When I purchased Copilot for Office, the sheer volume of information from Microsoft was overwhelming. Here's what I received:
Copilot Community Hub: Resources for deploying, using, and scaling Copilot.
Copilot Success Kit: Scenario Library, implementation framework, and how-to guides.
Admin Dashboard: This is for setup and configuration.
Copilot Lab: Training for effective prompting and usage.
I also received multiple welcome emails. Honestly, it felt like the first day of high school, with homework from every teacher! Eager to test it, I opened Outlook to see Copilot in action. However, it looked the same as before. Frustrated, I decided to try again the next morning.
Impatient, I skipped the setup instructions and jumped right in. At first, I couldn’t find Copilot. After some tinkering, I realized I was using the wrong email address. Once I switched to the correct tenant email, the Copilot interface appeared.
Lesson learned: Copilot works exclusively within the tenant it’s licensed for, ensuring data privacy.
Copilot in Action
As a pretty poor musician, I have an extensive sheet music library that I keep in OneDrive. If I am ever out and want to play music with friends, I can access my library online.
Without setting anything up, I asked Copilot in OneDrive: "Which PDF sheet music is written in the key of D?"
To my amazement, it returned:
Just Once
The A-Team
Hallelujah
Viva La Vida:
Overkill:
Teenage Wasteland:
Allentown:
What I like about you:
American Girl:
…and more, and it included links to open each file directly.
This seamless indexing of my files and emails, turning them into part of the AI's knowledge base, was mind-blowing. Without needing custom databases or fine-tuning, Copilot integrated everything automatically.
Testing Copilot in Outlook
In Outlook, we tried finding a Microsoft support case number with this prompt: "What was the case number from my support call with Microsoft?"
The initial response was generic and unhelpful.
“I couldn't find any specific case number related to your support call with Microsoft in the recent emails or files. If you have any additional details or a specific time frame, I can try searching again. Let me know how else I can assist you.”
Refined prompt:
"I’m looking for an email from the past two weeks referencing a Microsoft support case number."
This time, Copilot nailed it:
Incident Title: Proactive Support - Getting Started with Copilot.
Case Number: 2411120040002311
Severity: C
Contact preference: Phone
Name: Michael ONeill
Copilot scanned thousands of emails in seconds and summarized the details perfectly.
What’s Next for Copilot?
Curious about its capabilities, we asked Copilot to delete emails with a specific subject. It responded:
"Sorry, I don’t support that yet, but here’s what I can do…
What can you ask about?
An email you're looking at - Summarize this email
Work in progress
Your inbox - Catch me up on emails over the past day
Your organization - Who works on [topic?
Information from the web - What's the weather in Montreal tomorrow?
What actions can you take?
Set an automatic reply - Set my away message until next Friday
Create an email draft - Draft an email to [person about topic]
Create an inbox rule - Flag past and future emails from [person]
I'm working hard to improve and add more features in the future, thanks for your patience!
Click the button below to share feedback with us on future prompts you'd like to see in Chat."
Microsoft is working toward making Copilot a true personal assistant. While actions like email cleanup aren’t available yet, the roadmap for future features is promising.
For now, Copilot has already transformed productivity by integrating seamlessly with your files, emails, and workflows.
Stay tuned for more updates on how Copilot is evolving to become your ultimate productivity assistant!
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