Microsoft Copilot is rapidly becoming one of the most valuable tools available to businesses using Microsoft 365. Whether you're working with emails, documents, meetings or spreadsheets, Copilot can help reduce the time spent on repetitive tasks and free up valuable time for more important work.
Here are five practical ways to get more from Microsoft Copilot.
Catch Up on Missed Emails Faster
Long email conversations can quickly become difficult to follow, particularly when you've been out of the office or added into an ongoing discussion.
How to do it
Open the email conversation and use Copilot's summarisation capabilities to review the discussion. Depending on your Microsoft 365 environment, Copilot can provide an overview of key discussion points and highlight important actions.
Why use it?
Rather than reading through dozens of individual messages, you can quickly understand what has happened and identify anything requiring your attention.
Turn Meeting Discussions into Action Lists
Meetings often generate valuable ideas and decisions, but keeping track of agreed actions can be challenging.
How to do it
Use Copilot within Teams meeting recaps to generate meeting summaries, identify key decisions and highlight actions discussed during the meeting.
Why use it?
This helps ensure important follow-up tasks are captured and reduces the amount of manual note-taking required.
Create First Drafts More Quickly
Starting from a blank page is often the hardest part of writing emails, reports or internal communications.
How to do it
Provide Copilot with clear instructions describing the audience, purpose and tone you'd like the content to follow.
Why use it?
Copilot can create a useful starting point in seconds, allowing you to spend more time refining the content rather than creating it from scratch.
Make Sense of Complex Spreadsheets
Large spreadsheets often contain valuable information, but identifying trends and meaningful insights can take time.
How to do it
Ask Copilot questions about your data, such as:
- What trends can you identify?
- Which figures stand out?
- What has changed since last month?
- Are there any unusual results?
Why use it?
Instead of manually analysing rows of information, Copilot can help highlight patterns and focus your attention on areas that matter most.
Get Better Results from Copilot
Like any tool, the quality of the output depends on how it is used.
How to do it
When creating prompts, provide:
- Relevant background information
- The intended audience
- The desired outcome
- Any important context
For example, rather than asking:
Write an email.
Try:
Draft a professional email to a customer explaining a revised project timeline and outlining the next steps.
Why use it?
Providing additional context often results in more accurate and useful responses.
Final Thought
Microsoft Copilot works best as an assistant rather than a replacement for human expertise. Used effectively, it can help reduce repetitive work, improve productivity and support better decision-making across your organisation.
