Microsoft 365 Copilot | Features

Daily extra help to create a slide presentation and graphics in a spreadsheet or a text document is always welcome. Or to summarize and analyze all the information in these files. And we’re not talking about human help: artificial intelligence helps you get the most out of PowerPoint, Excel, or Word, and we are talking about Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Microsoft 365 Copilot: what it is

Copilot is an artificial intelligence (AI) tool in the Microsoft 365 suite that combines natural language with linguistic models, data, and Microsoft Graph to improve employee productivity using everyday applications such as Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, or PowerPoint.

As the name itself says, Copilot is a copilot, someone who helps you work to improve your performance or get you out of the most monotonous tasks. And at the same time, you remain the pilot, i.e., you control the business operations.

Copilot has been developed in collaboration with GitHub and OpenAI, whose GPT-4 language technology is integrated into the tool.

Business Chat

Microsoft 365 Copilot incorporates a tool called Business Chat. Linked to Microsoft 365 applications and the data generated by each user (chats, emails, notes…), it ‘listens’ to natural language to execute orders.

For example, as Microsoft points out, an employee can command Business Chat: “Tell my team how we have updated the product strategy.” From there, it will update that strategy based on the latest chats, emails, and meetings. Also, it can summarize conversations, e-mails, and other documents about a project.

Microsoft 365 Copilot | Features

Copilot is integrated into Microsoft 365 in two ways. It works alongside the user, integrated into the Microsoft 365 applications you use daily (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams…) to increase productivity, access to data, and, in short, expand the user’s knowledge.

Here are some of the most confirmed features that add to the mythical Microsoft 365 package with Copilot.

Copilot features in Word

The arrival of Copilot in Word means having the best companion for writing, editing, accessing, and incorporating information and summarizing as quickly and accurately as possible: making a first draft, including info of interest, adding related documents… In addition, it can bring a personalized tone to each task by knowing the document’s recipients.

• Generate summaries based on other text documents.
• Suggest writing tones: professional, informal…
• Provide arguments to defend a thesis.
• Rewrite sections or highlight inconsistencies.
• Create text drafts based on outlines or structures.

Copilot Features in PowerPoint

Copilot in PowerPoint helps you turn your ideas into excellent presentations. If creativity is not your forte, Copilot becomes your ideal companion to tell stories in the best way. It can transform written documents into complete presentations, even with notes and fonts to reinforce your presentation. Or start a new slideshow from scratch from a simple prompt or outline. Condense long presentations at the touch of a button and adjust the layout, reformat text, or perfectly synchronize animations using your natural language prompts.

• Generate a draft slideshow with information from another file.
• Summarize presentations.
• Change the layout of a specific slide.
• Reduce text and synchronize it with animations already present in a presentation.

Copilot features in Excel

Copilot in Excel is here to facilitate data analysis and exploration. Forget formulas: simply ask about the presented dataset and access concrete answers, correlations, and what-if scenarios. It will also suggest new procedures and recipes for your questions, using models to help you explore your data.

Identify trends, create visualizations, and ask for recommendations to gain greater depth.

• In an Excel spreadsheet full of data and variables, filter out the highest or lowest values. This can be very useful to check, for example, the best-selling products, where the highest costs come from, or which categories are the most successful among the public.
• Create draft budgets or accounting.
• Generate graphs.
• Make assumptions about sales results and growth… by changing one of the variables.

Copilot features in Outlook

The time we spend managing e-mails is undoubtedly an obstacle to our maximum productivity. Copilot in Outlook is our best help to communicate better and faster. Summarize long and convoluted email threads with multiple people to understand at a glance not only what has been said but also each person’s different points of view and unanswered questions. Reply to an email with a simple prompt or turn quick notes into clear, defined messages from other emails or content you already have access to from Microsoft 365.

• Write email drafts based on information from other documents.
• Summarize message chains.
• By achieving the above two points, ‘clean up’ the inbox faster than usual.
• Mark the most important items or messages.

Copilot features in Teams

In Microsoft Teams, Copilot helps you organize more effective meetings and meeting highlights and summarize critical actions, so your team knows what to do next. In chat, Copilot answers specific questions or updates you on anything you missed.

Adding Copilot to your meetings and conversations gives you a powerful tool to help you with everyday tasks such as creating meeting agendas based on chat history, identifying the right people to follow up with, and scheduling monitoring meetings.

• Generate a list of possible topics to talk about in meetings.
• Also, generate meeting structure according to chat messages.
• Create meeting summaries for those who could not attend, were late, or would like a summary.

Copilot features in Power Apps

Copilot will enable application developers to work with machines and humans to create applications faster and easier. Using natural language models, developers will develop apps by describing their needs through conversation.

Copilot will also allow users to interact with data in a chatbot experience, creating queries and refining analysis more intuitively.

In addition, Power Virtual Agents chatbots have been integrated into Power Apps. This will make it easier for developers to add AI chatbots to their applications.

By including these tools, Microsoft hopes to lead the revolution in low-code application development and move towards creating transformative software in a natural language that everyone understands.

Copilot Features in Power Automate

Microsoft Power Automate has released two new features to enhance the platform: Copilot and Create text with GPT. The Describe it to design it, launched in October 2022, allowed you to type a simple sentence and create a workflow based on that description. With Copilot, the user will enhance and modify flows with AI-driven conversations. Users ask questions and receive help to make improvements and changes; natural language is used to create simple flows or complex business processes.

In addition, Microsoft has launched a new feature called Create text with GPT, allowing users to generate content in desktop workflows automatically. This can be useful for creating daily content, customer service, and extracting information from large amounts of text and documents, as it saves time compared to manual crawling.

In short, these new features help Power Automate users automate processes more intelligently, quickly, and efficiently.

Satisfaction with Copilot

According to GitHub, 60-75% of developers who tried Copilot on the platform felt «more fulfilled with their job, feel less frustrated when coding, and can focus on more satisfying work.»

Security and Biases

Being part of the Microsoft 365 suite, Copilot has the same security processes as other tools in the suite, such as two-factor authentication. In addition, protocols are in place to detect and prevent data bias.

Benefits for enterprises

The application of Copilot in companies increases workers’ productivity and performance, which, as with other technologies such as automation, allows them to focus on more creative and less monotonous tasks.

By obtaining the help of AI, tasks are done faster and with a higher degree of success, resulting in greater satisfaction. Moreover, in this case, using natural language facilitates communication between the human and the machine to perform them.

We help you to take advantage of all the possibilities of Microsoft 365 Copilot

At Plain Concepts, we are specialists in AI and the customization of the Microsoft 365 suite of tools. As promoters of the Modern Workplace concept, we have extensive experience enhancing intelligent workspaces designed to increase communication between departments, data sharing, and ultimately, increasing the productivity of each employee, aligning it with business objectives.

If you want to know more about our services, do not hesitate to contact our experts.