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.

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 ten, 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 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 those that are for everybody,” VanGilder says. “It’s not for power users.”

Once our 10 scenarios were defined and learning assets made available to Microsoft employees, Microsoft Digital partnered with the MAGIC Skilling Team in our Customer Success Engineering organization that 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 program manager on the MAGIC 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 skilling on the MAGIC team. “We love to see how our efforts as Customer Zero translate beyond Microsoft,” Martin says.

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.”

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,” VanGilder says.

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.”

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!”

Draft email with Copilot in Outlook

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

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

“This is one that will help you look good,” Kneip says.

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 a lot of things 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” and “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.

Discover what was said with Copilot

This tip is for when you remember that someone messages you, but you can’t find their message, or you want to know 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.”

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 to come up with 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 that’s similar. They used Copilot to write an email responding to a customer complaint, using the company guidelines for such responses. After refining Copilot’s draft email into the final version, they said the Copilot draft was 70-80% complete.

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.”

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 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.

We hope these top 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 able to save time and mental effort.

Check out our full Monday morning with Copilot exerpience.

To learn more about Microsoft Copilot and tools for product management, join us here at Copilot for Work.

• Driving Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption with an assist from Microsoft Viva.
• Driving Copilot for Microsoft 365 adoption with our Copilot Champs Community.
• Deploying Microsoft 365 Copilot in four chapters.

• Want more information? Email us and include a link to this story and we’ll get back to you.
• Please share your feedback with us—take our survey and let us know what kind of content is most useful to you.

The post Unlock your productivity: Here are our Top 10 tips for using Microsoft 365 Copilot every day appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

Robert Gates likens Microsoft 365 Copilot to a “calculator for words.”

Gates, a partner-focused solution architect on the Global Partner Team at Microsoft, explains how to harness the full potential of Copilot through the art of purposeful prompting. He’s been helping partners across the Americas develop best practices around Copilot since its initial launch. His ongoing experience with the tool has revealed that effective use of Copilot goes far beyond simply issuing commands—it’s about crafting prompts with intention and clarity.

Press play to hear Gates share how crafting prompts based on the desired outcome can make Microsoft 365 Copilot a strategic partner.

A calculator for words

Just as a calculator requires the right inputs to produce meaningful results, Copilot needs well-constructed prompts to deliver valuable outputs.

“If the problem isn’t clearly defined, Copilot can’t generate a useful solution,” Gates says.

This is where the power of purposeful prompting comes into play.

To create effective prompts for Copilot, goals must be clearly defined. This sounds easy but can be difficult to get right. One of the key challenges Gates has observed in customer interactions is a disconnect between the data requested and the actual goal. For instance, asking Copilot to retrieve 50,000 rows of data might seem like a reasonable request, but it often misses the mark.

The real question is: What do you want to achieve with that data?

Instead of focusing on volume, Gates advises users to zero in on the outcome they want—whether it’s summarizing key insights or generating a specific report for leadership. This shift in focus can dramatically improve the quality and relevance of the responses.

“A lot of the work is defining your goal and outcome in the prompt. Sometimes you may have to work backward because Copilot doesn’t necessarily have access to the data or the resources. Focus in on the final output,” Gates says.

Crafting purposeful prompts

To get the best results from Copilot, Gates emphasizes the importance of a well-defined prompt structure. A successful prompt should include the following elements:

• Goal definition: Clearly articulate the goal of your request in your prompts. What specific output are you seeking? For example, “I need a summary of key trends from this dataset for my leadership team.”
• Context and source information: Provide relevant context that helps Copilot understand the scope and nature of the task. Mention any specific sources or data points that should be considered in generating the output.
• Expectations: Set clear expectations for the format and depth of the response. This helps Copilot tailor its output to meet your needs more precisely.
• Persona prompting: Consider nudging Copilot with a specific persona or role. For example, “As an expert analyst, summarize the key findings from this data.” This can help refine the tone and depth of the response, making it more aligned with your requirements.

By defining the outcome you want, providing context, and guiding Copilot with clear expectations, you can unlock the full potential of this powerful tool—transforming it from a basic query processor into a strategic partner in their work.

Thank you for watching Gates’s presentation! We hope it helps you get started with your Copilot training and adoption efforts at your company.

Check out Microsoft 365 Copilot.

