How to use Copilot – 3 simple use-cases
It’s no secret that Artificial Intelligence can do some astounding things. Take a quick scroll through LinkedIn and you’re almost certain to come across multiple posts showing off a new practical application for the technology, or a showcase of its ability to create impressive imagery, video, and audio.
We’ve all heard the hype around AI. But how can you get started? And what can it actually do for you and your business?
In this article we are going to explain how to use Copilot, with some of the tool’s most straightforward use-cases. This AI tool can interact with a range of existing Microsoft software. If you haven’t started using AI tools then this is a great way of getting started. With Copilot you can start testing how AI can refine processes in different ways across your business.
Want to learn more about working with AI and getting the most out of tools like Copilot at your business? Join our AI Workshop on Thursday 12th December, held on-campus at the University of Salford.
What is Copilot?
Microsoft’s Copilot is a generative AI chatbot service. It is available in multiple ways across a variety of Microsoft services and software. You can use Copilot to answer questions or generate images and text. However, the tool offers a wider range of options through its integration with specific apps.
You can access copilot in multiple ways. It can be found at copilot.microsoft.com, on the sidebar as part of the Microsoft Edge web browser, and also within Microsoft 365 Apps. In order to use it within Microsoft Apps, you will need a paid subscription. But you will also benefit from the ability to leverage your own data and ask specific questions about information found in your documents and emails.
3 simple ways to get started with AI tools
How to use Copilot to generate text
Whether you are using it through the website, through your browser or integrated into an app like Microsoft Word, Copilot can generate text on the fly with just a simple prompt. This is one of the simplest ways in which you can start to leverage this technology and save time and money for your business.
In Microsoft Word, press either the Copilot icon or ALT + i to open the “Draft with Copilot” box. Now, simply type or paste your prompt into the box.
With a tool like this, you can create text for:
- marketing emails
- google ads
- LinkedIn posts
- web content
- email replies
AI tools are great for saving time, but are not always accurate. To avoid errors, proof the output before publishing. It’s also important to understand that if you are using generative AI to create copy for web content, Google may punish you in its search rankings if the quality is low. You can make high quality content with AI tools but this requires you to spend a little more time on your prompt, and a little more time proofing the final text. Remember that Google rewards content that demonstrates expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Therefore it’s important to consider how the use of AI-content might influence this. You can find more guidance on Google’s stance on gen-AI content, in relation to SEO, here
How to use Copilot to get automated data analysis in Excel
You can use Copilot within Excel to quickly analyse trends from across your data, perform advanced calculations, and generate reports.
To do this, simply select Copilot from the ribbon and select “Understand”. This generates insights from your data in a matter of moments to help you to understand what your large datasets actually represent.
if you aren’t savvy with Excel and the formulas required to make sense of your data, Copilot can help you leverage some of its functions with ease. Whether you want it to perform calculations or make charts – by simply using regular words in a prompt, Copilot will figure out what you need and help you do it, allowing you to get the most out of excel, without having to acquire the technical know-how first.
How to use Copilot to efficiently manage your emails
As with other apps, using Copilot within Outlook requires a few extra steps to setup. Firstly, you’ll need a Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription in addition to your regular 365 business subscription.
Microsoft also recommends that users review their privacy and security settings. This is to ensure that none of the settings are interfering with Copilot functionality. However once you have all of this set up, Copilot can help manage emails automatically by using AI to streamline and organize your inbox.
Copilot / Outlook use-cases
- Draft an email
Working through a packed inbox can be a huge time investment. Fortunately, Copilot can help you streamline the process. Just select the Copilot icon in the toolbar and then select the option “Draft with Copilot.” With just a simple prompt you can generate messages. You can also choose different options that dictate tone or length. This allows you to quickly craft emails and move your attention to more pressing matters. In addition to this, Copilot can offer suggestions to emails that you have written to improve readability, clarity or tone. - Summarise long email threads
Long email threads can often bury important information. Copilot can help you avoid this. Simply select the conversation you would like to summarise and select “Summary by Copilot” at the top of the thread. Copilot will then scan the thread and present all of its information to you in a more readable way. - Prioritise your inbox
If you have lots of emails in your inbox, working through them in the order that they arrived might mean that you’re prioritising non-urgent tasks over ones that need addressing right away. Copilot can analyse your inbox and highlight what’s most important. This allows you to sort your emails based on its analysis of priority.
Optimising your business with AI tools
Getting started with AI and Copilot offers a range of new tools which can simplify tasks and streamline processes. This can potentially open up your time to concentrate on other meaningful projects within your business.
Once your business has started to see the benefits of using AI, you can then start experimenting with other potential use cases that could help save time at your business. This might include deploying an AI-powered chatbot on your website to improve customer service or using AI to help segment your audience data and optimise your marketing strategy. There are potentially limitless opportunities in how you can leverage AI tools in your business, but beware that there are risks involved with its use.
First, and foremost, remember that AI tools can still make mistakes, even if they same infallible on first use. Even rudimentary tasks that are simple for humans can stump Generative AI tools due to the methods used to break down questions and formulate responses. Famously, ChatGPT struggled to accurately count the number of Rs in the word “strawberry”.
Errors like these will inevitably get fixed. But, by performing a quick sense-check you can ensure sure that your AI assistant has not made a mistake, misunderstood your question, omitted important information, mixed fact and fiction or just simply made up people, events or articles.
Another important risk to consider is cybersecurity. Data security company, Cyberhaven reports that 11% of data employees have input confidential information into ChatGPT or other third-party generative AI platforms. This could potentially open the door to vulnerabilities within an organisation’s cybersecurity. This is because the data stored by individual GPTs relating to prompts and interactions may be used to train and improve them. As a result, confidential data may be unintentionally ingested into the large language model and be accessible outside of your organisation.
Conclusion
Your organisation could benefit from the adoption of AI to carry out simple or time-consuming tasks. Looking beyond the headline-grabbing applications of this exciting new technology, we can see that by combining AI with everyday Microsoft tools such as Outlook, Word or Excel, we can make a real impact on our day-to-day tasks and start improving processes within organisations in a practical and actionable way.
If you would like to learn more about getting started with AI at your business, join our workshop on Thursday, December 12th at the University of Salford. We will discuss practical use-cases for SMEs, how you can measure ROI and important processes to consider.