Jina Chan, Author at Inside Track Blog

Unlock your productivity: Here are our Top 10 tips for using Microsoft 365 Copilot every day

Jina Chan — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 16:05:00 +0000

Imagine having a personal assistant that helps you navigate your daily tasks effortlessly. Microsoft 365 Copilot offers just that, allowing you to work smarter, not harder.

And the best part?

You don’t need to be a prompt engineer to use it.

“We did over a month’s work of surveying different groups to find out what their daily top Copilot scenarios are. Our extended team whittled them down to 10, from over 100. They had to be things you could use every single day.”

Cadie Kneip, readiness business program manager, Microsoft Digital

Here in Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization, we found 10 scenarios for using Copilot every day in an experience we’re calling Monday morning with Copilot. Many of the scenarios are one-click actions, making them beginner-friendly. They’ve been thoroughly researched and tested by our Copilot readiness team.

“We did over a month’s work of surveying different groups to find out what their daily top Copilot scenarios are,” says Cadie Kneip, a readiness business program manager on the Readiness team in Microsoft Digital. “Our extended team whittled them down to 10, from over 100. They had to be things you could use every single day.”

Originally, our Readiness team did an intensive training called the Copilot Power Hour. “It was like drinking from a firehose,” says David VanGilder, also a readiness business program manager in Microsoft Digital.

“We were able to integrate the scenarios into a robust skilling model that provides an easy-to-follow path for customers to onboard and extend their knowledge of Copilot.”

Tricia Gill, principal content program manager, Content Excellence team, Data, Platform, and Growth

We winnowed the good ideas we got from that exercise down to 10 scenarios that we thought would be a good way for teams like yours to get started using Copilot. “We made sure to focus on the ideas that are for everybody,” VanGilder says. “It’s not for power users.”

After our 10 scenarios were defined and learning assets made available to Microsoft employees, Microsoft Digital partnered with the Content Excellence team in our Data, Platform, and Growth organization, which creates impactful and educational customer-facing learning content for Microsoft customers.

“We were able to integrate the scenarios into a robust skilling model that provides an easy-to-follow path for customers to onboard and extend their knowledge of Copilot,” says Tricia Gill, a principal content program manager on the Content Excellence team. “This is enabling us to help customers realize value even faster.”

The partnership between the two teams has been key, says John Martin, a director of content operations on the Content Excellence team. “We love to see how our efforts as Customer Zero translate beyond Microsoft,” he says.

1. Catch up on long email threads with Copilot in Outlook

This is one of many tips that don’t need a prompt—you just open a thread and select the Summarize button. Copilot then provides a summary at the top of your email.

You could use this when your boss adds you to an email thread that has been going on for a long time and asks you to solve a problem that’s buried somewhere in all those many emails back and forth. Copilot can save you the 30 minutes it might take to wade through the entire thread.

“It has annotations of where it found things,” VanGilder says. “If you click the number, it’ll take you to the source, so you can get the full story.”

“With Copilot, the prompt ‘Recap the meeting so far’ gets you caught up when you’re five minutes late, and you don’t have to disrupt the meeting by asking.”

David VanGilder, readiness business program manager, Microsoft Digital

2. Recap Teams meetings with Copilot in Teams

You can use this tip to recap an entire meeting, or if you join late, you can recap only the part you missed.

For example, when you return from vacation, instead of spending days catching up by watching the recordings of several meetings, you can quickly read a text summary of each meeting.

“With Copilot, the prompt ‘Recap the meeting so far’ gets you caught up when you’re five minutes late, and you don’t have to disrupt the meeting by asking,” says VanGilder.

3. Summarize your week with Copilot

Say you’re working on two or three major projects and several minor projects. It can be a lot to keep track of.

With this prompt, Copilot shows you the past week of chats and emails, and you can easily see them in a table that includes whether you’ve responded.

“What’s really lovely about this one is that people already know how to do the first half of this prompt,” VanGilder says. “But the second part, to put it the results in a table—that creates a nice display of results. I was able to get caught up on all my projects quickly.”

4. Generate meeting notes with Copilot in Teams

Copilot can list key topics and action items from a meeting. If you’re the meeting host, this can be very helpful, as you’re probably used to spending the meeting with your nose buried in OneNote. With Copilot taking your notes, you can be an active participant in your meetings.

“There’s more than one way to use this functionality,” VanGilder says. “Instead of clicking ‘Generate meeting notes,’ I can type in the prompt and add ‘and put the results in the form of an email I can send to participants.’ I do quickly proofread it, because it’s not called Pilot, it’s Copilot, so you do need to check its work!”

5. Draft email with Copilot in Outlook

Of course, many of us are experts in sending and receiving emails for work. But sometimes you have to write an email that’s especially challenging.