• Watch the first video in our Copilot Champs series: Showcasing how our product managers are using Microsoft Copilot.
• Watch the second video in our Copilot Champs series: Using Microsoft Copilot as a trusted advisor for your Six Sigma projects.
• Watch the third video in our Copilot Champs series: Getting your Microsoft 365 Copilot training right.
• Watch the fourth video in our Copilot Champs series: How we’re delivering demos in Microsoft 365 Copilot at Microsoft.
• Learn more about how our Copilot Champs Community is helping drive Copilot for Microsoft 365 adoption here at Microsoft.

• Want more information? Email us and include a link to this story and we’ll get back to you.
• Please share your feedback with us—take our survey and let us know what kind of content is most useful to you.

The post Getting more out of Microsoft 365 Copilot with purposeful prompts appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

Microsoft Teams is an integral part of how we work at Microsoft. As our work culture continues to evolve, we’re leaning on Microsoft Teams Premium with Microsoft 365 Copilot to support us. It allows us to be more efficient and more present with our fellow humans, and to bridge time zone and language barriers.

“When we think of the evolution of how we work, it’s been a journey of multiple years,” says Claire Sisson, a principal group product manager with Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization. Sisson leads the team that manages how we use Teams internally at Microsoft and is the central owner of the internal implementation of Microsoft 365 Copilot within Microsoft.

“It went from fully in the office with some people remote, to everybody remote, to a combo,” Sisson says. “Pre-COVID, we were able to use Teams to have async collaboration.

Then COVID hit.

“Thanks to Teams, we were able to switch to fully virtual,” Sisson says. “When we went back to the office, what changed from before is that we’ve layered on new habits. We’re not going back to the way we worked before—we’re using the habit from COVID where you might want to catch up with all the things online.”

Improving productivity with Intelligent Recap and Copilot in Teams

Microsoft Teams offers several AI-enhanced features to help catch up on “all the things.” The intelligent Meeting Recap feature is available with Teams Premium. If you miss a meeting, you can go to the “Recap” tab and see meeting notes, recommended tasks, and highlights.

Copilot in Teams is an AI-powered assistant that attends your meetings. Designed to enhance your productivity and collaboration, you can engage with it like a coworker, asking it questions.

“It allows me to pay much more attention in the meeting, to focus on what’s being said and not worry about capturing notes and next steps,” says Sara Bush, a principal product manager with Microsoft Digital who works directly with the Teams product group, focusing on everything to do with the meetings experience. 

Bush finds that Teams in Copilot makes it easy to get the information she needs after a meeting. “It’s saving me hours every week,” she says.

Copilot in Teams is also helpful before a meeting starts. You can ask it if there are pre-reads and have it summarize them for you.

Copilot is also useful for situations when a meeting participant is late joining a meeting, loses connectivity partway through, or is scheduled for multiple meetings at the same time. People can ask Copilot what they missed, and it directs them to the information that’s most relevant to the meeting. It helps them quickly get caught up.

Copilot in Teams allows you to use apps to engage with others in meetings. A manager can ask their team for feedback using a pop-up form during the meeting. Participants can provide their feedback anonymously if they choose.

“I find it very enabling as a manager; and through apps you have different ways to engage with people, so your meetings can be impactful and helpful for everyone,” Sisson says.

Another helpful app that can be used in meetings is Whiteboard, which lets meeting participants create sticky notes and drawings, collaborating on visual elements without interrupting the flow of the meeting. And after the meeting, Copilot in Whiteboard can categorize and summarize notes, find items in the whiteboard, and follow up on them.

Meeting employees where they are

Chat in Microsoft Teams is a natural place for people to use Copilot. Microsoft Digital estimates that 98% of Teams users use chat for both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. As people use Copilot more, they discover more Teams features. This leads to a virtuous cycle where Teams and Copilot use reinforce each other.

Importantly, you can access Copilot both in a meeting and in the associated chat channel. This allows people to follow up on action items after a meeting, and to pull more people into the chat to provide additional information on those items.

Copilot also makes it easier to find information.

Sandro Moreia, a senior specialist in Brazil Specialist Sales, recently used that capability to help a key customer.

“This customer is very complex, with several different areas, each with its own goals, and sometimes there’s overlap,” Moreia says. “I said, ‘Oh, did you know that your colleague already did that?’ They weren’t aware.”

