Microsoft 365 is an excellent productivity suite in and of itself. But with the addition of AI, their might will increase. The new AI-powered productivity layer from Microsoft 365 Copilot, which is integrated with your favourite Microsoft suite apps, will free you from the monotony of daily chores you perform with the apps.
Along with your emails, documents, meetings, and the brand-new Business Chat service, Microsoft 365 Copilot is an AI chatbot assistant. It’s a chatbot, similar to the ones you’re familiar to from Bing and ChatGPT. It can be compared to an outdated Clippy that has been outfitted with cutting-edge artificial intelligence.
prompts
The power of large language models (LLMs) is combined, according to Microsoft’s statement, with your data from the Microsoft Graph and Microsoft 365 apps in Copilot. For those who don’t know, Microsoft Graph is the central repository for all of your data from all of your Microsoft 365 apps. The Microsoft Graph API can also be used by apps to connect to the data and increase your productivity while using the Microsoft platform.
Three technologies are combined in the Microsoft 365 Copilot system:
The Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, etc.), Microsoft Graph, along with all the content and context associated with your company.
The GPT-4 Large Language Model (LLM) parses, comprehends, and generates text that is legible by humans.
Microsoft 365 incorporates Copilot in two different ways. To release creativity, unlock productivity, and advance skills, it works with you, integrated within the Microsoft 365 apps you use every day—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and more. We’re also unveiling a brand-new service today called Business Chat. Business Chat enables you to perform previously unimaginable tasks by integrating with the LLM, the Microsoft 365 apps, and your data, including your calendar, emails, conversations, documents, meetings, and contacts. It will generate a status update based on the morning’s meetings, emails, and chat threads if you offer it natural language instructions like “tell my team how we updated the product strategy.”
Microsoft Word:
Based on a prompt, Copilot can write a first draught for you. Copilot can include content from collaborative papers from throughout the organisation because Microsoft Graph is running in the background. Even the tone of the paper can be changed to sound formal or informal.
Alongside you, Word’s Copilot creates, edits, summarizes, and writes. Copilot in Word will help you draught an initial draught with only a few simple instructions, including data from several departments as necessary. To make a document more compact, Copilot can add information to pre-existing ones, condense lengthy passages of text, and rework sections or the whole thing. You can even obtain suggested tones to help you hit the perfect pitch, ranging from formal to impassioned and informal to appreciative. Copilot can also assist you in writing better by making recommendations that bolster your arguments or fix errors.
You can try the following examples of commands and prompts:
On the basis of the information from [a document] and [a spreadsheet], create a two-page project proposal.
Streamline the third paragraph. The document should now be written in a more informal style.
Using this rough draught as a guide, write a one-page draught.
Microsoft Excel:
Copilot can answer questions that previously required complicated formulas by using natural language suggestions. Without making changes to the spreadsheet, you can ask it to present you with various visualizations, projections, and recommendations.
When analysing and exploring your data in Excel, Copilot works alongside you. Ask Copilot questions in plain English rather than using only mathematics to describe your data set. It will provide models based on your questions that help you study your data without changing it, and it will do this by revealing relationships, putting up what-if scenarios, and suggesting new formulae. To influence various results, identify trends, develop effective visualizations, or solicit suggestions. You can test out the following commands and prompts:
Describe how the sales were broken down by kind and channel. Add a table here.
Create a chart to aid in visualisation and project the effects of [a variable change].
Model the impact on my gross margin of changing the growth rate for [variable].
Microsoft PowerPoint:
Copilot can create a slide deck automatically from a Word document or from your outline. Longer presentations can be made simpler with simple commands.
You may create amazing presentations with PowerPoint’s Copilot feature. As your go-to resource for storytelling, Copilot can turn your written materials into decks that include speaker notes and sources, or it may launch a brand-new presentation from a straightforward prompt or outline. Use natural language instructions to change layouts, reformat text, and precisely schedule animations. You may condense lengthy presentations with the touch of a button. You can try the following commands and prompts, for example:
Make a Word presentation with five slides that includes pertinent stock photographs.
This presentation should be condensed into a three-slide summary.
Create three columns with three bullets in each, each containing a photo.
Microsoft Outlook:
Copilot can collect discussions from email threads and material from across Microsoft 365 in addition to promptly responding to routine communications. You can modify the volume and length of your responses using Copilot.
Copilot in Outlook works with you in your inbox and communications so that you can spend more time communicating—better, faster, and more easily—and less time on email triage. Summarize lengthy, complex email exchanges involving several parties in order to comprehend not only what has been stated, but also the various perspectives of each party and the unresolved issues. Utilizing other emails or content that you already have access to from throughout Microsoft 365, you can respond to an existing email with a straightforward prompt or turn hasty notes into clear, professional replies. Toggle buttons can be used to change the note’s length or pitch. You can try the following examples of commands and prompts:
Please summarise the emails I missed last week while I was away. Mark any items that are crucial.
Write a brief, professional answer thanking them and requesting additional information about their second and third points.
Next Thursday at noon, invite everyone to a “lunch and learn” on new product launches. Mention that there will be lunch.
Microsoft Teams:
Agendas and schedules for meetings can be created by Copilot. As the chatbot can list the advantages and disadvantages of every topic and recommend the following actions, it will also be a useful decision-maker.
Copilot in Teams makes collaboration effortless. To ensure that everyone in the group knows what to do next, Copilot enables you to hold more productive meetings by helping everyone catch up on the conversation, organise key discussion points, and summarise critical activities. Without interfering with the conversation, Copilot provides you with answers to particular queries or catches you up on whatever you missed in your chat. You now have a strong tool to assist with routine chores like making meeting agendas based on chat history, choosing the appropriate people for follow-ups, and setting the next check-in by integrating Copilot into your meetings and discussions. You can try the following examples of commands and prompts:
Describe what I missed at the meeting in brief. What arguments have been put out so far? On what points do we disagree?
Make a list of advantages and disadvantages for the subject at hand. What else ought to be taken into account before we decide?
What choices were made, and what suggestions are there for the following actions?
Business Chat:
Your calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and contacts are all accessed by this new service. By using it as a single-window solution for your inquiries on projects and plans, you can improve collaboration.
With Business Chat, you can accomplish things you’ve never been able to before because it works with all of your data and apps. Using the Microsoft Graph’s strength to combine information from your documents, presentations, emails, calendar, notes, and contacts, Business Chat works alongside you. To keep the team on the same page and moving ahead as a unit, compile information from many sources. Spend more time concentrating on the most crucial work and less time on the tools. Business Chat in Microsoft Teams will be available to our preview customers starting today.
You can try the following examples of commands and prompts:
Write a summary of the conversations, emails, and documents regarding the [customer] escalation from last night.
What is the [project’s] upcoming milestone. Risks have they been identified? Please assist me in coming up with a list of possible mitigations.
Create a new planning overview in the same format as [filename A] that combines the project list from [person’s] email as well as the planning timeline from [filename B].