What is Microsoft 365 Copilot And What Can It Do?

In 2023, as AI technology accelerates, Microsoft has launched Microsoft 365 Copilot to harness the power of AI within the Office 365 collection. This AI-driven conversational assistant increases efficiency by managing activities such as sorting emails, arranging appointments, and creating outlines quickly.

By utilizing advanced language models (LLMs), Microsoft Graph, and Office 365 applications, Copilot effortlessly communicates with programs like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. which improves the efficiency of work processes and offers intelligent support.

Introduction to Microsoft 365 Copilot

Since generative AI is blooming in 2023, to stay in competition Microsoft recently announced that they are incorporating its superpower in Office 365 suite. Introducing Microsft 365 Copilot which is an AI-powered chatbot developed to increase the productivity of users.

From organizing emails, meetings, and calendars to generating drafts and new ideas Copilot can do all of it within a few seconds.

Microsoft reveals that Copilot uses the combination of large language models (LLMs) with user data in the MS Graph and M365 applications. However, for users who are not familiar with Microsoft Graph, it is the central source in the cloud for all our data.

Further, it gets distributed to various M365 apps. It uses three major technologies as follow:

Office 365 apps – Outlook, Teams, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc.
MS Graph and User Data.
OpenAi’s GPT- 4 LLM to process the entered information and output results as accurately as possible.

Applications Supported By Office 365 Copilot

The Copilot chatbot works along with all applications that are powered by the Microsoft 365 suite. To interact with it, simply enter a prompt and let the Copilot do its magic for you.

From generating a document to a specific answer it can do all of it depending on the instruction given by the user.

Let’s look at some amazing examples of this tool’s capabilities in different M365 applications:

• Microsoft 365 Integration With MS Word

For a more faster and efficient work users can create their first draft based on the prompt they provided to Copilot. It can incorporate content from other documents as well. Moreover, along with the prompts, users can also define the tone of their document’s content to sound more professional or vice versa.

• Microsoft 365 Integration With MS Excel

Before M365 Copilot, users spent a significant amount of their time on repetitive Excel tasks. However, now they can save this task for Copilot to get things done. By using the natural language prompts this utility can generate answers to the prompts that require complex formulas.

Also, it is capable of generating various visualizations for data sets, and projections, and also it provides suggestions without altering even a single bit of data.

• Microsoft 365 Integration With PowerPoint

Most of us find it boring and tiresome whenever we have to create a presentation. After the integration of Copilot in the Microsoft 365 suite, users just need to provide an outline or a document as a reference to create beautiful PowerPoint presentations.

It is recommended to provide as detailed prompts as possible for more accurate results.

• Microsoft 365 Integration With MS Outlook

It gets quite complicated for working professionals to be more productive when they are dealing with a lot of emails every day.

Hence, Copilot plays a major role in eliminating this time-consuming task by providing features such as instant replies to routine emails. Furthermore, it can drag email threads discussions, and content across the M365 suite.

• Microsoft 365 Integration With Teams

Microsoft 365 Copilot can be a game changer for Teams users. It can help in setting upcoming meeting agendas, organizing all the discussion points from meetings, and creating action points. Additionally, for those who missed their meeting by any chance, Copilot can generate a meeting summary.

Along with it, this utility can list the pros and cons of any discussions so that users can make decisions more precisely.

• Microsoft 365 Integration With Business Chat

This is a new feature in the Office 365 suite. O365 subscribers can use it to organize their calendars, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and contacts in a better way.

As a one-stop solution for project and plan-related queries, it helps in creating a better collaboration environment.

How Microsoft 365 Copilot Can Be Beneficial For Us?

Let’s have a look at how this utility can be useful for users who want to focus more on their productivity and creativity:

• More Efficient Workflow: Using Microsoft 365 Copilot, we can automate those repetitive tasks that require more effort. For example, replying to routine emails or summarizing lengthy documents into fewer words.
• Analyzing and Fixing Errors: Apart from generating and automating tasks, Copilot can also help in reducing writing errors. To make our drafts look more professional this utility suggests necessary improvements or alternatives based on our writing style.
• Provides Guidance: Microsoft 365 Copilot provides smart feedback after analyzing the content to enhance our writing skills. Along with it, we can explore new things and insights from our data.
• Generate New Ideas: For users who sometimes get stuck in a situation where they can’t find any new ideas. Copilot can help them by generating hundreds of unique ideas to take inspiration from.

Is Microsoft Copilot Available to Use?

As per reports, Microsoft 365 Copilot is still in the testing phase and for now available to approximately 600 preview users only. However, we can expect to see it on our M365 account soon as the competition is growing rapidly.

For this early access program, selected organizations are paying $30 per user per month extra to experience the power of Copilot.

Wrapping It All

In 2023, we are witnessing the rain shower of AI products that can make our lives easy in various ways. Microsoft 365 Copilot is one such example of that. Using GPT-4’s LLM and Microsoft Graph this utility can do extraordinary work like automating emails, generating drafts, framing error-free content, and many more. Moreover, it can give visual analytics for data entered into it.

Although Office 365 Copilot works on a smart AI brain, to fully utilize its potential it is a good idea to not get fully dependent on it.  It is more like a friend who can do all your general tasks so that you don’t have to compromise your productivity.