In that instance, she asked Copilot to create a log entry about everything that happened.

“It’s easier than going back through emails, chats, and meetings,” Moreia says. “Copilot generated around 30 rows of facts in a timeline, just summarizing one topic.”

Another valuable use of Copilot in Teams is for asynchronous collaboration.  

“A team might have a conversation during their working hours, but then the partner team in Bangalore and Europe might join the chat when their day starts,” says Eileen Zhou, a principal product manager with Microsoft Digital who supports the end-to-end rollout and adoption of Copilot as part of a multi-team effort. “It empowers a culture where employees collaborate from anywhere at any time.”

Boosting communication with Copilot in Teams

Facilitating communication among people and teams who are spread out across time zones and speak multiple languages is an ongoing challenge.

In addition to time zones, Copilot in Teams can also help bridge language barriers. Seijun IKE, a cloud solution architect with the Security Customer Success Unit based in Tokyo, finds it helpful to enhance his English language skills.

“I can check periodically whether my understanding is right or wrong,” says IKE, who uses the auto-translated subtitles during meetings. “After the meeting, I ask Copilot to clarify as an English learner. My Copilot prompt identifies five high-frequency expressions used in business English and provides two examples of each for an English learner. It’s very helpful.”

For example, one such expression IKE learned this way is, “At the end of the day,” which he heard in a presentation by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “And now I use it a lot because I learned it from Satya,” IKE says.

IKE also uses Copilot to enhance his writing.

“Whenever I send a message, [Copilot] can rewrite it,” IKE says. “So, if I converse with someone who only speaks English and I have to write something to convince or persuade them, in those cases, the rewrite is very helpful. That kind of thing is pretty impactful for non-native English speakers.”

Building and respecting culture with Copilot in Teams

IKE also uses Copilot to build a positive team culture.

“I love my team, and there’s a product in the Viva Suite, called Viva Connections, that has a feature to praise someone,” IKE says. “I have a prompt to generate the top five candidates to send praise to from last week’s conversations through Microsoft Teams chat or email. With these prompts, I can easily find candidates, see a review of those conversations, and then send praise.”

Microsoft Digital ensures Copilot in Teams respects cultures by collaborating with works councils. Works councils serve as the voice of our employees in some geographies, advocating for their rights and interests within the workplace.

As AI technology grows in influence across industries, these internal organizations, and labor in general, are at the forefront of discussions regarding the implications of AI for the modern workplace. Microsoft Digital plays the role of facilitator between the works councils and the product teams.

One Teams feature that came from this collaboration is the option for meeting participants to not be identified by name in transcripts. If a meeting participant has chosen to exclude their name, they might appear in the transcript as “Speaker 1” or “Speaker 2” instead of by name.

Another privacy feature of Copilot in Teams, Only during the meeting, was designed at the request of Microsoft Digital. When this mode is on, Copilot is active only during the meeting. The meeting attendees can ask Copilot questions and use it to catch up on anything they missed, but when the meeting is done, Copilot doesn’t retain the information.

The future of Copilot in Teams

Looking ahead, Copilot in Teams isn’t just about getting more done—it’s also about reducing bias, giving people more time to focus on creativity, and allowing them to spend less time on repetitive tasks.

In addition to the efficiency boost that Copilot in Teams provides, it offers the possibility of reducing bias. Copilot generates action items and key takeaways for meeting participants.

“When you use those, it’s a new way of working, because you and I could have our own perception of who should take the action items or what should be the next step,” Sisson says. “Copilot’s not going to care about our titles—it’s going to assign the logical action items to those providing the best insights on those topics.”

But even more interesting than what Copilot in Teams does is what it allows us to do.

“The piece I’m most excited about is to see what you and I and everybody out there are going to create,” Sisson says. “At the end of the day, nobody wants to stay after work to catch up on notes or summarize. I want to be with my family, have fun, do all those things. So how can technology enable us to be more successful so we can focus on what we want to achieve?”

By handling routine tasks, Copilot in Teams enables people to spend more time in a flow state, doing their best work.

“Having the technology do all that for you, so you can really focus on the creative areas, critical thinking, or debating a point, instead of trying to find all the information—that’s what’s uniquely human and the richness of what we do,” Sisson says. “That’s the piece I find really remarkable.”

