How Microsoft Copilot is Shifting the AI Narrative to Make You More Productive

While there are many ways an organization can leverage Microsoft Copilot, the following workflows could propel quicker time to value.

Copilot can help users prepare for meetings by providing relevant information from the internet or a user’s recent emails, meetings, conversations and files. It can also assist in taking notes during the meeting and summarizing the key points discussed.

“Getting me to pay attention for more than 60 minutes in a meeting is hard. So, if I feel less engaged, I can always ask Copilot to provide a summary of what’s going on. Sometimes there are meetings that overlap, but now I can afford to miss a meeting and catch up later with an auto-generated summary,” Zaleschuk explains.

Copilot can simplify data analysis tasks for beginners and experts alike. For tasks that require internet research, it can produce a list of sources and relevant points by scanning the internet. Inside Microsoft Excel, Copilot can help users analyze data without complex maneuvers. It can answer questions like “What’s the sales forecast for the next quarter?” by analyzing a spreadsheet and supply calculations wherever needed.

Essentially, it simplifies complex data tasks for users with basic Excel skills, making them more productive and self-reliant. For example, if you’re working on a report, Copilot can help you analyze the data by generating charts and graphs that highlight the most important trends and insights with a simple prompt.

Content operations that involve creating presentations, documents, marketing collateral, etc., can be transformed in terms of speed and creativity with Copilot. It can create new content by having the relevant files inputted as part of the prompt. It can also help users write more effectively by suggesting phrases and sentences based on the context of the document.

As it sits inside the Microsoft 365 environment, it can readily work with native formats such as PowerPoint slide designs, tables, images and textual features.

For instance, it can create a PowerPoint boilerplate taking meeting notes (also summarized by Copilot) as the input, reducing the time needed to go from scratch to finish. 

Copilot aids users in prioritizing emails by summarizing the key points of each email and highlighting the most important ones. It can also suggest phrases and sentences based on the context of the email.

Picture this – you receive an email from a colleague asking for your availability for a meeting. Copilot can suggest a response based on your calendar availability. Copilot can also help you write more effective emails by suggesting phrases and sentences based on the context of the email.

Early research suggests that tools like Copilot could set the pace for a new era in knowledge work. A study published by Harvard Business School reported that generative AI in the workplace led to a 25.1 percent decrease in time spent to complete tasks for the participants. Zaleschuk also cited Microsoft’s internal company research, which found that 58 percent of users reclaimed time for more important work using Microsoft 365 Copilot.

So how is Copilot driving these productivity gains?

The answer lies in the efficacy of its responses. Copilot produces clean, relevant and useful responses that elevate the quality of work and the speed at which it is delivered.

Professionals heavily benefit from its ability to complete routine tasks, which translates to:

• More mental bandwidth to focus on tasks that demand higher cognitive abilities – their true talents.
• More time on their calendars to dedicate to high-priority tasks or personal wellbeing – improving work satisfaction.
  

Under the hood, Copilot uses retrieval augmented generation (RAG), an architecture for grounding responses in context and truth.
 

It is a sophisticated system that takes the user prompt from Copilot, contextualizes it based on user data – chat histories, emails, documents, etc. – and sends it to a large language model (LLM) for the right response. Microsoft Graph receives this response, contextualizes it again for accuracy and safety before feeding it back to Copilot.

This process ensures that Copilot is on target as often as possible, offering reliable responses consistently.

Trust is the foundational element for any AI system to be adopted in the enterprise. This is because generative AI systems have faced data privacy, security and response safety concerns in the past, making organizations apprehensive of their reliability.

Microsoft Copilot takes a holistic approach to strengthen user trust by ensuring Copilot’s responses are attuned to the principles of fairness, reliability & safety, privacy & security, inclusiveness, transparency and accountability.

To make this happen, Copilot ensures that the organizational data it uses:

• Never leaves the security parameters of the organization.
• Is not used to train the OpenAI foundation models without permission.
• Is protected by stringent enterprise compliance and security best practices.
• Is grounded with Microsoft Graph to remove any potentially harmful results.
  

The Copilot Audit dashboard makes it possible for administrators to tweak security controls and get a better idea of Copilot usage for smarter compliance. By default, it reduces security risks by honouring file permissions across different users and comes with data quality protection features. Users can rest assured that others can’t find or use files without explicit permissions within Copilot.
 

As Microsoft Copilot makes it way to the hands of your coworkers to inspire creativity and unlock productivity, CDW is proud to pair with you to make this journey successful.

Being recognized as the winner of the 2023 Modern Workplace Partner of the Year by Microsoft, CDW brings immense partner value to the table. Our in-house experts are equipped with training and certifications from Microsoft to facilitate a smooth Copilot adoption.

CDW’s professional services for Copilot help organizations get started faster, navigate the use-case landscape confidently and understand governance comprehensively. All of which will contribute to your organization driving value with Copilot early and at scale.