For example, it could be that there’s some friction about the subject, and you want help in being diplomatic. Or maybe the recipient doesn’t want or need a lot of technical details, and you’d like some guidance on making it understandable to a general audience.

“This is one that will help you look good,” says Cadie Kneip, a readiness business program manager within Microsoft Digital.

6. Get ready for your day with Copilot

In movies and TV shows, when a busy executive walks into their office, an assistant is standing there to say, “Good morning, So-and-so called about the XYZ project, and you have a meeting at 9 o’clock with the Such-and-such team.”

This tip turns Copilot into that assistant for you. It summarizes major items from the preceding day—emails, Teams messages, and meetings. It also gives you a table of your upcoming meetings for the day.

You don’t have to use the part of the prompt that requests an “inspirational tone” or “a touch of fun,” but it shows the power of Copilot prompts. “It’s a good example that shows how users can tailor the prompts,” Kneip says.

7. Discover what was said with Copilot

This tip is for times when you remember that someone messaged you but you can’t find it, or you want to recall what a key stakeholder said about a project.

“This prompt uses the Context IQ, and that’s really the magic of Copilot,” VanGilder says, referring to the forward slash (“/”) you type when entering the prompt. “You can use it to search for documents, meetings, or people.”

8. Boost your brainstorms with Copilot

This tip also uses the smart search feature of Context IQ. You might not use it daily, but it can save you a lot of time.

The Microsoft Digital readiness team used this tip to generate plans for Camp Copilot, a three-week training program. “The prompt we gave was, ‘I want to do a fun, interactive, summer training session for employees. Can you come up with a few ideas?’” Kneip says.

One Copilot user came up with an innovative use for this functionality: They used Copilot to write an email responding to a customer complaint, supplying the tool with the company guidelines for such responses to help shape the output. After refining Copilot’s draft email into the final version, they said the Copilot draft had been 70-80% complete.

9. Create presentations from your ideas and files with Copilot in PowerPoint

You probably won’t use this tip every day, but it’s helpful because it removes the struggle of staring at a blank page.

“People will collect information from customers, put it into a Word document, and then use Copilot to convert it into a PowerPoint presentation,” VanGilder says. “It has a lot of use in training and selling.”

10. Uncover relevant files with Copilot

If you’ve ever needed to find a file but couldn’t remember exactly what it was named or where it was located—and who hasn’t?—then this tip’s for you. Copilot can search for files related to a specific project or topic.

The prompt was suggested by an attorney at Microsoft, who asked if Copilot could help find files. VanGilder’s response was, “Give it a try and let me know what happens.” And it worked!

“This one’s an exciting prompt that people are absolutely in love with, to quickly find what you’re looking for,” VanGilder says.

Learn more

We hope these 10 scenarios help you and your organization get more out of Copilot. When people see how easy these tips are—many of them need just a click or two—they’ll be inspired to save time and mental effort themselves.

Check out our full Monday morning with Copilot experience.

Try it out

To learn more about Microsoft 365 Copilot and tools for product management, check out Copilot for Work.

Transforming internal communications at Microsoft with Viva Amplify and Viva Engage

Jina Chan — Sat, 10 May 2025 17:05:00 +0000

This story reflects updated guidance from Microsoft Digital—it was first published in 2024.

When our internal communicators need to get the word out about new Microsoft 365 Copilot features, they turn to Microsoft Viva Amplify, which allows them to do so quickly, across many internal channels at once.

Viva Amplify, with its “write once, publish everywhere” approach, allows our internal communicators to reach employees easily in Microsoft Viva Engage and other distribution channels. It also gives them the ability to monitor the effectiveness of their outreach, so they know how well they’re reaching people in each channel they use. (Read our story on deploying Amplify internally at Microsoft here.)

“People are excited about the ability to create a publication in one place and send it to many channels at once with very limited rework needed,” says Sam Crewdson, a principal program manager in Microsoft Digital, the company’s internal IT organization. “That they also get rich, consolidated analytics across all of those channels; it really is a powerful one-two punch.”

When the Viva Amplify product team added Viva Engage as a distribution channel internally at Microsoft, it gave communicators from across the company an important tool they were waiting for.

“Many were like, ‘This is cool, but I really want Viva Engage,’” says Sarah Lundy, a senior content program manager on the IT communications team in Microsoft Digital. “I think some were waiting for that key channel because Viva Engage is so key to our communication efforts at Microsoft.”

Communicating with Viva Amplify to Viva Engage

The Microsoft Digital IT Communications team using and supporting Viva Amplify includes Melissa Cafiero (left to right), Victoria Martinez, and Sarah Lundy.

Victoria Martinez and Melissa Cafiero, both senior content program managers in Microsoft Digital, use Viva Engage and Viva Amplify to communicate about our new Microsoft 365 Copilot features they want to share with our employees.

We use Viva Engage from within Viva Amplify all the time for posting Copilot promotional materials, sending helpful tips and links to live trainings,” Martinez says.