Here are some tips for getting more value out of Microsoft 365 Copilot in Microsoft Teams:

• Before a meeting, ask Copilot questions about the meeting agenda and background information to prepare. During a meeting, use Copilot in the meeting chat to catch up on conversations.
• Use the Rewrite and Adjust buttons to get Copilot’s suggestions on the messages you send in chat.
• Ask Copilot to send you reminders for following up on action items after the meeting.

Get started with Microsoft 365 Copilot in Microsoft Teams meetings.

• Learn more about AI-powered collaboration in Microsoft Teams.
• Take a closer look at intelligent meeting recap, which is now available in Teams Premium.
• Learn how to prompt like a pro in Microsoft 365 Copilot in Teams.

• Want more information? Email us and include a link to this story and we’ll get back to you.
• Please share your feedback with us—take our survey and let us know what kind of content is most useful to you.

The post Transforming how we work in Microsoft Teams Premium with Microsoft 365 Copilot appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

We have deployed Microsoft 365 Copilot to nearly all our employees and vendors at Microsoft. As Customer Zero, we are the first enterprise to do so at scale. As of this week, nearly everyone at the company has it.

We’re seeing immediate and wide-ranging benefits.

“Our employees are putting it to work for them right away,” says Claire Sisson, a principal group product manager in Microsoft Digital, the internal IT organization at Microsoft. “It immediately starts giving you smart insights that help you get on top of your work.”

So, what is Microsoft 365 Copilot, exactly?

It’s our new productivity solution that uses the power of AI and large language models (LLMs) to help us be more productive. It’s part of our Microsoft 365 Copilot offering that creates a single, seamless user experience across Microsoft 365, Copilot in Windows, Bing, the Microsoft Cloud, and other Microsoft applications.

Here at Microsoft, we got Microsoft 365 Copilot early as part of our role as the company’s Customer Zero, which allows us to test our products at enterprise scale.

“We’re pioneers in using AI in our products,” says Sisson, who is leading the rollout of Microsoft 365 Copilot internally at Microsoft. “We’re the first enterprise in the world to launch Copilot at scale, and we’re capturing a ton of insights.”

Sharing the feedback that we get from our early adopters is helping the company create the best possible version of Microsoft 365 Copilot for our customers.

“We’re learning so much,” Sisson says. “We’re learning how to deploy it at enterprise scale, how to make sure we put in the right protections for our employees and for Microsoft, and then ensuring our employees start using it in productive ways that reap all the new benefits of Copilot.”

Microsoft 365 Copilot gets its power from seamlessly integrating with data in Microsoft 365 Graph and the various Microsoft 365 applications and services that we all—our employees and our customers—use to get work done, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams.

It helps you in numerous ways, ranging from summarizing action items from an important meeting, to helping you conduct on-the-spot analysis of data that has just come your way, to instantly crafting high quality content that helps you land an important project.

“Its capacity to boost productivity and produce high quality work for our employees enables them to dedicate their attention to their core work and big aspirations,” Sisson says. “And frankly, that’s what’s happening—our employees are getting time back to work on the things they love, and that’s the high value work that drives this company forward.”

[Learn how we’re getting the most out of generative AI at Microsoft with good governance. See how we’re responding to the AI revolution with an AI Center of Excellence. Check out how we’re embracing AI at Microsoft with new AI certifications. Find out how we’re enabling and securing Microsoft Teams meeting data retention at Microsoft.]

Succeeding as Customer Zero

We know that Microsoft 365 Copilot is evolving day by day. As the company’s IT organization, we work to understand those changes, document them, and translate them into communications and readiness assets for our employees. As we work to build a better product, the speed of these cycles accelerates awareness and improvement.

Using Microsoft 365 Copilot

Each of the main Microsoft 365 applications has a Copilot that you can use. Here are some of the ways you can use Copilot in each of the apps:

Copilot in Teams

• Quickly recap, identify follow-up tasks, create agendas, and ask questions for more effective and focused meetings and calls.
• Summarize key meeting takeaways, see what you might have missed, and pinpoint key people of interest in chat threads users were added to.

