Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot

Currently, much of our time is consumed by mundane tasks, leaving little room for creative pursuits and fulfilling work. Microsoft has introduced Copilot for Microsoft 365, positioning it as your essential partner in productivity. Copilot harnesses the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) alongside your data from Microsoft Graph—encompassing your calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and more—integrated seamlessly with Microsoft 365 apps. This integration transforms your words into a powerful tool for enhancing productivity, all while maintaining robust commitments to data security and privacy in enterprise environments.

Copilot is deeply integrated into Microsoft 365 in two key ways. It operates alongside you within everyday Microsoft 365 applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and others, empowering creativity, boosting productivity, and enhancing skill sets. Additionally, we are unveiling a new experience called Business Chat, which leverages LLMs, Microsoft 365 apps, and your data—covering calendars, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and contacts—to achieve unprecedented capabilities. For instance, you can issue natural language commands like “tell my team how we updated the product strategy”, and it will generate a status update based on morning meetings, emails, and chat conversations.

Recent GitHub data reveals that developers using GitHub Copilot report enhanced productivity (88%), reduced time spent searching for information (77%), and the ability to focus on more rewarding tasks (74%).

Reinventing productivity for all

Copilot for Microsoft 365 seamlessly integrates into your everyday applications, enabling you to focus more on essential tasks and less on routine work. By working alongside you, Copilot for Microsoft 365 enhances creativity, boosts productivity, and elevates skills.

Copilot in Word assists by writing, editing, summarizing, and generating content in real time. Simply provide a prompt, and Copilot in Word will create initial drafts, drawing upon relevant information from across your organization as needed. It can add content to existing documents, condense text, or completely rewrite sections to improve clarity. Moreover, Copilot offers suggestions for tone—from professional to casual—to help you strike the right chord. It also enhances your writing by suggesting improvements to strengthen arguments or smooth out inconsistencies.

Below are some examples of commands and prompts you can try:

• Generate a two-page project proposal using data from [a document] and [a spreadsheet].

• Simplify the third paragraph. Change the document's tone to casual.

• Create a one-page draft based on this rough outline.

Copilot in Excel collaborates with you to facilitate data analysis and exploration. You can ask Copilot questions about your dataset using natural language, not just formulas. It uncovers correlations, proposes what-if scenarios, and suggests new formulas based on your inquiries—generating models that allow you to explore data without altering it. Whether identifying trends, creating compelling visualizations, or seeking recommendations for achieving different outcomes, Copilot in Excel is equipped to assist.

Here are some examples of commands and prompts you can use:

• Provide a breakdown of sales by type and channel. Insert a table.

• Forecast the impact of [a variable change] and create a chart for visualization.

• Model how adjusting the growth rate for [variable] would affect my gross margin.

Copilot in PowerPoint acts as your creative collaborator, helping transform your concepts into polished presentations. Serving as your storytelling ally, Copilot can convert existing written documents into slides complete with speaker notes and references, or initiate a new presentation from a simple prompt or outline. With a single click, it can condense lengthy presentations and utilize natural language commands to adjust layouts, reformat text, and synchronize animations perfectly.

Here are examples of commands and prompts you can use:

• Generate a five-slide presentation based on a Word document, incorporating relevant stock photos.

• Summarize this presentation into a concise three-slide overview.

• Rearrange these three bullet points into three columns, each with accompanying images.

Copilot in Outlook collaborates with you within your inbox and messages, allowing you to streamline email management and focus more on effective communication—enhancing efficiency and ease. It condenses lengthy and complex email threads involving multiple participants, providing not only a summary of discussions but also insights into various viewpoints and outstanding questions. You can reply to emails with minimal input or transform brief notes into polished, professional messages, drawing content from other emails or Microsoft 365 resources. Adjustments to tone and length can be made easily using toggles.

Here are examples of commands and prompts you can use:

• Summarize the emails I missed while I was away last week. Highlight any important items.

