Microsoft 365 Copilot officially launches: the new era of personal computing is here

"We believe Copilot will fundamentally transform our relationship with technology and usher in the new era of personal computing," said no other than Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella himself. The arrival of Microsoft 365 Copilot has been a long time coming and at Arxus, we’ve already been hard at work testing the new solution. Will 1 November 2023 be forever remembered as the day Microsoft 365 Copilot was born? Let’s take a look at the basics of the tool and help you get prepared for the next big thing for your Modern Workplace.

What is Microsoft 365 Copilot?

Microsoft 365 Copilot is a Microsoft solution embedded in your Microsoft 365 apps and services that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) to help you create, edit, and format documents, emails, and presentations with ease. It is designed to save you time, improve your productivity, and enhance your creativity.

Microsoft 365 Copilot can help you with tasks such as:

• Generating relevant and engaging content based on your topic and audience.
• Suggest the best tone, style, and format for your document.
• Providing feedback and tips to improve your writing and presentation skills.
• Automating tedious and repetitive tasks such as formatting, spelling, and grammar checking.
• Integrating with other Microsoft 365 apps and services such as Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Teams, and SharePoint.

Arxus’ first impressions of Microsoft 365 Copilot

As a member of the early access program (EAP), we’ve already had some time to test certain features of Microsoft 365 Copilot. During this period, we’ve made the following observations:

1. Quality data equals quality output

Microsoft 365 Copilot uses the accessible data within your Microsoft 365 tenant: your e-mails, presentations, chats, files, etc. If you ask Copilot to summarize a report you made some weeks ago, it can access that content and summarize it for you. This becomes more difficult for the Copilot when you ask it to look for answers to which your data has multiple answers. This could be duplicates of certain files, that contain both outdated and current information or e-mails that contain conflicting information. This poor data quality can lead to unwanted Copilot results and may hinder adoption in the long run.

It is therefore particularly useful to take a critical look at your data quality and make sure outdated data is either excluded from your Copilot database or deleted.

2. Make sure you have the right access policies in place

Another thing to keep in mind is that Copilot will only consider the data that you have access to. This means that when a user enters a prompt in Copilot looking for sales reports, it will only get results from sales reports that a specific user has access to. This is important to consider if you do not want your users accidentally stumbling upon sensitive information and want to make sure your prompt results are as relevant as possible. We also advise you to adhere to Zero Trust principles to make sure your data is safe and governed.

3. Explore use cases

Lastly, we’ve noticed that Microsoft 365 Copilot varies in usefulness depending on the use case and specific user type or ‘persona’. Microsoft 365 Copilot is strong at summarizing content, generating drafts, and giving you insights into data with great speed. For niche use cases or a limited set of data, Copilot is often not the best option and we are actively testing the possibilities of Azure OpenAI to fill in those needs.

It is, in any case, important to examine use cases and find out which personas are most beneficial for these use cases. That way you will have better Copilot results and strengthen the overall adoption of the tool.

How can I start using Microsoft 365 Copilot?

On 16 January 2024, Microsoft officially made Copilot for Microsoft 365 available for CSP customers (at launch on 1 November 2023, it was only purchasable for Enterprise customers). This means that any company, small or large, can now start using the technology. However, unlocking the full potential of Copilot for Microsoft 365 requires preparation, planning, and consideration as stated in the examples above.

Feel free to contact us with any questions you have concerning the topic. Our experts are available to advise you in discovering the AI solutions that fit your use case and guide you in embracing the power of AI.

Stay tuned for more news and insights on Microsoft 365 Copilot and Azure OpenAI as Arxus will continue to test and explore Microsoft 365 Copilot and other AI solutions made available by Microsoft.