Business Chat in Microsoft 365 Copilot

• Find and use info that’s buried in documents, presentations, emails, calendar invites, notes, and contacts.
• Summarize information across multiple sources like recent customer interactions, meetings, shared content, and deliverables.
• Prepare for a meeting based on topics and sources.
• Create a status update from the day’s meetings, emails, and chat discussions.

Copilot in PowerPoint

• Transform existing written content (such as documents, images, and graphs) into decks complete with speaker notes and sources.
• Start a new presentation from a prompt or outline.
• Condense and streamline presentations.
• Use natural language commands to adjust layouts, reformat text, and time animations.

Copilot in Word

• Write, edit, summarize, and create content in Word.
• Create a first draft, bringing in information from across your organization as needed.
• Add content to existing documents, summarize text, and rewrite sections or the entire document.
• Incorporate suggested themes, styles, and tone.
• Provide suggestions to strengthen arguments or smooth out inconsistencies.

Copilot in Excel

• Query your data set in natural language, not just formulas.
• Reveal correlations, propose what-if scenarios, and suggest new formulas based on your questions.
• Generate models based on questions via natural language.
• Identify trends, create visualizations, or ask for recommendations and insights.

Copilot in Outlook

• Get help finding the best time for everyone to meet.
• Compose more effective emails with suggestions from Copilot.
• Analyze, summarize, and get action items from email threads.
• Respond to existing emails with simple prompts and turn quick notes into new email messages.

Copilot in Loop

• As Microsoft Loop pages get filled with ideas and content, ask Copilot to summarize themes and actions.
• Edit or correct Copilot summaries, add additional details or context, and communicate with others.
• Collaborate with colleagues in real time in the same Workspace.

Copilot in Whiteboard

• Elevate and ideate on new ideas on any topic.
• Visualize any idea and use Microsoft Designer to generate designs.
• Categorize unorganized bullet lists and notes, including sticky notes, into organized groups based on themes.
• Summarizes all note content in the board and creates a summary output as a Loop component for further collaboration.

Microsoft 365 Copilot brings a robust list of new capabilities to each Microsoft 365 application.

“We’re constantly engaging our employees,” Sisson says. “Every application within Microsoft 365 has its own product team developing Copilot features and experiences. We’re working with these teams to provide valuable feedback, and while doing that, we, like our customers, benefit from the product getting better and better.”

As the company’s Customer Zero, it’s our job to make sure that our products are human-centric, and that using them makes sense in consistent and coherent ways. Culture, religion, and political beliefs are a few considerations that we’re using to evaluate how Microsoft 365 Copilot is working for and interacts with our employees. To help with this, Copilot is available in eight languages with a plan to add more shortly.

“The level of complexity that we’re dealing with is very high,” Sisson says. “We’re capturing and responding to very diverse feedback from employees who are spread across the globe.”

We also prioritize trust, security, and compliance. We’re working with the product teams, a broad set of regulatory bodies, and regional works councils to ensure that we’re looking out for the best interests of our employees and our company.

“The true potential of Microsoft 365 Copilot lies not just in its current capabilities but in its future possibilities,” Sisson says.

By continuously integrating feedback, staying attuned to global best practices, and harnessing the latest in AI research, Microsoft 365 Copilot is poised to redefine the boundaries of workplace productivity.

Works council collaboration

One of the ways we provide valuable Customer Zero feedback to the product group is via our partnership with our works councils in the European Union. They’re currently helping us examine the regulatory and ethical boundaries for Copilot usage across the company. Our works councils and other employee representation groups are providing valuable feedback on how AI should work to augment human capabilities, not replace them. They’re evaluating our internal deployment and considering Microsoft 365 Copilot use cases to ensure compliance with local laws as well as how AI can increase productivity and job satisfaction among their members. They’ve also provided critical insights that help us respect cultural nuances and ensure language accessibility.

“Our strong relationship with our works council in Germany helped us get the approvals we needed to deploy Copilot quickly,” says Anna Kopp, director of business programs for Microsoft Digital in Germany. “Because of our proactive outreach, our works council almost immediately moved into a state of ‘tolerance’ for Copilot—which basically means that they haven’t blessed it, but they’re not blocking it either.”

It was about working together early and often.

“We gave our works council members early access to Microsoft 365 Copilot so they could test it and give feedback,” Kopp says. “Their feedback helped us improve the product in numerous ways, especially around potential uses for behavioral assessment, which is not allowed in Germany. Giving them early access enhanced trust and enabled them to help us improve the product for all our customers with works councils.”

