Now that Microsoft 365 Copilot has been integrated into almost all of Microsoft’s apps and its ecosystem, it’s time to find out exactly how much this tool can improve your workflows and improve productivity. The 10 tips below are only a glimpse of how Microsoft 365 Copilot can help users achieve more in the business, but they show how powerful the technology is, and invite users to improve their Copilot experiences.
- Power your prompts. The clearer and sharper your prompts for Copilot, the better your results. This PDF from Microsoft – The Art and Science of Prompting: Copilot for Microsoft 365 – includes a wealth of tips and tricks to optimise how you talk to the tech.
- Create content at speed. While writing content with Copilot will need some editing, it’s a great way to break the barrier of the blank page in Word. Open a document, select the Copilot icon, and then use your new prompting skills to tell the tech what to do in the section titled ‘Draft with Copilot’.
- Go mobile. You can use Copilot on both Android and iOS devices and it is a game-changer if you’re on the move and need help preparing memos, reviewing documents, generating meeting summaries or responses to emails. This only works if you have the mobile versions of the Microsoft ecosystem on your device, but if you do, just select Word, and use the provided options to read through, summarise or search documents. It’s worth noting that creating customised summaries, finding documents, and searching documents are also core features for Copilot in the desktop Word application as well.
- Automate emails. You can use Copilot to prepare emails you write on a regular basis to customers or service providers. This is a complete win for users who work in customer service or accounting who send the same type of content to multiple people on a regular basis. Just ask Copilot in Outlook to draft emails based on a template and you’re done. The technology can also create templates for you.
- Manage meetings more effectively. In Outlook, Copilot can manage the meeting scheduling process for you – it will find times you have available, suggest relevant people, create an agenda and prepare for the meeting. Just before a meeting Copilot shows a Prepare icon in Outlook and if you click on it, you get a summary of the meeting and relevant files you can share with others or use to prepare.
- Track action items quickly. Copilot’s integration with Teams means that all the meeting information you prepared prior to the session, and all the content shared during the session, is available to all attendees. It also provides transcripts, summaries of the discussion, and actionable insights.
- Create an entire PowerPoint presentation from one document. Simply select the file and Copilot will create a PowerPoint with images and notes using the information in the document. Then you can just edit it to fit your needs once it’s done the hard work.
- Generate charts and graphs automatically. In both PowerPoint and Excel, it’s possible to create visual representations of data really quickly and easily. You simply prompt Copilot with the type of graph or chart you want and which data you want it to use, and it does the rest.
- Manage tone in emails. This is a good one. Often, when you reply to an email in a rush or without thinking, the tone in your email may be interpreted negatively by the recipient. Copilot saves you time and the risk of offence by simply checking tone for you – it will even change the tone based on your prompts.
- Track tasks automatically. You can ask Copilot to put all your tasks into one Planner or help you to categorise your tasks using insights from files. It can even send you reminders at a certain time and help you build a complete task outline quickly. You’ll need to edit it, but the bare bones will be there in just a few clicks.
This is only a fraction of what Microsoft 365 Copilot can do within the apps most used by the business user. The technology has immense potential, and Mint can help your business achieve that potential with our deep understanding of Microsoft, data and how to integrate Copilot within your ecosystem.