Getting started with Copilot - Summary
In this Video:
Unlock the full potential of Microsoft 365 with Copilot in this insightful video. Discover how integrating AI can streamline your workflows, enhance collaboration, and boost productivity across your essential applications.
In this video, we delve into:
- The core functionalities of Microsoft 365 apps like Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams, highlighting their seamless integration with Copilot.
- Practical ways to leverage Copilot for efficient task management, such as converting bug reports into actionable tasks without the hassle of switching between applications.
- The value of the Researcher agent in providing insights and counterpoints, helping you make informed decisions in your projects.
- Best practices for using AI responsibly within your team, ensuring clear communication and accountability while maximizing productivity.
- The importance of maintaining human oversight over AI-generated content, fostering a collaborative environment that prevents misunderstanding and enhances team dynamics.
Key takeaways include actionable strategies for utilizing AI tools effectively, tips for improving communication within teams, and an understanding of how to navigate the balance between AI assistance and personal accountability.
Join us as we explore how to harness the capabilities of Microsoft 365 Copilot to transform your daily operations, making your workflow more efficient and less error-prone. This video is a must-watch for IT managers, CIOs, and anyone looking to elevate their business through innovative technology solutions. Tune in and take the first step toward a more productive future with Copilot.
FAQ
1. What is the best day-one use case for Microsoft 365 Copilot?
One of the most practical day-one use cases is using Copilot to move information from one system to another with less manual effort. For example, you can pull details from Outlook, Teams, or SharePoint and turn them into tasks, notes, or follow-up actions in another tool. This helps reduce admin overhead and makes it easier to keep work moving.
2. How can Copilot help reduce forgotten follow-ups and delayed admin work?
Copilot can help capture actions the moment they happen, rather than relying on memory or a note to handle later. If an email, meeting, or conversation creates a task, you can ask Copilot to turn that into a structured next step straight away. That makes it easier to keep momentum, especially when you are moving quickly between meetings, clients, and projects.
3. Do I still need to review Copilot’s work before sending or assigning it?
Yes. Copilot can save time, but accountability still sits with the person using it. If Copilot drafts an email, creates tasks, or summarises a discussion, it is still important to check that the output is accurate, clear, and appropriate before it is shared or acted on.
4. What is a sensible way for teams to use AI without creating confusion?
A good approach is to agree on where AI is helpful, where human review is expected, and what standard of quality should apply before something is sent to a colleague or client. AI can be excellent for drafting, summarising, and speeding up repetitive work, but teams still need clear communication, shared expectations, and ownership of the final result.
All right, so that covers off the 365 app, um, that covers off Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. We’re not gonna touch out, uh, uh, Access because frankly, I’m yet to meet someone who really uses it. Um, but those are the, those are the big ones, right? Though that’s, that’s, that’s your day one for Copilot, right?
That’s your how do I get up and running with this thing. Now, I wanted to talk a little bit more about how I use Copilot and how I use products like this, um, because I do think they have, uh, an immense amount of value to, to be, to be gained, um, day one.
They… You can extend this stuff a lot, and we have, and I, I’ve got very specific things. Um, but the simple ways that I use it, I do a lot of pull and push. So I wanna be able to pull information out of SharePoint and Outlook, and Teams.
and push it. somewhere else. Most of the, time that’ comes down to, uh, someone’s emailed me about, you know, they’ve emailed me a bug. “Hey, there’s a problem with this particular system.” Cool. “Hey, Copilot, go get that’ email from Rob talking about the bug. Go and assess it, and then add it into our project management tool.
Add a task. I want Andrew to assess that, uh, to assess that’ bug. So assign Andrew to it. Set a deadline of, you know, next Friday, and have Copilot, do that’ push to the other system.” Now, both, both systems are doing what they’re best at, right? It’s not seeking to replace either of those, but the friction for me to transfer that information is nonexistent now.
It’s gone. I can instantly have, bug report turned into a, a task assigned to, someone in the team, and then, you know, they. now go back and forth on that system. That’s fine. But I don’t have, to open up two windows side by side, copy paste some stuff.
And the most important part of that flow that goes away is the, “I’ll do that when I, get back to my desk. I’ll make a note to do that later.” Um, that just goes away because from my pocket I’ can just grab my phone and go, “Hey, Copilot, I’ve got an email from Rob.