Getting governance right

While AI technology has recently generated considerable attention and excitement, questions and concerns also exist. Our teams have strong governance measures in place that aim to protect our employees and the company while not getting in the way of our powerful new AI tools. We build trust and are transparent with our employees as part of adhering to our Responsible AI and governance guidelines and are committed to working with our global employees who are represented by labor unions and works councils.

“It’s important that our employees—and the larger Microsoft 365 Copilot user base—understand that we’re implementing AI as an enhancer and accelerator, not a replacer,” Sisson says. “Successful use of AI lies in helping humans make better decisions, not in replacing those decisions altogether.”

We’ve done a lot of work to put strong governance measures in place here at Microsoft, and that early work is helping us to deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot quickly.

“Microsoft 365 Copilot governance and compliance lies within the underlying data that it uses to deliver its insights and take action,” says David Johnson, the principal PM architect in Microsoft Digital who leads our governance efforts. “The data discovery that Copilot does is built on a good data governance structure. We have strong permission systems in place that make sure our AI tools don’t share insights based on data that an employee shouldn’t have access to.”

Johnson and his team are working with the Microsoft 365 Copilot product teams to ensure that these data governance practices and standards are used across all Copilot deployments. This includes deploying governance measures—highlighted by our robust and matrixed labeling measures—designed to prevent oversharing of data, to educate employees on appropriate AI use cases, and to continually assess how Copilot uses our data and how we use the data that Copilot is serving up to us.

“It’s all working together to create an environment where Microsoft 365 Copilot can be a trusted, practical companion for productivity and empowerment for our employees,” Johnson says.

Showcasing the power of AI

Getting Microsoft 365 Copilot in the hands of our employees is only the first step—now we want to get them to start using it in the flow of their work. It’s about showing them that they can use it to do more high-level work and have more impact by doing things for them like analyzing Excel data sets and creating PowerPoint presentations from Word documents.

We use a robust, tried-and-true adoption approach built on the pillars of envisioning, where you build a strong plan for getting your employees to adopt a new product, on onboarding, where you launch your adoption effort, and on driving value, where you look to help your employees find value in your product.

Get your prompt on

Using the right prompt is your key for getting the most out of Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Prompting Microsoft 365 Copilot is the process of giving instructions or asking questions to Copilot in natural language. You can prompt Copilot by typing your request in the Copilot window. Copilot then responds with relevant output, such as text, images, graphs, or actions. To prompt Copilot effectively, follow these best practices:

Use the default prompts provided for better results

The prompts that Microsoft 365 Copilot suggests have been designed to provide clear instruction for Copilot to follow. Choose from a variety of prompts for different types of documents, such as reports, proposals, summaries, and more. You can also customize the prompts to suit your preferences and goals.

Use clear and specific language

This helps Copilot understand your request and provide a more accurate response. For example, instead of asking “How do I write a good email?”, you can ask “How do I write a formal email requesting a meeting with a client?”

Provide as much context as possible

The more information you provide, the better Copilot can tailor its response to your needs. For example, you can provide the purpose, audience, tone, and format of your document, as well as any relevant details or examples. You can also attach or link any existing documents or sources that you want Copilot to refer to. More details and examples are always better.

Experiment and use prompts that work best for you

Copilot is designed to learn from your interactions and improve overtime. You can try different ways of phrasing your prompts or ask Copilot to generate multiple outputs for comparison. You can also provide feedback to Copilot by rating, editing, or commenting on its outputs. Your Copilot experience will always be better than the previous engagement.

Review our prompt guidance

You can access infographic capabilities by selecting the Help icon in the Copilot window. This infographic explains the components and structure of a good prompt, as well as tips and examples.

Following these best practices, new users can optimize their experience with Microsoft 365 Copilot and get the most out of its capabilities. Click here to get more information on Microsoft 365 Copilot prompting.

In the end, the best way to get your employees to start using a new product like Microsoft 365 Copilot is to show them how it can make their lives better.

“Copilot represents a profound shift in how our employees are working,” says Stephan Kerametlian, a director for employee experience in Microsoft Digital. “They’re seeing benefits immediately.”

