Microsoft 365 Copilot: The New Tool for More Productivity

Microsoft 365 Copilot_Handelskraft_Header — Source: iStock/mihailomilovanovic

Digital transformation is not just changing the way we buy products or inform ourselves about important topics: it is changing the way we work. Fundamentally. We have already asked our teams how they have experienced their work being transformed by new tools such as ChatGPT. With Microsoft 365 Copilot, however, there is about to be a new tool on the market, one which could change the way we work even more fundamentally.

An Overview of Microsoft 365 Copilot

Microsoft 365 Copilot: AI on the Rise

AI offers businesses countless opportunities to optimise products and services as well as collaboration and processes within the company. Targeted decisions for the optimisation of shopping experiences can be made based on automatically gathered and centrally managed data, strengthening customer relationships.

ChatGPT, DALL-E and other AI-based tools also offer starting points to facilitate simple tasks in daily business. For example, employees can generate an outline for a blog post, simple codes or images for presentations.

The new productivity tool Microsoft 365 Copilot goes even further. For one, it is directly integrated into popular Microsoft apps such as Teams, Outlook, PowerPoint and Excel to simplify the creation of texts, presentations and Excel analyses. Business Chat also makes it possible to formulate concrete tasks in natural language.

The technology uses a large language model (LLM), which is trained to understand human language, and combines it with Microsoft Graph data. This is all the data that is generated using Microsoft services, such as e-mails, calendar entries and chat messages.

Microsoft 365 Copilot_Systems — Source: Microsoft

The vision of Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, is to expand the human intellect and their actions with the help of computer technology in the future. Microsoft 365 Copilot is intended to make everyday assignments easier for employees so that they have more time for creative tasks, new ideas and the actual core of their work.

Microsoft 365 Copilot: This Is Possible with the Tool and Microsoft Apps

If content creators want to compose a text on a certain subject, they can have Copilot generate a first draft in Word and then go on to enrich it with substantiated facts and a personal touch.

The creation of entire PowerPoint presentations will also be possible with Copilot. With just a few entries, the tool compiles content from selected documents, such as a customer offer, and prepares it in a visually appealing way. Furthermore, Copilot is supposed to be able to suggest lecture notes for the individual slides.

It is true that many things can be visualised more clearly in other systems than they can in Excel. However, Excel is still the most suitable option for some evaluations and reports, as it is the most familiar tool for many users. Copilot will make processing Excel analyses even easier in the future. It can analyse development trends in your tables quickly and visualise them through colour highlighting or in a diagram.

Another scenario that many employees are familiar with is the flood of e-mails awaiting them after a two-week holiday. Here, Copilot can also provide a bit of relief, for example by highlighting the most important e-mails, filtering out information from long messages and suggesting responses.

Even meetings held via Teams can be organised and documented more easily with the help of Copilot. You can collect important information before the meeting, summarise key messages and get suggestions for next steps.

If two crucial meetings overlap, Copilot can create a summary of the meeting you missed as well as an overview of your resulting tasks. If you still have questions afterwards, you can directly pose them to the tool.

Copilot also summarises notes collected in OneNote into a complete and clear document in the shortest possible time. For example, right after a customer meeting, sales managers can automatically create an offer in the desired layout on the basis of the notes created.

In other words: every application is to get its own co-pilot, which will carry out the desired functions and answer your individual questions. For this purpose, a conversation window will open, similar to a chatbot on a website.

As a user, you can then formulate your question, called a prompt. Similar to ChatGPT and other AI tools, it might take a bit of practice to formulate the prompt in a way that will result in a comprehensive answer by the tool.

This video will give you more detailed insights into Microsoft 365 Copilot:

Furthermore, Microsoft 365 Copilot is meant to help employees utilise the opportunities offered by Microsoft apps in a more comprehensive way. The tool employs a lot of features that many users have not yet taken advantage of, simply because they were not aware of all the things the applications can do. This way, you can discover new features that take your presentations, analyses and e-mails to a whole new level.

Microsoft 365 Copilot: What Business Chat Offers

In the future, Business Chat will be accessible via Microsoft.com, Bing or directly via Teams. For example, if you want to adjust your business strategy, Copilot will collect all the information you need as a foundation. Based on your existing data from Excel spreadsheets, Teams meetings, e-mail conversations and so on, the tool can, for example, compile an entire SWOT analysis, i.e. an assessment of your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

You can also have important information from several meetings automatically summarised and shared with the entire team in a few seconds. This way, you can ensure that everyone is on the same page without communication costing you a lot of time or risking forgetting to share important information.

Microsoft 365 Copilot: Data Protection and Security Standards

The more comprehensively intelligent tools intervene in our everyday lives, whether private or professional, the more responsibility is demanded of those who use these solutions. Social, cultural and legal standards must be met.

The large language model’s responses are followed up again by Copilot to ensure adherence to all security, compliance and privacy policies as well as processes.

Microsoft 365 Copilot: The Current State of Development

At the moment, Copilot is still being tested by a small group of customers. In this test phase, the tool is to be further optimised before it is made available to the masses. Afterwards, it will be integrated into all Microsoft applications. Microsoft has not yet announced what costs and licencing options users can expect. However, it is safe to say that such an increase in productivity through a seemingly exceptionally trained model will come at a steep cost.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Is Transforming the Digital Working World: Download the »Digital Transformation« White Paper for Free Now!

Digital tools do not just help your team’s productivity and efficiency – they are becoming a necessity when it comes to engaging customers on all channels and providing a seamless shopping experience. Read our »Digital Transformation« white paper to find out what steps you can take to prepare your company for digital transformation.

Fill out the form now and receive a free copy in your inbox!