We had a training session this week from the copilot expert at Pax8. Copilot is Microsoft’s AI engine that is embedded in Microsoft Office. It is in its first phase of development and I already had a copy of the product but really didn’t see the value. That was all about to change.

Copilot for office takes the data you have access to from your Sharepoint, One Drive and email. It is only used by you, the data isn’t shared out to the world like other AI models, so security GDPR are all covered.

The first area we looked at was the integration with Teams. This sounds and exaggeration but it is a little game changer. So Copilot joins you in the meeting, you turn transcription on and you are away. Copilot listens to the meeting and then afterwards provides you a summary and action points. This reduces note taking during the meeting allowing you to concentrate. After the meeting you can then ask Copilot questions, who took the action to fix xyz for example.

As you build your knowledge base of meetings you can then cross reference, and ask Copilot questions, we discussed xyz what was the outcome of that discussion? The ability to reference emails as well means you can follow a trail without the endless searching.

It has a really spooky feature called follow, which is where you are invited to a meeting, but you send Copilot. It reports back with a summary and list of actions. What this really means is you can attend the important meetings. If you are a project manager for example, you can attend every meeting, and be able to ask questions. As an example a customer calls you with an issue, you can ask Copilot questions without having to speak with the project team, and then work your way through to the solution.

So does it work in the real world? In our business we don’t sit in Office 365 all day, our emails are presented in Zoho Desk, so we mainly work in the environment. One issue I had been resolving was I lost our Terms and Conditions and needed them for the new website. I had spent a good half hour looking for them, so I asked Copilot “I have lost the document which is the terms and conditions for CrackingIT it is a word document on the SharePoint can you find it” 20 seconds later it was found. I then asked a series of random questions to find out how far we could go with asking questions. “This customer moved to a new address, when did this happen” “when did xyz install Starlink”

If you have read this far, could Copilot have saved you some time, well asking Copilot for a summary gives

Here’s a summary of the document:

The document describes the functionalities and benefits of Microsoft’s AI engine, Copilot, as experienced during a training session.

Copilot’s Data Integration and Security: Copilot integrates data from Sharepoint, One Drive, and email, ensuring that data is only accessible to the user and adheres to GDPR security standards.1

Meeting Assistance with Copilot: Copilot enhances meetings by providing transcriptions, summaries, and action points, allowing users to focus during meetings and follow up with specific questions afterward.23

Efficiency and Practical Use: Copilot can attend meetings on behalf of users, provide summaries, and answer queries, significantly improving efficiency, as demonstrated by its ability to quickly locate documents and track project details.45

The numbers you see relate to references in the main document so you can jump to the parts you want. Imagine this on a ten page document

I believe I will easily get back the cost of the Copilot license.

If you want to talk about how Copilot may help you, or get a demo give us a call.