This feature, which is also available to external customers, has been well received by communicators across the company.

“Viva Engage users were happy to add Amplify to their toolbox,” Crewdson says. “It’s been very successful.”

Communicating about Copilot with Viva Amplify

Sam Crewdson is leading the internal deploying of Viva Amplify at Microsoft. He’s a principal program manager in Microsoft Digital.

If you want to harness the power of Viva Amplify to communicate internally about Copilot, you can take advantage of Martinez and Cafiero’s hard work. They created a pre-built campaign that’s available in Viva Amplify, called the Copilot Deployment Kit. To access it, select the banner in Viva Amplify labeled “Get started quickly with even more pre-built campaigns.”

“Viva Amplify is a key tool for companies looking to land Copilot and get value for the licenses they’ve bought for their employees,” Lundy says. “You can run social campaigns, send launch communications, publish SharePoint training materials—all through Viva Amplify.”

Besides Viva Engage, Viva Amplify has many powerful features that enable communicators to reach more users effectively. With Viva Amplify, communicators can build a single communication to start with, then send it to multiple channels: email, SharePoint, blog posts, Teams, and, of course, Engage.

“We can do it all in Amplify, which makes it really easy and seamless,” Cafiero says. “Also, it promotes consistency and cohesiveness in communications.”

You can customize your communications for each channel by adjusting voice and tone.

“Each channel’s a little different,” Cafiero says. “A blog might be more formal. You can be shorter and snappier on Engage because it’s a social channel.”

Another powerful feature of Viva Amplify is centralized data.

“If a communicator wanted to measure success before Viva Amplify, they would have to go to many different places, including third-party tools,” Crewdson says. “Now you can get consolidated analytics across all those endpoints in a single place, represented in a consistent way.”

The time-saving benefits of Viva Amplify in both creating and tracking communications are significant. Martinez and Cafiero estimate they’ve experienced a savings of 25% in drafting communications, and 50–75% in tracking metrics.

Viva Amplify also enables sharing responsibilities. Multiple people can contribute to a communication and review it, and the people who author the communication don’t have to be the ones to publish it. This feature was helpful to Lundy when a long-scheduled trip conflicted with a release date.

“I was able to leave my coworker with everything ready to go,” Lundy says. “I could prep it all for her and she could publish when she got the word that it was time.”

The future of communicating with Viva Amplify and Viva Engage

Lundy sees Viva Engage as the future of how people will consume information at work. It’s a more social way of communicating, with two-way dialog and opportunities to engage informally and directly with leadership.

There’s already been an increase in adoption of Viva Amplify since adding Viva Engage, including more people who aren’t professional communicators by job title. For example, program managers are also using it.

“We’re starting to see a hockey-stick shaped uptick in adoption and there’s lots of good stuff to come,” Crewdson says. “The next six to twelve months are going to be really exciting. We’re going to bring the power of Copilot to Viva Amplify. It will help you create concise, effective content. But more, this fall we’re going to release AI capabilities around design ideas. So not only will it help you write great copy, but it’s going to look great too.”

Viva Amplify will also provide even more help with analysis.

“In the future, there’s so much opportunity to provide deeper insights,” Lundy says. “It can tell us, ‘When you send a shorter communication at 7:00 AM, it performs better than longer emails.’”

The value of these tactical improvements is that Viva Amplify will be able to support communicators in their expanded roles.

“We’re not just sending an email about the latest re-org,” Lundy says. “There are elements of change management, leadership messaging, and crisis management. Viva Amplify is beginning to support communicators by allowing them to focus on the big-picture strategy: how their leader is positioned, how employees adopt the right changes at the company. It has the power to free up communicators for the strategic role they often play.”

Here are some suggestions for getting started with Viva Amplify at your company:

Try out the Viva Engage distribution channel in Viva Amplify.
Try out Viva Amplify templates. Author a publication and then save it as a template for consistent branding, look, and feel across your publications.
Try the new pre-built campaigns in Viva Amplify. The Microsoft Digital team has released one for Microsoft 365 Copilot and one for general AI adoption.

Get started with Viva Amplify.

Want more information? Email us and include a link to this story and we’ll get back to you.

The post Transforming internal communications at Microsoft with Viva Amplify and Viva Engage appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

Eliminating mundane repetitive tasks with our new Microsoft Teams app

Jina Chan — Thu, 01 May 2025 16:00:00 +0000

As organizations grow and their projects become more complex, managing workloads becomes more challenging.

Our employees report that repetitive, mundane tasks take up too much time and energy, saying things like “I’m constantly having to switch gears,” and “I start out strong, but then start to feel randomized and frazzled.”

To help them take back their time and focus on the work that matters most, Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization, created a Microsoft Teams app called the Automation Catalog for Power Platform.

