Copilot for Microsoft 365 is a powerful generative AI assistant that can help you and your team work smarter and faster. Copilot can enhance your productivity and creativity across various Microsoft 365 apps, such as Word, Outlook, Teams, PowerPoint, and more. Copilot can also help you access and analyze data, communicate effectively, and collaborate seamlessly. 

But how can you use Copilot for Microsoft 365 the right way? In this article, we will share some tips, tricks, and best practices for getting the most out of this innovative tool. We will also show you how Maureen Data Systems can help you prepare, adopt, extend, and customize solutions within the Copilot for Microsoft 365 platform. 

How to Use Copilot for Microsoft 365: Getting Started 

To use Copilot for Microsoft 365, you will need a Microsoft 365 license and a Copilot add-on license, which costs $30 per user per month. You will also need to have a Microsoft Entra ID, a OneDrive account, an Outlook account, and a Teams account. You may also need to enable some additional features, such as Microsoft Loop and Microsoft Whiteboard, for your tenant. 

Once you have the necessary licenses and accounts, you can assign them to your users as an admin through the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, the Azure Admin Center, or PowerShell. You can also configure your security, privacy, and compliance policies for Copilot through these tools. 

How to Use Copilot for Microsoft 365 in Each Microsoft App 

Copilot for Microsoft 365 adapts to the functionality of each Microsoft app to deliver specific solutions for different use cases. Here are some examples of how to use Copilot in each productivity app: 

  • Word: Copilot can help you summarize, create, refine, and enhance documents. It can also help you visualize and transform text into a table, draft new documents by referencing existing ones, and reveal changes and revisions made by collaborators. 
  • PowerPoint: Copilot can help you turn ideas into presentations. It can also help you condense lengthy presentations, reformat text, layouts, animations, and more. Copilot can also integrate with DALL-E, the OpenAI image generator, to help you create custom images. 
  • Excel: Copilot can help you analyze and understand data. It can also help you ask questions about your data sets, suggest new formulas, and propose “what-if” scenarios. Copilot can also integrate with Python in Excel, allowing you to perform sophisticated mathematical analysis. 
  • Outlook: Copilot can help you stay on top of inbox conversations and communicate with message suggestions. It can also help you summarize email threads, show suggested action items, replies, and follow-ups, and create email thread summaries, draft agendas, create engaging meeting titles, and suggest attendees. 
  • Teams: Copilot can help you recap and summarize conversations, organize key discussion points and actions, identify individuals for follow-ups, and create meeting agendas. It can also help you take collaborative notes during meetings, capture specific content, and synthesize long posts. 
  • Whiteboard: Copilot can help you start and improve the ideation process. It can also help you generate, categorize, and summarize ideas, and automatically capture and visualize spoken discussion points when using Whiteboard in a Teams meeting. 
  • Loop: Copilot can help you work together more effectively with your team. It can also help you create and share prompts for Copilot, organize team projects, summarize content, and generate recaps of meetings. 
  • OneNote: Copilot can help you plan, organize, and manage your content. It can also help you draw action information from notes and respond to your questions about your notes. 

How to Use Copilot for Microsoft 365: Tips for Success 

Now that you know how to use Copilot for Microsoft 365 and its features on a basic level, here are some of our top tips for success: 

  • Learn how to prompt the Copilot effectively: Prompts are the key to a successful experience with Copilot. You need to give Copilot as much relevant details and context as possible, specify which information sources and data it should use, tell it how it should respond, and iterate and experiment with your requests. 
  • Turbocharge adoption with the right strategy: Copilot can be a game-changer for your organization, but you need to ensure that your team members understand the benefits, get the proper training, and overcome any objections or concerns they may have. You also need to keep up with the latest changes and evolutions of Copilot and its features. 
  • Customize the Copilot experience: Copilot can deliver more relevant and accurate responses if you customize it to your specific enterprise use cases and scenarios. You can do this by configuring your content connected to the Microsoft Graph, and by using Copilot Studio, a low-code tool that allows you to build, test, and publish custom GPTs. 
  • Keep Copilot secure: Copilot follows “Responsible AI” guidelines and ensures that you maintain complete control over your data. However, you also need to implement the right level of security for your organization. You need to train your team members on using Microsoft 365 securely, and use the security tools in the Microsoft ecosystem, such as Purview, to apply sensitivity labels and retention policies to your content. 
  • Remember the limitations of Copilot: Copilot is an amazing tool, but it’s not foolproof. It can only deliver information based on the data it has, and it may not always know the difference between “good” and “bad” responses. You need to think carefully about what data you ask Copilot to use, and review its responses carefully and question their accuracy. 

How Maureen Data Systems Can Help You 

Maureen Data Systems is a premiere IT services and solutions company that can help you prepare, adopt, extend, and customize solutions within the Copilot for Microsoft 365 platform. Our team of certified engineers can help you: 

  • Procure and implement the necessary licenses and accounts for Copilot 
  • Configure your security, privacy, and compliance policies for Copilot 
  • Train your team members on how to use Copilot effectively and securely 
  • Customize your Copilot experience with Copilot Studio and other tools 
  • Support your Copilot journey with ongoing maintenance and updates 

Check out our current Copilot offerings in Microsoft Marketplace 

If you want to learn more about how Maureen Data Systems can help you unleash the power of Copilot for Microsoft 365 and become AI-ready, contact us today and we will be happy to assist you. 

Reference: How to Use Microsoft 365 Copilot (The Right Way) – UC Today