For starters, they’re now using natural language to unlock tools that have been right in front of them for a long time—they just didn’t know that they were there, or if they did, how to use them.

“Most people only use a small fraction of the features built into Microsoft 365 apps,” Kerametlian says. “Copilot users don’t need to know precisely where a feature is in the app’s interface—they don’t even need to know that it’s there. They just have to imagine what they want to accomplish, and Copilot will surface the feature for them.”

As a result, our employees are discovering new and creative ways to work.

Microsoft 365 Copilot boosts our employees’ productivity by taking care of their mundane tasks and repetitive processes. “That lets them focus on ideation, creativity, and strategy, the tasks where they can genuinely add value,” Kerametlian says.

It’s also upleveling our employees’ skill sets.

“Talking to Copilot using intuitive natural language interaction leads to easier discovery and accelerated learning,” Kerametlian says. “This makes our employees better at what they’re good at and helps them quickly become experts at what they’re learning. They can rapidly get comfortable with the handful of commands that help them learn the technology and boost their skill.”

In truth, Kerametlian says, Microsoft 365 Copilot is so powerful that it is unleashing a new era of employee creativity and productivity. “It’s such a natural thing to do, to ask it for help,” he says. “The more interesting thing will be to see what our employees do with it. We expect that we’re going to see some very creative, and surprising results.”

Look to the future

The future vision for Microsoft 365 Copilot is bright. The measure of a tool’s success isn’t just in its deployment but its adoption, utility, and the tangible impact it brings to everyday tasks. Our Customer Zero emphasis on capturing user feedback from internal teams and external customers will be instrumental in shaping how we grow into using Microsoft 365 Copilot over time.

“We’re committed to the evolution of Microsoft 365 Copilot at Microsoft,” Sisson says. “As we move forward, our mission continues to be to facilitate a seamless, productive, and enriched work experience for our employees.”

We’re charting a path where technology and human ingenuity converge through continuous feedback, rigorous refinement, and adherence to best practices.

“We’re very excited about where we are right now,” Sisson says. “Microsoft 365 Copilot isn’t just a tool for our employees to use—it’s a testament to the future of work, a future where technology augments human potential, empowering every individual to achieve more.”

Here are some things to think about as you consider getting started with Microsoft 365 Copilot:

• Copilot is a powerful AI assistant that can help you generate text and images, summarize documents, create presentations, and more using natural language prompts.
• Copilot works across various Microsoft 365 apps such as Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Teams, and OneNote. As soon as you have it, you can access Copilot by selecting the Copilot icon in the app.
• Copilot respects your privacy and security. It only accesses the information that you have permission to view and doesn’t store any of your data. You can also review and edit the content that Copilot generates before using it.
• Copilot is designed to enhance your creativity and productivity, not replace it. You should always check the facts, accuracy, and quality of the content that Copilot produces and use your own judgment and expertise to decide whether to use it or not.
• Microsoft is constantly learning and improving Copilot based on your feedback.

If you want to learn more about Copilot and how to use it, you can check out the following resources:

• Microsoft 365 Copilot help and learning: This is the official support page for Copilot, where you can find tutorials, videos, FAQs, and tips on how to get the most out of Copilot.
• How to get ready for Microsoft 365 Copilot: This is a video from Microsoft Mechanics that explains how to prepare your organization for Copilot, including the prerequisites, licensing, and best practices.
• Get ready for Microsoft 365 Copilot: Implementation and best practices: This is an article from OnMSFT that provides more details on how to implement and optimize Copilot for your organization, including how to encourage collaboration, emphasize security, and stay updated.
• Copilot in OneNote: This is a page that shows how Copilot can help you improve your notetaking and supercharge your productivity in OneNote.
• 7 Things you can do with Microsoft 365 Copilot and why you should use it: This is another article from OnMSFT that showcases some of the amazing things that Copilot can do for you, such as writing emails, summarizing documents, creating presentations, and more.

Learn how to get ready for Microsoft 365 Copilot at your company.

• Learn how we’re getting the most out of generative AI at Microsoft with good governance.
• See how we’re responding to the AI revolution with an AI Center of Excellence.
• Check out how we’re embracing AI at Microsoft with new AI certifications.
• Find out how we’re enabling and securing Microsoft Teams meeting data retention at Microsoft.

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