It’s a bug report. Make a task in, in ClickUp and assign it, to Andrew. I want it done by next Friday.” And it just goes, “Cool, boss. No worries. Done.” The very worst outcome from that is it says something like it did for, for the Outlook video where it’s like, “Which of these options do you want to take?” Like, “Oh, do you want it worded a certain way?” But the, the thought and the information and, and the action that I wanted taken is at least in a Copilot conversation.
It’s not gone. I don’t forget about, them because it’s not on me to remember. So when I get back to my desk, I go to Copilot, and I see it came back with some extra stuff. Oh, cool. Yeah. Take option one, get it sorted. Done. And so the very worst case is my thought is still captured because the worst, the thing I hate the most is when I forget stuff.
I’m doing 20 different projects across 20 different clients at any one time, and I go and meet someone for the first time. We talk about a, a system. I haven’t seen before, or they ask. about a particular workflow I’ve not thought through previously. As soon as I walk out of, that meeting, if it’s not recorded on Teams, because in the case of catching up for a coffee, I don’t wanna be that guy who’s like, “Hey, I’m just gonna record our whole, our whole conversation.
You cool with that?” So as soon as I walk away, though, I’ll shake your hand, I’ll… As soon as I’m out of eyesight, bang, straight to Copilot. “Hey, Copilot, just met up with Rob. We talked about X, Y, and Z. I need to follow up on blah, blah, and blah.
Assign that out to, you know, Andrew. Assign that out to Joe. We need to go back to them by next Wednesday. Cool.” And it’ll go, “Awesome. Added three tasks in ClickUp. Assigned them all. They’ve all got deadlines. I made notes against each of them.” Cool. That’s, that’s done now.
And so that, that is my biggest workflow improvement, at least with, you know, out-of-the-box tools like this. Like I said, I, I’ve, I’ve extended my AI tools pretty significantly, uh, not all of which is relevant to most, uh, most users. Um, but that’s, that’s, you know, that’s kind of how I tend to use these things.
Now, I use the Researcher agent a lot, um, because it’ can sp- it can genuinely come back with some interesting insights on topics I’m unfamiliar with, um, or take a different, uh, stance against an, an issue. So particularly when it comes to comparing products, I can say, you know, “I really love Copilot.
These are the things I like about it. But someone just told me, I don’t know, Grok’s awesome. Give me the counterpoints. Like, like, Steel Man that for me. Tell me the things that, that, you know, would genuinely might change my mind.” And it’ll come back with some interesting stuff, right?
And, and then I can take that and use that information. I can, I can, you know, synthesize it in my own way. I can be the person with the brain, right? That’s the important part. Um, and so maybe it comes back with stuff and I disregard it. “Nah, don’t agree with that.” That’s fine.
That’s cool. But I have access to a lot more depth of information now. I don’t need to go through Reddit threads and, uh, you know, Microsoft pages and read the white paper and the marketing. Copilot can go and sift through a bunch of stuff for me and, and kind of give me a, a much better starting point for those, things.
Now, the other part to use of AI is I think that there’s a really important, uh, discussion, I suppose is one way to put it. Um, but just an understanding, I think amongst your team, amongst your peers, and with your clients about what you are going to use AI for.
Um, not for any l- you know, legal or contractual obligations, but just as a, as a social etiquette thing. So if I, if I do some research on a given topic and I need to talk to someone else in my team, about it, someone who’s an expert in SharePoint.
If I just go to Claude and say, “Hey, I want to do this in SharePoint, how do I do it?” And then, email that entire, you know, um, that entire block of text out to them and say, “Hey, what do you think?” It’s kind of like doing a Google search and sending them a screenshot of the results.
Like, that’s not cool. They could have gone to Copilot themselves and asked the question. Um, and so I don’t wanna just be throwing stuff. over the wall to people. That’s what’s commonly being referred to as work slop, and that is I took two seconds to hit the magic button to output a bunch of stuff.
Like, you deal with it, you validate it. Um, and so, you know, in our group here, we have a pretty good understanding, um, that if we send you an email, we took the time to write that email. Now, we might have drafted the fir- we might have done the first draft with AI, but we’ve gone through that with some level of detail to make sure that it makes sense, that we’re not just giving you a wall of text for the sake of a wall of text.
