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For Exigent, exploring ways to leverage emerging technologies is directly tied to uncovering opportunities to better serve our customers. When it comes to artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, our team has been exploring several options, from using custom automation to quickly deploy new hardware to testing out AI for research and analysis of everything from new technology tools to marketing performance.

We also do our best to share what we learn with our customers – after all, we are your technical advisors! Lately, we've been exploring the differences between paid AI options, such as ChatGTP, and embedded solutions, such as Microsoft 365's Copilot. If you are taking advantage of Copilot, you may already use it to find information in Teams chat, summarize meetings, or pull related emails out of Outlook to save yourself from sorting through multiple search results.

Recently, several updates to Microsoft 365 Copilot improved the user experience and productivity. Here are some key changes and tips for using them in your daily operations.

Copilot Chat: This new feature serves as a perfect starting point for everyone in your organization to dip a toe into AI efficiencies. Copilot Chat can assist tasks across Microsoft 365 Office apps, making your work more efficient and productive.

Some examples of what you can do with Copilot Chat:

1. Outlook:

• Summarize the content of a large email thread to quickly catch up on conversations or to prepare for an upcoming meeting.
• Draft responses to emails, ensuring a professional tone and succinctly conveying key points.

PowerPoint:

• Transform text-heavy slides into concise bullet points for better clarity.
• Create presentations by suggesting topics, pulling in content from Word documents, and adding speaker notes, animations, and transitions. Note: While this tool has a definite learning curve, it's a powerful way to reduce time spent on presentations.

Excel:

• Detect and fix text inconsistencies, number format issues, and extra spaces effortlessly.
• Highlight trends, create visualizations, and provide recommendations to simplify data analysis.

Teams:

• Summarize key discussion points from meetings, including chat contributions and transcripts.
• Suggest action items based on meeting recordings.
• Caution: As with any AI-generated content, pause to review the overview or summary. While AI is powerful, it lacks reasoning skills that can inadvertently alter meaning.

Word:

• Write articles, reports, or other documents based on your prompts. Remember, the more specific you are, the better the outcome.
• Reference emails, meetings, and people in your organization while drafting documents.

OneNote:

• Summarize, organize, and rewrite notes using natural language commands.
• Create to-do lists from meeting summaries or email conversations.

These capabilities are designed to save time, enhance productivity, and make work more efficient. For example, Team Exigent quickly learned to rely on Copilot meeting summaries, creating quick recaps of meetings and a list of tasks to assign. I personally love the "Prepare for meeting" option found within Outlook – it quickly summarizes any email communications related to the meeting topic and offers quick notes for review.

Additionally, as an organization that follows the EOS model, we recently used AI for a quick summary of our planning session SWOT exercises and to suggest the next steps after our meetings. We found that while the tool could eliminate redundant points, it missed the mark on next steps—something we quickly realized during the review of the summary. So again, don't blindly trust any AI tool when it comes to organizational or personal nuance.

New Copilot Enhancements Deliver More Value

Other capabilities within the new launch include:

• Web-grounded chat with GPT-4o, a conversational AI experience where responses are supplemented or verified with real-time information from the web. Instead of relying solely on pre-trained knowledge, web-grounded AI performs live searches to gather current data, making answers more accurate, relevant, and up-to-date. You can use it to do market research, write a strategy document, or prepare for a meeting. 
• The capability to upload filesallows you to add any document to the chat and ask Copilot to do things like summarize key points in a Word document, analyze data in an Excel spreadsheet, and suggest improvements to a PowerPoint presentation.
• Also new: Agents. Using natural language, anyone can create agents to automate repetitive tasks and business processes—directly in Copilot Chat. However, agents are a paid addition and require a more extensive understanding of AI and prompts. Typically, IT admins would work within Copilot to build organization-wide agents and manage agent deployment through Microsoft Copilot Studio.

Use With Caution and Provide Guidance for Users

As with any AI tool, don't hand over too much power to Copilot. Remember to review for accuracy, watch for misconstrued notes or commentary, and be certain you are considering data security whenever you use the tool. AI is still considered an emerging tech, with battles over privacy, data protection, copyright infringement, and more still waging in courts around the world. We highly recommend enacting a simple but clear AI policy to guide its use and protect not only your organizational data but also your employees.

[Check out tips for an AI policy]

That said, with Copilot, you can accelerate many daily, repetitive tasks, such as:

1. Meeting Scheduling: Copilot simplifies meeting setup by finding the best time for a 1:1 or meeting in seconds.
2. Excel Enhancements: Copilot in Excel now offers one-click magic to detect and fix text inconsistencies, number and format issues, and remove extra spaces.
3. Read Aloud in Word: The new Read Aloud feature for Copilot responses in Word allows you to hear Copilot's responses read aloud directly from the chat pane. This feature is available for Word and PowerPoint and can be found under the "Review" tab in Word documents.
4. OneNote Copilot for iPad: This intelligent assistant for OneNote transforms the way you interact with your notes, helping you to summarize, organize, and rewrite notes.

Not sure where to find these capabilities? Simply click on the Copilot icon, ask about any of the above, and the product itself will provide guidance. Or, ask it about the ways it can help you save time or steps within an app you are currently using.

With all this in mind, get out there and start exploring how AI can help your productivity.

Need help or more information? Exigent can help explain Copilot licensing and capabilities.