Unlocking the Power of AI for Your Business

Microsoft 365 Copilot – What You Need to Know

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat

Copilot Chat is the revolutionary AI chat experience that you will use every day, powered by broad knowledge from the web, and designed to be safe and secure for business use.

Copilot Chat is included in various Microsoft 365 licenses such as Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Microsoft 365 Business Premium, and Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3 and E5 plans.

Copilot Chat includes:

• Web-grounded chat with GPT-4o. You can use it to do market research, write a strategy document, or prepare for a meeting
• File uploads. Upload any document and ask Copilot to do things like summarise a Word document or suggest improvements to a PowerPoint
• Prompt Library. Access Microsoft’s growing library of useful prompts. Written a useful prompt yourself? Save it to the library for reuse and easily share with colleagues
• Copilot Pages. Collaborate on content with colleagues and AI in real time, easily adding content from Copilot and your own files
• Mobile app. Download the M365 Copilot app to harness the power of AI on the go

For more detailed information and support, you can refer to Overview of Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/copilot-microsoft365-chat

Microsoft 365 Copilot

While Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is included with most Microsoft 365 Business licenses, you can also purchase an additional Microsoft 365 Copilot license including features that significantly improve productivity by leveraging AI across the Microsoft 365 suite of apps.

A key feature of the additional paid license is its integration with Microsoft Graph. This integration enables Copilot to access and utilise data from various sources, such as emails, Teams conversations, SharePoint documents, and more, thereby providing a comprehensive overview and actionable insights based on organisational information.

The additional benefits of a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot license include:

• Get AI-powered chat grounded in your business data
• Access Microsoft 365 Copilot in apps such as Teams, Outlook, Word, PowerPoint and Excel
• Create and use agents with Copilot Studio
• Experience enterprise-grade security, privacy, and compliance

Here are some of the ways Microsoft 365 Copilot can be used in the core apps, to enhance different aspects of your workflow:

• Teams: Enable more effective meetings and collaboration through intelligent scheduling, task assignments, real-time insights, and automated meeting summaries
• Outlook: Manage your email with smart categorisation, automated replies, scheduling assistance, and personalised email coaching to improve your communication skills
• Word: Improve your writing with AI-driven suggestions for grammar, tone, and style, as well as content generation, making your documents polished and professional
• PowerPoint: Develop presentations with design suggestions, content recommendations, automatic formatting, and dynamic visual aids that keep your audience engaged
• Excel: Enhance your data analysis with predictive analytics, automated data entry, visualisations, and integrate Python for advanced data analysis and modeling capabilities

Find out more about the Microsoft 365 Copilot plans: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/copilot

Prompting Tips

There are 5 key components to a Copilot prompt.

1. Clear Objective: Start with a clear end goal in mind. Define what you want to achieve with the prompt, whether it’s generating a specific type of content, solving a problem, or providing information.
2. Context and Background: Provide relevant context and background information. This helps the Copilot understand the situation better and generate more accurate and relevant responses.
3. Specific Instructions: Include detailed and specific instructions. The more precise you are, the better the Copilot can tailor its responses to meet your needs. This can include parameters, constraints, or examples.
4. Tone and Style: Specify the desired tone and style of the response. Whether you want a formal, casual, friendly, or technical tone, make sure to communicate this clearly.
5. Flexibility and Adaptability: Allow for some flexibility in the prompt. While specific instructions are important, it’s also beneficial to give the Copilot some room to adapt and provide creative solutions or insights.

Example Prompt for Copilot Chat

Unlock the full potential of Copilot with this example prompt I recently used with a customer in a government department. Try it out, edit it to work for you, and save to your Prompt Library for later use!

“Please provide a comprehensive list of all current Western Australian legislation related to ***conflicts of interest in the workplace***. Include the following details for each piece of legislation:
Title and Link: Provide the official title and a direct link to the full text of the legislation.

Overview: Summarise the key points and provisions of the legislation.
Relevance: Explain how the legislation is relevant to Western Australian Government departments, employees, and contractors. Highlight any specific sections or clauses that are particularly important for these groups.

Ensure the response is well-structured and detailed, covering all aspects mentioned above.”

Top tip: I have included ***Conflicts of interest*** in asterisks so that I can quickly change that in future if I reuse from the Prompt Library. Don’t forget to ask follow up questions or suggest changes in formatting if you don’t get what you want immediately!

Access Microsoft’s prompt library: https://copilot.cloud.microsoft/prompts/all