What is Microsoft Copilot? | AI Tools for Office365

Microsoft has announced the latest in next-generation AI technology. Copilot, Microsoft's new Enterprise level ready AI, will "team up" with your current Microsoft 365 offering, integrating itself with apps including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams to unlock your productivity, giving you, and your business, the power to combine large language models (LLMs) with your data in the aforementioned apps. It is a way of helping people with the energy-draining tasks, freeing you up to do more with your working day.

The benefits of Microsoft Copilot

Embedded into your existing computer systems, it can effortlessly enable you to up your creativity, be more productive and uplevel your current skillset. Whether it is giving you a first draft to work from in Word or creating an effortlessly professional presentation in PowerPoint, you can do it all simply by analysing data that you have stored in documents, spreadsheets, and emails. It can even work cross-functionally, so you can ask it to translate a Word document into a PowerPoint presentation.

1. Get creative

Formulating a piece of long-form content? Now you never have to worry about writer's block as Copilot can help create a first draft for you. It scours your applications to gain the relevant knowledge, creating paragraphs of text that are either useable or the opposite, meaning at least you know what NOT to include.

2. Be more productive

Ever wanted to summarise that long email thread to find what you need? Now you can. On top of that, you can draft your response too, thanks to Copilot in Outlook. It can also help you clear your packed inbox in minutes, which will make that first day back from a break a breeze. The hidden gem though is using it with Teams. Copilot can analyse your meeting, summarise, and tell you who said what and where people agree or disagree, all in real time. To that end, meetings will soon become so much more productive, and leave you thinking "I am glad that was not just an email."

3. Improve your skillset

The average person does not use Excel, Word, PowerPoint and so on to their full potential. We know there are thousands of commands and pieces of functionality that are relatively unused by the common user. That is now unlocked using the most basic language, meaning you will be able to do things with Microsoft 365 that you may have never even known existed. It works with your content to work in the correct context.

4. Be more collaborative

How many times have you arrived late to a meeting and not known what was going on? With Copilot for Teams, your transcript to that point can be analysed and scanned before a summary can be prepared and given to whoever has just joined the meeting to bring them up to speed. That, as well as the aforementioned point on productivity, means you never need to argue over a point again, and if that is not great for collaboration, we do not know what is.

In simple terms, it is the perfect tool for those who are ready to embrace a new way of working to gain a professional edge. It will come with learnings, and it will not always be right, however, one thing is for sure: those who embrace it will be the ones most likely to progress and better themselves.

If you would like to speak to Managed247 about how to integrate Microsoft Copilot into your systems, get in touch.