Microsoft Copilot for Organizations: Master Productivity

Microsoft 365 Copilot is available in different versions, including a free version and upgraded, feature-rich versions integrated into Microsoft 365. This tutorial focuses on the organizational versions, specifically for business or enterprise accounts. These accounts offer a baseline set of Copilot tools, including a secure AI chat experience with enterprise data protection and limited integration with productivity apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. An upgraded subscription, called Microsoft 365 Copilot, provides enhanced capabilities, extending Copilot's integration to Outlook and Teams, adding more features within existing apps, and enabling grounding in work data. The presence of a 'work/web' toggle switch in Copilot indicates a full Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription, enabling access to organizational data.

The Copilot website serves as the main portal for Microsoft 365 apps and services, including the full Copilot chat tool. A shield icon indicates enterprise data protection, ensuring company information remains secure and is not used to train AI models. The 'work/web' toggle switch allows users with the full subscription to switch between web mode (internet-grounded responses) and work mode (organizational data-grounded responses). Users can engage Copilot with simple or complex questions, and it maintains context for ongoing conversations. The 'new chat' button resets the context, allowing for fresh inquiries. Copilot also stores previous conversations, accessible via a list on the left pane.

For complex questions, Copilot offers a 'think deeper' mode, which takes more time to analyze and compare results from different sources for increased accuracy. This mode is particularly useful when the accuracy of answers is critical. Copilot provides citations for its responses, especially for complex questions. Users can hover over a citation to see its source or click a link to visit the original website for independent fact-checking. A 'sources' option at the bottom of the response lists all references used.

The 'work' mode in Copilot allows it to access private and secure information from your organization, including email messages, chats, shared documents, and details about co-workers and meetings. This enables Copilot to answer questions like 'When was my last meeting with Ava?' or 'Are there any outstanding action items from my emails over the last 3 months with [person]?'. Users can use the '/' key in the chat field to search for specific people, files, or email threads within their company directory. Copilot operates within the existing permissions and security policies of your Microsoft 365 account. It can only access information that the user is authorized to view.

Copilot can analyze specific documents and images provided by the user, either by uploading files directly or selecting them from Microsoft cloud storage. For instance, a spreadsheet can be uploaded for Copilot to analyze and extract information, such as identifying backordered items with the highest profit margin. Images can also be dragged into the Copilot chat field for analysis. As a generative AI, Copilot can create drafts of text, entire documents, pictures, and even video sequences. For text generation, users can prompt Copilot to compose emails, and it can generate full documents like PowerPoint presentations based on previous chat contexts or research.

Copilot in Microsoft Word can summarize documents, answer specific questions about content, explain Word functionalities, and draft text, with advanced features like 'work web toggle' available for full subscriptions. Excel's Copilot is highly useful for data analysis, capable of answering questions about spreadsheets, sorting data, filtering, applying conditional formatting, and adding new calculated columns. The 'Agent Mode' in Excel's Copilot allows direct modification of spreadsheets. PowerPoint's Copilot can generate presentation drafts from prompts, create infographics from slide content, and add new slides to existing presentations, with translation features also available.

Outlook's Copilot assists with email triage, summarizing long threads, drafting new messages or replies with specified tone and length, and providing 'coaching' on draft quality. In Microsoft Teams, Copilot enhances communication and collaboration by summarizing chat conversations, answering questions about chat history, rewriting messages for tone, and providing AI summaries and Q&A for recorded meetings. Copilot's access to organizational data, including chat messages, team channel conversations, and recorded meetings, is private and protected within the Microsoft 365 environment, adhering to existing organizational permissions.

Copilot offers 'Pages' and 'Notebooks' for saving, sharing, and organizing research. Pages allow users to save, modify, and add to information researched in Copilot, similar to Microsoft Loop, and can be easily shared with controlled permissions. Notebooks, available to full Microsoft 365 Copilot subscribers, are specialized research platforms based on user-provided information sources. Scheduled prompts, also available to full Microsoft 365 Copilot subscribers in work mode, automate recurring requests, such as identifying outstanding action items from emails, and can be configured to send email notifications.

Prompt engineering is a strategy for writing effective prompts to get better results from Copilot, involving components like defining a 'role' for Copilot, specifying a clear 'goal', providing 'context', setting 'expectations', and listing 'sources'. Microsoft 365 Copilot is accessible through various applications beyond the website, including a dedicated mobile app for smartphones and a standalone Microsoft 365 Copilot app for Windows. Many Windows computers also feature a dedicated Copilot key or a keyboard shortcut (Windows key + C) which can be customized to launch either the basic Copilot app or the Microsoft 365 Copilot app.