Um, because that’s quite frustrating for you to have to then go through and sift through it, right? Um, but there are parts where we absolutely will use AI to do it, and we’re, we’re open about that. We don’t, we don’t try and hide that stuff. Um, you know, if you and I catch up and we talk through a bunch of things where there’s a bunch of action items, I might send you an email five minutes after we catch up that says, “Hey, great to catch up today.
You know, we talked about X, Y, and Z. Uh, you know, I’ll have these done by blah, blah, and blah dates.” Um, the important part of that email is that, uh, the tasks are correct, but it’s, it’s that detail that’s important. It’s the fact that we have it on record, that we can agree, and if I missed something or if I assigned something to you but you were like, “Oh, I thought you were gonna do that,” we can quickly go and remedy that now.
It’s not I walk away with my understanding of the meeting, you walk away with a totally different understanding. And so for those kinds of things, absolutely we should be using AI. Now, I’ll draft it with AI, I’ll review it, spot check it, and then send it. I, I, I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna try and, um, you know, hide the fact that I used AI to do that.
But if I send you something and it says, “Look, I had a really deep thought about, you know, I, I sat and I pondered a certain thing and these are the conclusions I’ve come to and these are my recommendations and this is why,” that I wrote that with real intent.
That’s not just I went to Claude and said, “Give me the argument to use Copilot, not some other product,” and then sent it straight to you. Um, and so I think that it’s important that you and your team work on, like, what do we accept is just completely AI generated, what needs to have real significant human review, um, and, and come to some level of understanding there because otherwise I think it, it could lead to some, some interpersonal problems like anything else could, right?
If, if we all email each other and we’re all really nice, you know, our email’s, you know, it’s friendly language and then a new starter joins the team and they’re quite short, they might not be doing it because they’re aggressive. They might just be like, “I’ expect if I say, ‘Yep, sounds good,’ that that’s cool.” But if the existing team dynamic is that you would always say, “Hey, Kane.
Yep, not a problem, mate. I’ll get that sorted for you,” that just kinda, you know, it’ bucks the trend a little bit. That it, it, it stands out. And so in, that same way, I think there does need to be that level of conversation. And given that you’ve just got– like if you’re watching this, you’ve probably just got given a license.
You know, if the oth- if the rest of the team’s been using it for, a while, try and suss it’ out a little bit. Um, and if you’re the person who’s been using it for a while and someone else new joins and they do do some work slop stuff, right?
T-take the time. Like, take? a minute, be understanding about it, right? Like, any other interpersonal issue you might have, it’s, you know, you, you figure it out, right? Uh, you’re, you’re a team. You’re meant to work together. Um, and so, you know, don’t, don’t jump to conclusions, you know, too quickly.
Uh, be reasonable about this stuff, right? It’s new for everyone. Um, and so it might be the, case that like that curt individual who doesn’t, you know, who sends really short emails in, in response to stuff, they might just think like, “Oh, I, I just thought that’s how we did it.” Cool.
That’s not how we do it? Fine. We figure it’ out and we move on. Um, but I, I do think that there’s a really strong, um, uh, onus, uh, on people to be accountable for what they send. Uh, not, not least of which because you can’t blame Copilot.
This isn’t the, the new age, the dog ate my homework type of thing. Uh, you know, if I send a client something and it’s wrong, I can’t say, “Ah, well blame Copilot, blame Microsoft.” Um, and so yeah, I think it’s important that these things will save a lot, of time.
They offer a lot of efficiencies. Um, but just be mindful that it’s not– you won’t save 100% of the time maybe. You’ll save on a five-minute task, you still gotta spend that one, minute doing the QA. Th-that seems like a reasonable trade-off to me. Um, but again, that’s for you and your team to decide.
Um, but yeah. That’s, that’s my kind of general use of AI, at least from, from a, from a typical, uh, you know, office work kind of setup. Um, hopefully you found that, uh, useful in some way. Um, but yeah. B-best of luck figuring that part out. There will be one.
more video, uh, because there is one little thing that I wanna, I wanna talk about separate to, to that topic, uh, that I think is super useful. So check that out, and I’ll catch you later.