summarizing your ideas, and utilizing Microsoft Loop components for sharing your creations, thus taking your collaborative efforts to an unprecedented level.
By now, you probably get what this Copilot can do…
It’s like having a personal assistant who doesn't get tired. You can ask it a questions whenever and wherever, it will always help you.
Last but not least, there is also a Semantic Index for Copilot… What is it?
The Semantic Index for Copilot essentially works as an advanced data navigational chart, tailored to your organization and user-specific information. It does not just search for documents using keywords in the title or content, like the "Last week Opportunities Report". Rather, it comprehends the context, knowing that "Oppos reports are typically generated by David from the department z, and are created using Excel." By leveraging this nuanced understanding, it discerns your requirements and guides you to your desired outcome. This Semantic Index is a fundamental component for obtaining accurate and practical responses from Microsoft 365's Copilot. Plus, it also enhances the enterprise search experience for E3 and E5 users, regardless of their interaction with Copilot.
Finally, here is 10 things that Copilot can do faster than you :)
Data Analysis: Copilot can process and analyze large volumes of data at a speed that far exceeds human capabilities. It can quickly identify trends, patterns, and anomalies in the data.
Document Scanning: Copilot can scan through hundreds or even thousands of documents, articles, or emails in a fraction of the time it would take a person, making it highly efficient in information retrieval and fact-checking.
Task Automation: Routine tasks such as scheduling, reminders, or sending standard responses to common queries can be automated by Copilot, freeing up significant time for the user.
Generating First Drafts: Whether it's a report, an email, or a presentation, Copilot can provide a first draft much quicker than a human, giving the user a starting point to refine from.
Content Recommendations: Based on user behavior and preferences, Copilot can quickly provide personalized content recommendations, such as articles to read, videos to watch, or courses to take.
Error Detection: Copilot can spot errors, inconsistencies, or discrepancies in documents, code, or data almost instantly, which would be much more time-consuming for a human.
Real-time Translations: For multi-lingual communications, Copilot can provide real-time translations much faster and with more accuracy than a human translator.
Performance Tracking: Whether it's tracking a team's progress on a project or an individual's health stats, Copilot can compile and analyze the data faster than a human.
Meeting Scheduling: Copilot can compare multiple calendars, identify common free slots, and schedule meetings in seconds – a task that could take a human quite a while.
24/7 Availability: Unlike humans who need rest, Copilot can function round the clock, providing assistance, processing requests, or monitoring systems without downtime.
That’s it for now. When does the Microsoft 365 Copilot come out? We don’t know, yet… Hopefully very soon.
