Microsoft held an event titled “The Future of Work with AI” today. During the presentation, the company introduced Copilot, a tool that uses AI to generate content across apps, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams. Copilot is also available in Viva and a new experience called Business Chat.
You can watch Microsoft’s AI event to catch up, but we’ve also broken down the highlights. Microsoft shared a blog post (opens in new tab) recapping today’s announcements as well.
Copilot in Word
Copilot in Word can summarize documents and suggest edits as you write. The tool also has the ability to generate a draft of a document based on information from an organization. Copilot in Word supports picking between tones, such as professional or casual, and can help improve documents in other ways.
Copilot in Excel
Using Copilot in Excel should make it easier to make complex spreadsheets. The tool allows you to ask questions in natural language and will then suggest formulas to use. Copilot in Excel can find correlations in data, generate models based on questions, and find trends. It can also create visual aids, such as charts.
Copilot in PowerPoint
PowerPoint’s Copilot features focus on creating presentations. You can have the tool gather information from a Word document to create slides, including speaker notes and sources. You can also compress preexisting presentations to be much shorter with the tool.
Like Excel, PowerPoint will let you use natural language to enter commands, such as timing animations and reformatting text.
Copilot in Outlook
Copilot in Outlook will use AI to read through emails. It can then write replies for you, which should save some time. Like Word documents, text generated by Copilot in Outlook can be edited, so it’s more helping you with a draft than creating something set in stone.
You’ll also be able to create messages from notes that prompt the AI. The tone can be adjusted to fit specific emails as well.
Copilot in Teams
If you’re late to a Teams meeting, Copilot will be able to help you out by creating a summary of what’s been said so far. The tool can answer specific questions regarding a meeting as well.
Copilot will also be able to generate meeting agendas based on chat history, suggest who should follow up about specific items, and recommend a time to schedule check-ins.
Business Chat
Business Chat is a new experience that extends across different apps and data sources. It uses Microsoft Graph and AI to gather information from documents, presentations, emails, notes, calendars, and more.
Here are some commands shared by Microsoft as examples:
- Summarize the chats, emails, and documents about the [customer] escalation that happened last night.
- What is the next milestone on [project]. Were there any risks identified? Help me brainstorm a list of some potential mitigations.
- Write a new planning overview in the style of [filename A] that contains the planning timeline from [filename B] and incorporates the project list in the email from [person].
Copilot in Viva
Copilot will integrate with Microsoft Viva in several areas, including Viva Engage. The tool will highlight trending topics from workplaces to help leaders better interact with colleagues. It will share suggestions for posts and will have the ability to add images and adjust the tone of text as well.
Copilot within Viva Engage will also suggest responses to help conversations continue and provide prompts to spark communication.
