Imagine having a personal assistant that helps you navigate your daily tasks effortlessly. Microsoft 365 Copilot offers just that, so you can work smarter, not harder. And the best part? You don’t need to be a fast engineer to use it.
Here at Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization, we found 10 scenarios for using Copilot every day in an experience we call Monday Morning with Copilot. Many of the scenarios are one-click actions, making them beginner-friendly. They have been thoroughly researched and tested by our Copilot Readiness team.
“We did over a month of work surveying different groups to find out what their daily best Copilot scenarios are,” said Cadie Kneip, a Readiness business program manager on the Readiness team at Microsoft Digital. “Our extended team whittled them down to ten from over 100. They had to be things you could use every single day.”
Initially, our Readiness team conducted an intensive training session called the Copilot Power Hour. “It was like drinking from a fire hose,” says David VanGilder, who is also program manager for Readiness Business at Microsoft Digital.
We distilled the great 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 the ones that are for everyone,” says VanGilder. “It’s not for power users.”
Stay on top of long email threads with Copilot in Outlook
This is one of many tips that doesn’t need a prompt – you just open a thread and select the Summarize button. Copilot then provides an overview at the top of your email.
You can 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 is buried somewhere in all the many emails back and forth . Copilot can save you the 30 minutes it can take to wade through the entire thread.
“It has annotations about where it found things,” VanGilder says. “If you click on the number, it will take you to the source, so you can get the whole story.”
Recap Teams meetings with Copilot in Teams
You can use this tip to recap an entire meeting, or if you’re joining late, you can recap just the part you missed.
For example, when you come back 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 ‘Recap the meeting so far’ prompt catches you when you’re five minutes late, and you don’t have to disrupt the meeting by asking,” says VanGilder.
Summarize your week with Copilot
Let’s say you’re working on two or three major projects and several smaller projects. It can be a lot to keep track of.
With this prompt, Copilot shows you the last week’s chats and emails, and you can easily see them in a table that includes whether you’ve replied.
“What’s really nice about this one is that people already know how to do the first half of this prompt,” says VanGilder. “But the other part, to say the results in a table – it creates a nice display of results. I was able to quickly get caught up on all my projects.”
Generate meeting notes with Copilot in Teams
Copilot can list key topics and action items from a meeting. If you are a meeting host, this can be very useful, as you are probably used to spending the meeting with your nose buried in OneNote. When Copilot takes your notes, you can be an active participant in your meetings.
“There’s more than one way to use this functionality,” says VanGilder. “Instead of clicking ‘Generate meeting notes’ I can type the prompt and add ‘and put the results in the form of an email I can send to the participants’. I proofread it quickly because it’s not called Pilot, it’s Copilot , so you should check out its work!”
Draft email with Copilot in Outlook
Of course, many of us are experts at sending and receiving emails at work. But sometimes you have an email that’s particularly challenging.
For example, it could be that there is some friction on the subject and you want help being diplomatic. Or maybe the recipient doesn’t want or need a lot of technical details and you want help making it understandable to a general audience.
“This is one that will help you look good,” says Kneip.
Get ready for your day with Copilot
In movies and TV shows, when a busy executive walks into their office, an assistant is there to say, “Good morning, they called on the XYZ project, and you have a meeting at 9 o’clock with So-and-so’s team.”
This tip makes Copilot the assistant for you. It summarizes a lot of things from the previous day – emails, Teams messages and meetings. It also gives you a table of your upcoming meetings for the day.
You don’t need 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 of how users can tailor the messages,” says Kneip.
Discover what was said with Copilot
This tip is for when you remember someone messaged you, but you can’t find their message, or you want to know what a key stakeholder said about a project.
“This prompt uses 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 function of Context IQ. You may 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?'” says Kneip.
A Copilot user came up with a similar innovative use. They used Copilot to write an email in response to a customer complaint using the company’s 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 useful because it removes the hassle 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,” says VanGilder. “It needs a lot of training and sales.”
Uncover relevant files with Copilot
If you’ve ever needed to find a file but couldn’t remember exactly what it was called or where it was located – and who hasn’t? – then this tip is for you. Copilot can search for a specific project or topic.
The question was suggested by a Microsoft lawyer who asked if Copilot could help find files. VanGilder’s response was, “Try it and let me know what happens.” And it worked!
“This is an exciting call that people are absolutely in love with, to quickly find what you’re looking for,” says VanGilder.
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.
Get more details on each of these scenarios here: Monday Morning with Copilot.
Read our full Top 10 scenarios for using Microsoft 365 Copilot every day here, a fun experience we call Monday Morning with Copilot. When you get there, you’ll find a lot more details, including videos that will walk you through each tip.
