We are back with part two of our Copilot series! Today we will be talking through Copilot in Outlook. For many of us, this is the application we open up at the very beginning of our day and it’s likely the last one we close. This leads to a pretty daunting task for Microsoft to ensure the capabilities of Copilot fit into our workflows and actually improve the way we use this crucial tool.
Before we dig into Copilot in Outlook, let’s talk about what generative AI is. I know this is typically a buzzword in many of your communities, but if we break it down in layman’s terms generative AI is just a super smart computer program that can create new things just like drawing a picture or writing a story. Here are a few of my key understandings:
Learning from Examples:
- Generative AI learns from examples, much like reading a lot of books and then writing your own story.
- It looks at tons of examples such as pictures, text, or music and learns patterns from them.
- With Copilot, you can make this process even more exciting tailored through your prompts!
Fun and Life Changing Applications:
- Generative AI can be used for fun activities like creating video game characters or making art.
- It also has life changing applications, such as helping doctors find new medicines.
- Many organizations encourage us to think of AI as a creative helper that uses what it knows to make new and interesting things.
Key Considerations:
- While AI is a powerful tool, it must be used responsibly.
- Data privacy and content authenticity are crucial concerns that we need to keep at the forefront.
- Best practices for using generative AI include:
- Respecting data privacy, especially when it’s personal.
- Recognize that AI-generated content is just that—generated. We should interpret the answers with a grain of salt and not take anything too seriously.
- Always remember that generative AI is no substitute for human conversation.
With Copilot for Outlook, there are seven different ways to utilize this tool:
- Email Drafting: Copilot can help you draft emails based on simple prompts, ensuring your messages are clear and effective.
- Tone and Clarity Coaching: It offers suggestions to improve the tone and clarity of your emails, making your communication more effective.
- Summarizing Emails: It can summarize long email threads, extracting key information and suggesting follow-up actions.
- Schedule a Meeting: Have Copilot schedule that meeting for you! Automatically add in an agenda, summary from the email thread, and identify the time that works best for all recipients based on their current availability*.
- Inbox Management: Copilot assists in managing your inbox by highlighting important emails and helping you find specific messages quickly.
- Following a Meeting: Stay on top of important meetings and their outcomes with Copilot’s reminder to review the meeting recap.
- Meeting Preparation: Copilot can prepare you for meetings by summarizing related emails, documents, and chats.
*Applies to internally scheduled meetings where calendar visibility is available.
Let’s dig a little deeper into each of these.
I like to combine 1 and 2 here as these are actually the same button in Outlook. Email drafting with Copilot in Outlook streamlines the process of composing emails by allowing you to start a draft with a simple prompt as opposed to staring at that blank email screen. You provide the main points or context, and Copilot generates a draft based on your input, with options to customize the length and tone. Tone and clarity coaching with Copilot helps you refine your emails by offering suggestions to improve tone, clarity, and overall reader sentiment. It reviews your draft and provides tips to adjust the tone to match the context, whether formal, friendly, or assertive, and enhances clarity to ensure your message is easily understood. Copilot also analyzes how your email might be perceived by the recipient and suggests changes to enhance the reader’s experience. Key item to note here: Copilot may sometimes provide repetitive coaching suggestions. My recommendation is to update the first or second time you ask for coaching, but anymore and you’ll notice it repeat itself.
Copilot’s summarization capabilities in Outlook help you quickly understand the key points of lengthy email threads by automatically identifying and summarizing the main content, including who sent the emails and the most essential details. These summaries appear at the top of the email thread for easy access, often with citations linking to specific emails for quick reference (my personal favorite – find the most important email!). This feature saves time and ensures you stay informed about important conversations without having to scroll through multiple messages. Overall, it enhances your email management and productivity by keeping you on top of critical information efficiently.
GAME CHANGER ALERT! Copilot for Outlook now does your meeting scheduling. Selecting a thread of emails with your team, select the schedule with Copilot button in your classic ribbon and Copilot will identify the time that works best for all on the email, add an agenda, and even summarize the thread to be included in the description of the meeting. This tool is one that has certainly revolutionized to the way in which I schedule meetings. How about you? Have you tried it yet?
Copilot for inbox management is designed to streamline your email handling and reduce stress. Coming soon and recently announced is the ability for Copilot to prioritize your inbox. You’ll soon find this feature nested in the filter icon at the top of your inbox. Additionally, it organizes your inbox by creating systems and categories for better prioritization. These features collectively aim to make managing your inbox more efficient and less overwhelming, although, if you’re like me, too much categorization can be equally as overwhelming!
Another more recent Copilot in Outlook tool is the Prepare button. When you have a meeting scheduled, this button appears in your inbox and provides a summary of the meeting details. With the prepare button, Copilot will populate a summary of what it believes to have been recent action items or conversations that have taken place lists out any key action items to come and identifies any related documents as a part of that meeting. No more searching to find the relevant file or previous meeting recap.
This last tool is one that those of you who are commonly marking meetings as tentative, may not appreciate as much as the others. Following a meeting is actively replacing the maybe button and Outlook to follow a meeting select Follow, and it will mark you as having followed a call, sending a notification to the organizer that you will be following in place of attending the call. A key item to recognize about following a meeting is this only works for meetings that get recorded. If the meeting you are following does not get recorded, there will be no updates for you to receive as Copilot requires recording/transcription in order to actively provide a summary and meeting recap. Similar to when utilizing Copilot in an actual meeting without recording, this information would not be readily available following that call.
As you can see, Copilot in Outlook is a game-changer for anyone looking to enhance their email management and productivity. From drafting emails and improving tone to summarizing threads and scheduling meetings, Copilot offers a suite of features that streamline your workflow and make your daily tasks more efficient. By leveraging the power of generative AI, Copilot not only saves you time, but also ensures that your communications are clear, effective, and professional. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just getting started, Copilot in Outlook is a valuable tool that can help you stay on top of your email game. Give it a try and see how it transforms your Outlook experience!