• Draft a response thanking them and requesting more details about their second and third points. Condense this draft and maintain a professional tone.

• Invite everyone to a "lunch and learn" session on new product launches next Thursday at noon. Mention that lunch will be provided.

Copilot in Teams enhances collaboration by streamlining teamwork processes. It facilitates more productive meetings by helping organize discussions, summarize key points, and outline actionable items for the entire group. Within chats, Copilot swiftly provides answers to specific queries or updates on missed information without disrupting ongoing conversations. Integrating Copilot into meetings and chats offers additional capabilities such as generating agendas based on chat histories, identifying appropriate team members for follow-ups, and scheduling future check-ins.

Here are examples of commands and prompts you can use:

• Provide a summary of what I missed in the meeting. What were the main points discussed? Where do opinions differ on this topic?

• Create a table outlining the pros and cons of [topic being discussed]. What other factors should we consider before making a decision?

• What decisions were reached, and what are the recommended next steps?

Introducing Business Chat

Business Chat introduces a revolutionary experience that spans all your data and applications, enabling unprecedented capabilities. Integrated with the Microsoft Graph, Business Chat collaborates with you to consolidate information from your documents, presentations, emails, calendar, notes, and contacts. By merging data from various sources, it ensures team alignment and facilitates cohesive progress, allowing you to focus more on essential tasks and less on managing tools. Today, our preview customers can access Business Chat within Microsoft Teams.

Here are examples of commands and prompts you can use:

• Provide a summary of the chats, emails, and documents related to the [customer] escalation last night.

• What is the next milestone for [project]? Were any risks identified? Help me brainstorm lists.

• Create a new planning overview in the style of [filename A], incorporating the project timeline from [filename B] and including the project list from the email sent by [person].

Extending to Microsoft Viva

Copilot in Viva Engage, a key integration within Microsoft Viva, provides leaders with thought-provoking conversation starters derived from sentiments and trending topics within workplace communities and discussions. It assists leaders by suggesting personalized post content, offering options to include images, and adjusting the tone to enhance dialogue richness.

Additionally, Copilot enhances the Answers feature in Microsoft Viva Engage, ensuring a swift and efficient experience. It proposes prompts to improve the clarity and depth of questions asked. During team interactions, Copilot suggests responses that foster ongoing dialogue, leveraging relevant knowledge and expert input.

Building responsibly

Copilot for Microsoft 365 is tailored to meet enterprise needs, guided by our AI principles and Responsible AI Standard, and built upon decades of research in secure and privacy-preserving machine learning. Microsoft’s AI initiatives undergo rigorous evaluation for potential risks and are subject to mitigation measures by a diverse team of researchers, engineers, and policy experts. Across its services, Microsoft employs the Azure Content Moderation Stack to monitor and filter out harmful content. Technologies like InterpretML and Fairlearn are utilized to identify and address data biases.

The Copilot System upholds their steadfast commitment to data security and privacy in the enterprise. It automatically adheres to your organization’s security, compliance, and privacy policies within Microsoft 365. Data management practices align with our established standards, and Copilot's large language models do not undergo training using your tenant data.

Furthermore, Microsoft has focused on creating an experience that emphasizes human control and user empowerment. This includes acknowledging limitations, providing sources for information, and encouraging users to review, fact-check, and refine content based on their own knowledge and judgement.

Get AI-ready with Microsoft 365

Microsoft is currently conducting trials of Copilot for Microsoft 365 with 20 customers, including 8 from Fortune 500 enterprises. Over the next few months, they will expand these trials to a broader range of customers. They will also provide details on new controls for IT administrators, enabling them to confidently plan for the implementation of Copilot across their organizations.

To prepare for Copilot, the optimal approach is to leverage Microsoft 365, the essential platform for modern work. Microsoft 365 integrates essential capabilities into a unified solution, encompassing identity management, applications, administration, security features, and enterprise data, ensuring readiness for AI integration.

Find out more here.