Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to revolutionize the way we work and interact with technology. Among the latest advances in this field, Microsoft 365 Copilot stands out as a revolutionary AI assistant designed specifically for Microsoft 365 applications and services. Much more than a simple chat, such as OpenAI’s Chat GPT, Copilot is seamlessly integrated into your Microsoft 365 ecosystem, offering intelligent, personalized assistance throughout your working day.
In this article, we’ll explore in detail the features and benefits of Microsoft 365 Copilot, as well as its potential to transform your everyday business life. Although Microsoft 365 Copilot is not yet available in Canada, it is expected to arrive in the next few months, and it’s essential to prepare for its imminent arrival.
We’ll find out how you can prepare now for Copilot’s arrival to maximize its results from day one of use. Whether you want to unleash your creativity, optimize your productivity or develop new skills, Microsoft 365 Copilot promises a new era of productivity and collaboration thanks to this powerful alliance between AI and Microsoft 365 applications.
Get ready to welcome Microsoft 365 Copilot and exploit its full potential when its availability is announced in Canada. Be ready to embrace this new era of AI-assisted work, where Copilot will accompany you throughout your professional day for exceptional results.
1. What is Microsoft Copilot
Overview and benefits
Overview
Imagine yourself with an intelligent personal assistant that can help you accomplish your professional tasks faster and more efficiently… Look no further, Microsoft 365 Copilot is coming soon! Microsoft 365 Copilot is a powerful artificial intelligence (AI) assistant designed specifically for Microsoft 365 applications and services. It goes beyond simple OpenAI GPT Chat, being directly integrated into the Microsoft 365 ecosystem to deliver an unrivalled user experience.
Thanks to the power of Large Language Models (LLMs), Microsoft 365 Copilot has an advanced understanding of natural language. It uses your company’s data, available in Microsoft Graph, to provide relevant answers and suggestions.
Advantages
Whether you’re working on Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or other Microsoft 365 applications, Copilot will help you unleash your creativity. There’s no need to start from scratch, as AI supports you by leveraging its vast expertise to offer contextual suggestions and inspiring ideas. In addition to stimulating your creativity, Microsoft 365 Copilot helps you optimize your productivity. It can summarize actions for you, saving you precious time in the execution of your tasks. With its high-level skills, Copilot helps you excel at what you do well, and master new areas you haven’t yet explored. It’s designed to adapt to your specific needs, based on your company’s data, and supports you in your professional progress. Say goodbye to chores, and free up time for more interesting tasks!
Security and confidentiality are essential to Microsoft, and Microsoft 365 Copilot is designed with them in mind. It is integrated with the applications that millions of people use every day, benefiting from a comprehensive approach to security, compliance and privacy. Your data is carefully protected, ensuring a secure environment for your work.
MS Solutions’ advice: To ensure confidentiality within your organization between different departments, make sure you have optimal data governance.
Examples of use in Microsoft 365 applications
In concrete terms, here’s how Microsoft Copilot can help you, depending on whether your requests are formulated in writing or verbally:
- In Outlook, Copilot becomes your ally in efficiently managing your inbox on a daily basis. It makes it easy to review recent e-mails, flag important items such as customer comments and supplier concerns, and draft personalized responses to each request, applying a professional tone and reducing text where necessary.
- In Excel, Copilot works alongside you to help you be more analytical. It helps you break down sales by type and channel, project the impact of increasing online inventory, reformat data into visual graphs to model the impact of inventory changes on gross margin, and create charts to share with your team.
- In Word, Copilot supports your creativity by helping you write, edit, summarize and create. It can write a project proposal based on customer and sales feedback data, adjust the tone of the document to your preferences, and create a draft based on a pre-existing outline.
- In PowerPoint, Copilot helps you create visually stunning presentations. It can create a presentation based on a Word document, include relevant stock photos, consolidate that presentation into a concise summary, and reformat bullet points into columns with images.
- In Teams, Copilot enables you to run more effective meetings by helping you to summarize decisions made and suggest next steps. It can also create charts illustrating the emergency measures discussed.
- With the new addition of Business Chat, Copilot helps you summarize customer feedback on the buying experience. It gathers data from chats, e-mails and documents related to customer feedback, determines the pros and cons of moving more inventory to the Web, and drafts a planning overview using last quarter’s sales and a summary of customer feedback.
Microsoft Copilot becomes a true working partner, supporting you in a variety of tasks and enabling you to unleash your creativity, optimize your productivity and collaborate more effectively.
If you want to know more about Copilot, we have created a special F.A.Q on the subject!
2. How to get Microsoft Copilot?
To access this powerful AI solution, you must have a specific license at a cost of $40.70 CAD per user per month, with an annual commitment. This license is in addition to your existing Microsoft 365 subscription.
Prerequisites vary depending on the size of your organization. For businesses with 1 to 299 users, Business Standard or Premium licenses are sufficient. Beyond 300 users, you will need a Microsoft 365 E3/E5 or Office 365 E3/E5 license.
At MS Solutions, we support you in choosing the license suited to your needs and in integrating Copilot into your Microsoft 365 environment. Our team of experts can also train you to maximize the potential of this AI assistant on a daily basis.
Is Copilot for Microsoft 365 free?
