In this blog series, I’ll delve into the advantages of using Microsoft 365 Copilot. In this first post, I’ll discuss the common challenges we face in our daily tasks at work and how Copilot can help alleviate these burdens, save time and money, and boost our productivity.
We all feel the pressure of work. Information, deadlines, and constant communication can often overwhelm us. AI can help, not just by making work easier or faster, but by making it more fulfilling. When we don’t have to spend as much mental energy figuring out what happened in that meeting, catching up on emails, or finding that document from last week’s chat, we can focus more on the core of our work and the purpose behind it.
In recent years, the pace and volume of work have continued to increase. Data from searches across Microsoft 365 services reveals that on any given workday, Microsoft’s most active Microsoft 365 users:
- Conduct 18 searches for what they need.
- Receive over 250 emails.
- Send or read nearly 150 chats.
Globally, Microsoft Teams users are now in three times as many meetings each week compared to 2020. Additionally, some people use 11 different apps on Windows in a single day to complete their tasks.
AI helps lighten the workload by boosting human abilities and speeding up natural creativity. When leaders learn to use AI effectively, they can enable their teams to embrace this new era of AI-powered productivity, bringing great benefits to their organisations.
Before diving into Microsoft 365 Copilot, let’s compile a list of tasks we typically handle each day at work. On an average workday, you might find yourself:
- Catching up on email threads among colleagues.
- Engaging in numerous Microsoft Teams chat conversations.
- Reviewing recordings of Teams meetings you missed due to other commitments.
- Sending various emails to colleagues and external partners.
- Creating PowerPoint presentations
- Analysing data in Excel, budgeting, transforming it into tables, graphs, or pie charts
- Locating emails and Teams messages where you’ve been directly mentioned with the @ symbol and tasked with specific actions to complete.
- Reviewing outstanding tasks from this or last week, including important actions assigned by your manager.
- Checking emails or Teams channels to ensure you haven’t missed any company announcements.
- Planning for the upcoming week’s tasks and meetings.
- Organising the next team get together and ensuring fun activities are arranged.
- Reading through a lengthy 100 page document in preparation for a meeting the next morning.
- Recalling the last time you had a meeting with a specific colleague.
I could list additional daily tasks, but you get the idea.
How can Microsoft 365 Copilot help?
Microsoft 365 Copilot isn’t just another feature introduced by Microsoft. It’s more than that, it’s your AI (Artificial Intelligence) powered Copilot that accompanies you, the Pilot, throughout your day to day interaction with Microsoft 365 apps such as Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Teams, Loop and Whiteboard. Copilot was developed to save time and make you more productive by being able to generate new content mimicking human behavior. This is known as Generative AI where machines are able to generate new unique content and respond like your interacting with a real human being.
Going back to the list of daily tasks I created at the beginning of this post. Well, Copilot can assist with addressing those challenges and more. Those challenges we are all aware of at the workplace where the pace of work is overtaking our ability to keep up with our daily tasks. Microsoft 365 Copilot is designed to assist and reduce that burden, such as being able to generate new emails, summarise email threads, summarise a large word document, summarise team meetings you were not able to attend, create you a PowerPoint deck, generate a business proposal, generate a job advertisement, locate email and teams conversations where you were @ mentioned, list your outstanding tasks for the week and more!
Remember, Microsoft 365 Copilot is not replacing you, it’s your Copilot and you’re the Pilot.
Image generated by Microsoft Copilot in Bing
Is Copilot the same as a search engine like Bing or Google?
Is Copilot the same as a search engine like Bing or Google? Not exactly. Copilot is more advanced than a search engine. When you use a search engine, you may ask a question like, “How do I fix this plumbing issue?” The search engine will then scour its index of relevant content and present a list of website links for you to explore. You then have to sift through these links to find the information you need or perform another search.
Copilot, on the other hand, uses a pre trained Large Language Model (LLM) to perform a similar task but with a twist. It doesn’t just find relevant content; it generates new content, providing a direct answer to your question, such as how to resolve the plumbing issue. This process is known as Generative AI. I’ll cover Large Language Models (LLMs) later in this blog series.
Here is a short video from Microsoft which summarises and provides an insight into Copilot.
Is Microsoft 365 Copilot free?
No, this particular service requires a license for each user who will be using Copilot in your organisation. Microsoft 365 Copilot is available as an add-on plan with one of the following licensing prerequisites listed at the at the following Microsoft Learn page, Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 requirements.
Before exploring Microsoft 365 Copilot within the various Microsoft 365 Apps, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams and Outlook, I explore how this AI Powered Copilot functions under the hood and provide a high level architecture overview through a number of diagrams.
Click the link below to progress to the next post. See you there 🙂
Copilot for Microsoft 365 under the hood
