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Unlocking the Future of Work: A Deep Dive into Microsoft 365 Copilot
Introduction to AI and Chat GPT
There has been quite a lot of talk this year about Artificial Intelligence (AI) developments and the prevalence of AI in mainstream technology. You may already have heard about Chat GPT and some discussion about what Chat GPT can do. If you haven’t, here’s a definition from none other than Microsoft’s Bing Chat – Microsoft’s commercialisation of Chat GPT.
“GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer, which is a series of large language models developed by OpenAI. ChatGPT is a chatbot model that is built upon GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, and fine-tuned for conversational applications. It can generate natural and engaging responses to user inputs, and also follow instructions in prompts. It is one of the most advanced AI chatbots available today.”
The Promise of M365 to AI and Chat GPT
Recently at Microsoft’s Inspire Partner conference, some exciting announcements were made relating to Microsoft 365 Copilot. So what is Copilot – let’s go and ask Bing Chat.
“Microsoft 365 Copilot is a new feature that helps you work more efficiently and creatively with the power of large language models and your data in the Microsoft Graph. It is integrated into the Microsoft 365 apps you use every day, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and more. It can help you write emails, create presentations, generate charts, schedule meetings, and more.”
While a succinct definition, it doesn’t really demonstrate the promise of capability that Microsoft 365 Copilot (Let’s call it M365 Copilot) has to offer the right people within your business. I used the term “right people”, as there has also been quite a bit of discussion about Copilot pricing, and it really does come down to where you might get benefit from Copilot. I should also point out that Microsoft talked about Microsoft 365 Copilot along with some other Copilots, such as Sales Copilot and Security Copilot.
Real-world Applications of M365
In short, M365 Copilot will add efficiency to the tasks we do and help us to be far more effective in the tasks we use M365 for.
The M365 Copilot solution integrates across the M365 applications and some demonstrations given at Inspire and that are available on the Internet, showed off M365 Copilot working with Outlook, Teams, PowerPoint, Excel and Word
Meeting Summaries and Presentations
Imagine running late to a Teams meeting and asking Copilot to summarise what’s been missed. To provide you a recap of the content that’s been discussed and action items so far. To ask Copilot for an indication of why certain decisions were made. Then at the end of the meeting to provide a summary and action items out of that meeting.
Emails, Data Analysis and Document Creation
Maybe you spend quite a bit of time in Excel and need to analyse data and provide trending information. Ask M365 Copilot to do this for you based on the data available and then ask what contributed to the cause of that trend. Follow up with a what if question and ask Copilot to provide the step by step as to how it came to that prediction.
You might need to draft a proposal based on notes you’ve taken, from previous documents that have been used for M365 Copilot to give you a starting draft.
There may be a long email thread that you need to get a summary of, or ask M365 Copilot to help you write a draft reply that incorporates data from docs
Or if you need to work on a PowerPoint presentation – ask M365 Copilot to generate the PowerPoint presentation for you! Based on a proposal, and using natural language, you can change a slide from being too wordy, to more image-focused so you can get your message across clearly. You could even request animations to be added to add some zing to your slides!
Or if you need to work on a PowerPoint presentation – ask M365 Copilot to generate the PowerPoint presentation for you! Based on a proposal, and using natural language to change a slide from being too wordy to more image focused to get your message across, then request animations to be added to add zing to another slide.
The Future of M365 Copilot and Cost-Benefit Analysis
While we don’t have access to M365 Copilot just yet, we have an exciting promise of changing the way we work, enabling better productivity and improving the output of what we do produce by taking away some of the time that we don’t always have to be experts in each of the M365 products we use. Doing a cost/benefit analysis in a pilot might just be the way to determine across different parts of your business what and where M365 Copilot can make a difference!
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