No, Copilot for Microsoft 365 is not free. This is a paid add-on for Microsoft 365 users.
Be careful not to confuse Copilot for Microsoft 365 and the version of Copilot integrated into the Microsoft Edge browser which is in fact free.
What is Copilot in Microsoft Edge?
The free version of Copilot in Edge is an in-browser assistant, powered by artificial intelligence. It is an AI tool that uses the technology behind ChatGPT to help users navigate the web more efficiently.
Free Copilot features in Edge:
- Web page summarization: Copilot can read an article or web page and provide a quick summary, ideal for quickly skimming long pieces of content.
- Contextual search: It can answer questions based on the content of the page you are viewing, allowing you to get information without leaving the current tab.
- Improved writing: Copilot can help you rephrase text, correct grammar, or even generate emails, social media posts, etc.
- Content generation: For content creators, it can write draft articles, create lists, and more, right in the browser.
- Support in Microsoft Office Online: When you use online versions of Word or Excel in Edge, Copilot can give you suggestions for improving your documents.
Difference with Copilot for Microsoft 365
Unlike Copilot for Microsoft 365, which is a paid service with deep integration into apps like Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams, Copilot in Edge is free and primarily focuses on improving the browsing experience and online tools. It doesn’t have access to your company’s internal documents or advanced features like business data analysis.
In short :
- Free in Edge: Optimized for web browsing, article summaries, and writing help.
- Paid for Microsoft 365: Integrated into office applications, with advanced automation and optimization capabilities for business users.
3. How to prepare for the arrival of Copilot for Microsoft 365?
Why you need to act now and how to do it?
It is essential to prepare for the arrival of Microsoft 365 Copilot in order to take full advantage of it from the first day of use. This tool could really become a competitive advantage for certain organizations. As AI tools will not communicate natively between technology platforms on day 1, it is important to work on the Cloud version rather than the desktop version. This will enable smoother integration of Copilot with your Microsoft 365 applications and ensure an optimal experience.
For Microsoft Copilot to provide relevant suggestions and recommendations, it is crucial to provide it with historical productivity data from your business. This includes things like emails, presentations, reports, conversations and meetings. The more you share this information with Copilot as early as possible, the more it will be able to absorb your data and enrich its knowledge base, which will be extremely beneficial to you from day 1.
It’s also important to note that AI tools need to be regularly updated and integrations can sometimes be shaky. By being ready for the arrival of Copilot, you will be able to anticipate these updates and ensure you maintain a smooth and trouble-free experience.
Finally, it is crucial to keep in mind that using AI tools from third-party vendors can introduce new attack vectors for bad actors. So make sure you put in place good management of your data governance, by following Microsoft 365 governance best practices and by carrying out a structural diagnostic of your Microsoft 365 environment. This will guarantee the security and confidentiality of your data while optimizing your experience with Copilot.
In summary, by preparing for the arrival of Microsoft 365 Copilot, you improve your user experience from day one. Work on the Cloud version, share your historical data, anticipate updates, and ensure good data governance. By following these recommendations, you will be ready to take full advantage of Copilot.
4. How to activate Copilot Microsoft 365?
To activate Microsoft 365 Copilot, simply follow a few simple steps once your organization has purchased the corresponding subscription. First, sign in to your Microsoft 365 admin portal with an account that has administrator permissions. Next, navigate to the “Billing” section, then “Products and Services,” to make sure the Copilot subscription is active. Once confirmed, go to the “Users” section to assign Copilot licenses to the relevant accounts. Finally, check that users have the latest versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams applications, as Copilot integrates directly into these tools to offer artificial intelligence features such as automated drafting and data analysis .
5. How to use Copilot for Microsoft 365?
To use Microsoft 365 Copilot, make sure your organization has enabled this module and that you have a valid license. Once signed into your Microsoft 365 account, open applications like Word, Excel, Outlook or Teams. You will then see the Copilot icon in the application ribbon or sidebar. Click on it to access artificial intelligence features, such as automatic text generation, document summarization, creating tables in Excel or optimizing your emails in Outlook. Use Copilot to automate repetitive tasks, save time on your projects and improve your team’s productivity.
If you want to go further in getting started with Copilot, MS Solutions offers corporate training that will allow your employees to fully exploit the potential of Copilot for Microsoft 365 in everyday applications.
In short
Since its launch in 2024, Microsoft 365 Copilot has been talked about, and for good reason! This artificial intelligence assistant, directly integrated into your Microsoft 365 environment, simplifies everyday life like never before.
If you have not yet acquired your Copilot licenses, there is still time to do so. Contact our experts for personalized advice.
As we discussed in this article, anticipating the installation of Copilot in your environment is essential. A diagnosis of your Microsoft 365 structure will allow you to evaluate and optimize your infrastructure for smooth integration of this AI assistant. Furthermore, it is crucial to validate data governance to ensure the security and compliance of your information. This is precisely what we offer with our support dedicated to the adoption of Copilot.
Once the licenses are in place, consider training your team so that they can fully exploit this new tool and maximize your return on investment.
Don’t miss the opportunity to transform your daily professional life with Copilot. But be careful, you risk developing a slight dependence on this new assistant! You have been warned. 😉