The Automation Catalog provides templates to automate repetitive tasks in 52 high-value scenarios so far. They’re designed for many types of users, including program managers, software engineers, product designers, and more. These pre-built automations provide templates that can be easily customized by entering values or selecting from a list—you don’t have to be coding expert.

“The Automation Catalog does two things: one, it provides over 50 out-of-the-box automation templates published for employees to use, and two, it makes them discoverable by users directly in Teams, through the Automation Catalog app,” says Ashvini Sharma, a director of product management in the Power Automate team. “Then any user can find these templates and acquire them.”

The project was launched in June 2022, after surveying more than 2,000 employees. The AI, Assistance and Automation team in Microsoft Digital learned that people were spending a lot of time on repetitive tasks: 60% of time was being spent on duplicative and unnecessary tasks, with 64% of participants indicating that they struggle with having the time and energy to do their jobs. Over the next two years, the team identified and built the most useful automation templates and made them available across the company.

This belief in automation’s potential has driven the development and success of the Automation Catalog, making it a valuable tool for employees and customers.

“I’ve always been a big believer in the power of automation, and what we can accomplish through AI automation is incredible,” says Sean MacDonald, a partner director of product management in Microsoft Digital and key sponsor of the project.

Automation Catalog has templates that fall into six categories: calendar, email, tasks, Azure DevOps (ADO), wellness, and onboarding. Some popular templates included in the Automation Catalog are a daily consolidated task list, notification of canceled meetings, flagging important mails, scheduling time for learning, requesting meeting agendas, and notifying people that you’re running late.

The Automation Catalog now has over 23,000 unique users and has saved them 250,000 hours of work. The key to the Automation Catalog’s popularity is how easy it is to use. For example, the “I’m running late” template has a pre-populated message that you can customize. It takes just a few steps to set up: download it from the Automation Catalog, select your calendar, and create the template. From then on, Automation Catalog will prompt you to send the message whenever you’re running late.

“The Automation Catalog makes it tremendously easy for anyone to use these automations, regardless of their technical expertise or how much time they have available,” says Yash Malge, a principal product manager in Microsoft Digital.

How the Automation Catalog was built

The group that worked on the Automation Catalog includes Yash Malge (left to right), Alex Zwingli, and Ajay Kumar Jain on the Microsoft Digital team and Ashvini Sharma and Chris Garty (not pictured) on the Power Automate team.

The Automation Catalog was a collaborative effort between Microsoft Digital and Microsoft Power Automate, a low-code platform that’s part of Microsoft Power Platform. The partnership between Microsoft Digital and the Power Automate product group delivered value to Microsoft employees by saving them time and making governing the templates securely easier for Microsoft.

“As Customer Zero, Microsoft Digital provided a lot of the grounding for what is now the Power Platform catalog,” Sharma says. “That partnership has been very gratifying and impactful. Customers will benefit from it. It speaks to the leadership vision that the role of Microsoft Digital isn’t just being Customer Zero but also helping us develop solutions based on the needs of real enterprises that are relevant for others to benefit from as well.”

The Automation Catalog templates are published in the Power Platform catalog, which makes it easy for template creators to share their solutions for automating common tasks and also provides security and governance tools.

“The catalog was built with crowdsourcing in mind,” says Alex Zwingli, a product manager in Microsoft Digital. “The admins of the catalog can easily inspect and approve all submissions. After a submission is added to the catalog, anyone with access can easily find these templates in Teams and pick and choose which ones to install.”

The future of the Automation Catalog

For now, the Automation Catalog is only available to users at Microsoft. In the future, Microsoft Digital wants to share the Automation Catalog with the public by making it available as a Teams app that Power Platform catalog administrators can connect to and make available for their users. Microsoft Digital is currently rolling this out in private preview.

“When it’s available, each organization will have their own Automation Catalog with a private curated catalog,” Zwingli says.

Over the long term, the Automation Catalog team is exploring how to integrate the experience into the rest of Microsoft 365.

“We’d love to get customer feedback on what scenarios are most relevant and where users will find them to be most helpful,” Sharma says.

The team is also evaluating the best way to bring the Automation Catalog into the customer-facing product experience with Microsoft 365 Copilot. The Automation Catalog templates could feed into and inform Copilot about business processes. Also, Copilot could inform the user about Automation Catalog templates. For example, Copilot could respond to a request with, “I have an automation that does that. Would you like me to invoke it?”

Here are some tips for getting started with Automation Catalog at your company:

Fill out our interest form if you want to be notified when the Automation Catalog is available to the public.
Check out the Power Platform catalog or go to make.powerapps.com to discover apps.
If you’re not already using the Microsoft Teams store, try it out and see what’s under the Workflows section.

Want more information? Email us and include a link to this story and we’ll get back to you.

The post Eliminating mundane repetitive tasks with our new Microsoft Teams app appeared first on Inside Track Blog.