What is Copilot for Microsoft 365 and How Can It be Used?
Generative AI (GenAI) is the most impactful innovation of the 21st century, causing waves across every industry. One of the most powerful and integrated GenAI solutions is Copilot – Microsoft’s AI, which has already been built into their 365 package.
At CAB IT, we offer cloud management solutions to ensure your data is secure, accessible, and adaptable to your need. With the advent of Copilot as an addon to Microsoft 365, we’re here to explain what Copilot is, how it integrates with Azure and 365 applications, and how to use it to increase productivity.
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What is Microsoft Copilot?
Microsoft Copilot is a generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) model. The term “generative” refers to the ability of the model to generate content, and the AI aspect refers to the autonomy of the model and its ability to make insightful outputs based on human-level intelligence and understanding.
Microsoft’s GenAI model has access to a large database of information, and can actively access the internet, from which it can produce a variety of outputs such as writing or code. Copilot even has integrations with OpenAI’s DALL-E, allowing it to produce high-quality imagery.
GenAI has a range of functionalities such as acting as a natural language model, a code assistant, an AI author, and more. It performs these functions either as a standalone application on the internet, a virtual assistant on your Windows desktop or phone, or as an integration with many Microsoft programs.
Integration for Microsoft Copilot
To really make the most out of Copilot, its best to look at how it integrates with your IT infrastructure. This will show you how it enables additional working efficiencies, and how it can support the day-to-day work in a manner familiar to you.
The main two places you’ll see Copilot in Microsoft products are Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure:
Microsoft 365
Copilot became available for Microsoft 365 enterprise customers in November 2023. Since then, it has been integrated with 365 and all its applications, enabling specific instances of Copilot for each app and tailoring these to how the application functions and how people use it.
As part of the full 365 cloud package, Copilot delivers bespoke results and increased efficiency across the board, improving the way you work and the outputs you produce. It is an addon service, so it requires additional investment for each user, but this investment can be greatly outweighed when the AI is utilised effectively.
Each 365 application has its own uses for Copilot:
Teams
Copilot for teams enables real-time, in-app conversation summaries. Especially for fast moving conversations, large groups, or times when the chat goes a bit off topic, Copilot is incredibly useful for showing you the key points and actions to take away from the conversation. This saves valuable time reading through and deciphering messages, giving you the important details within seconds.
Word
As a language model, Copilot has an intense understanding of the intent behind queries and the words we use. This makes it the perfect choice to draft content, edit anything you’ve written, or summarise the key points from a document. Generation and summarisation enable you to speed up your work, while editing results in more accurate final documents that are still true to your words.
Outlook
Cutting down on admin time for email management has never been easier than with Copilot. It allows you to clear your inbox of irrelevant emails, making it easier to categorise and clearly distinguish important information. Copilot can also help you draft replies to emails, expediting the response process.
PowerPoint
If you’re fed up with using the same cookie-cutter presentation each time, then Copilot offers you the solution. It can create tailored presentation designs, offering multiple suggestions to ensure you get the result you’re after. This improves the visuals of your presentations while saving time on making them.
Excel
The ability of AI to analyse, visualise, and generate data based on logic and inputs is unparalleled. As part of Excel, Copilot is able to look at your data holistically, create insights or projections, and enhance the functionality of your spreadsheets. It can even write and insert its own code, making it possible to produce highly customised spreadsheets without any specialist knowledge.
Find out more about the value Microsoft 365 provides your business >
Microsoft Azure
Azure can utilise Copilot as an AI companion to simplify operations and management from the cloud to the edge of your systems and into your hands. It is designed to support and configure your applications and services to align with the needs and goals of your organisation.
For Azure, Copilot offers operational support by answering questions in detail, generating and carrying out complex commands, and delivering its outputs in a way that makes sense to you. As a result, it can improve costs, security, and reliability of your cloud systems – all in a scalable way tailored to your working environment.
Through insight analysis, issue summarisation, cause identification, and solution suggestions, alongside built in security and compliance measures, Copilot acts as an effective way to manage and manipulate your cloud data to match your business requirements.
How to Use Microsoft Copilot to Increase Productivity
Although it boasts a wide range of functions and extreme accessibility for users, you still need to understand the intricacies of Copilot if you want to make the most of it and increase your productivity. You can use Copilot to:
- Automate insight generation to inform strategies created by human operators
- Summarise key points from documents to streamline analysis and actions
- Handle basic user queries via natural language responses, freeing up human service representatives to deal with more complex issues
- Scale your cloud solution with Microsoft Azure integration, helping you cut costs by paying only for the capacity and services you require while enhancing efficiency with Copilot integration
- Ensure data readiness to maximise the impact of Copilot, and to improve your operations
Along with these specific applications of Copilot, it also has use in typical GenAI fashion – using it as a chat companion to discuss ideas, developing content, reviewing your work or code, generating images to act as inspiration, drafting emails, responding to queries, gathering research – all at breakneck pace, with high accuracy, and potential use across any number of situations.
Find out 6 more ways you can improve productivity and engagement with Microsoft 365 >
AI-Cloud Management from CAB IT
Copilot is an incredibly useful tool for any business, streamlining your operations, making work more efficient, and integrating with your applications to provide an accessible, scalable solution.
To make the most out of AI and the cloud, you need someone to help you manage it. At CAB IT, we help handle your cloud and 365 services, making it easier for you to make changes and fully utilise the benefits of both the cloud and generative AI.
Keep your systems responsive, secure, and up to date with our expert support – contact us now.
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