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Last week we discussed all the tasks that we need to do to get ready for Copilot. So now that we’re ready and raring to go, I will take you through my experiences of using Copilot with Outlook and Microsoft Teams.
In case you missed them, you can read part 1 and part 3 below.
Part 1: How to Get The Most Out of Microsoft Copilot (Preparation)
Part 3: How to Get The Most Out of Microsoft Copilot (PowerPoint & Excel)
Outlook is one of the most popular and widely used email clients in the world, but it can also be a source of frustration and inefficiency for many users.
Copilot can suggest email content, generate meeting invitations, summarise emails and more. This in turn can boost productivity and save you time.
There are too many fantastic features to note in this blog alone, so I’ve picked three that I think are the most useful and inspiring.
I asked Copilot to write me an email to the team about an upcoming team event. You can see how this went in the below video.
https://share.vidyard.com/watch/TU9eo3NbLbZkmgVx6ksgvb?
As you can see, Copilot understood the assignment in both examples. However, by adding a bit more information about how I would like this to be presented and what I’m trying to achieve, it’s provided a better outcome. It would have also taken me a little while to work out how to add the emojis, so that saved some time alone!
I’d advise that you always review suggestions before you accept them. For example, I’d remove the “Let’s make some unforgettable memories together” and swap that for something more appropriate for a team night out.
In the second example, it’s captured my tone of voice well however this isn’t always the case, so ensure that you don’t lose your personality and style and make sure the suggestions fit your purpose and audience.
At the click of a button, I asked Copilot to summarise an email I received from the supplier that provides our remote monitoring software.
Here it is:
Whilst I’ve had to be selective with the content I’m showing in this blog, hopefully, you can imagine how useful this will be for summarising very long emails and email threads so you don’t have to scroll and read everything. Instead, it cleverly picks out all of the information it thinks you need and is useful for saving time. I’ll definitely be using this feature moving forward, particularly when I’ve just come back from holiday and have hundreds of emails to sift through.
The final feature in Outlook that I’d like to note is scheduling meetings. When creating a meeting in Outlook and inviting a contact, Outlook will look at your calendar along with the invited attendees’ calendar(s) and suggest a date/time that everyone is available.
Here’s an example below:
It can see that James isn’t working tomorrow (Wednesday) so has jumped straight to his next availability on Thursday.
This is so simple and effective as it means you don’t have to keep flicking to and from on the calendar to find out when everyone is available. This is particularly useful if you don’t have access to your contact’s calendar!
The first thing to point out with Microsoft Teams is that you need to have a transcript running in meetings for Copilot to work.
This functionality is game-changing, particularly for those users who find themselves in hours of meetings daily. Copilot will summarise the key points from the meeting, allowing you to be more engaged in the meeting itself. You can also ask it to pick out the key action points from the meeting so there’s no need to take minutes.
Here’s an example of a summary of a recent end-of-day team meeting that I had with the team.
As with everything in Copilot, be sure to review the summary and action points before sending this on to your clients and colleagues as it doesn’t always get it right. You’ll likely want to edit the content before sharing, but from experience, this is far quicker than writing up all of the points from memory or your own notes.
The only bit of functionality that I feel is missing here, is to be able to share this summary in an email. Currently, you have to manually copy and paste this into Outlook. A little button to do this automatically would be a great help here (hint Microsoft if you’re reading ).
In conclusion, when given enough context and information, Copilot is a brilliant tool to use in Outlook and Microsoft Teams and will save me time so I can concentrate on ensuring we provide the best experience possible for our customers.
I actually asked Copilot to write this blog once I’d given it all of my research, but I didn’t feel that it captured my tone of voice so I re-wrote a lot of it. I’ll keep practising on perfecting our working relationship!
Keep your eyes peeled for part three of our ‘How to Get The Most Out of Microsoft Copilot’ series, next week, featuring Microsoft PowerPoint and Excel.
If you have any questions in the meantime, feel free to drop me a message on fiona@systemagic.co.uk