What's it like to actually use Copilot in your daily life? There's been plenty of talk about what benefits AI can bring to your worklife, so I decided to put the test in my day-to-day work, focusing on using copilot without specialized training - like most people might see it.
These are my observations from the first seven days with Microsoft Co-pilot.
I feel like a child in a candy store!
I know a little about Ai already, so getting started was easy.
I started out with generating a few e-mails with co-pilot. I moved on to compiling notes from a customer across tools, and summarized chats and extremely long mail threads
Then it hits me: I’ve become a whole lot more productive than yesterday!
I jokingly say to a colleague; I kinda feel entitled to a serious salary increase, being this productive”.
My colleague replies, “or you could take more time off.”
I’m excited to see what tomorrow will bring!"
Dear Chrome,
You’ve been by my side for so many years, given me so many joyful, insightful, and memorable answers… But I’ve found somebody else. Their name is Edge, and I want to explore where this is going.
It's day two of Microsoft Copilot, and I am flying.
Our customers' primary concern regarding AI, is security. Obviously, this is also on my mind working with confidential data (internal and external).
So, what can Copilot do? Copilot can access all documents, chats, and e-mails across my M365 account and apps whilst ensuring that no data is used outside of our organization nor used for training purposes or anything else.
A highlight of the day was when I uploaded a PowerPoint, describing my core offering within my field, and asked it to create a script for a video I’m planning to record. The result was outstanding!
Okay, one more highlight: I had an internal Word document of 50 pages, that I needed reformed to a very concise and easy to understand PowerPoint. The text was straight to the point, the pictures not so much … However, it has saved me tons of work, all I had to do was refine it and give it my own personal touch!
Working with Copilot within Excel… I’ve always been a fan of Excel but now my love has reignited!
Nerdy?
Absolutely.
It’s amazing what you can do! An important lesson is that Copilot works with tables, which is why the icon remains greyed out until you input some data structured in a table.
Today, I started an early spring cleaning in some of our internal systems – of course, built on Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics365.
This allows me to export tables to Excel, then ask Copilot to highlight redundant account names and other relevant data, and BOOM! In just a few seconds, I’m presented with what I’ve asked for and can continue the work.
I have had a few glitches here and there and maybe been too enthusiastic with asks that might be too premature, but my initial thrill continues!
So, rumor has it that you can (record and) transcribe meetings within Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Copilot works its magic by giving me summaries, highlights, agreed actions, decisions, etc.
Today was the perfect day to put it to the test because my agenda was packed with back-to-back meetings…
Alas! I soon realized that you need to enable a setting on tenant level to make use of this fantastic feature. So that will have to wait for another day.
Instead, I discovered that Copilot can help me when working and collaborating within whiteboard.office.com, and let me just say – what a game changer!
I’m quite sure that I will always preach to Microsoft products. But… I’ve been using another similar tool to Whiteboard. Never again, I tell you!
With MS Whiteboard, not only can Copilot provide me with suggestions for the content, but once this is done, it can structure the content and give me a summary.
I think Whiteboard will be my main tool for collaborating with my team and peers - and specifically useful in brainstorming sessions, training, and workshops whilst supporting remote work. I also learned that it integrates with Microsoft and Teams, making collaboration even more productive.
What can't CoPilot do?
Well, it's still not great with Danish, which might limit its use for some people... but looking at the capabilities of existing language models, I'm sure it's only a matter of time...
My mom always said that I shouldn't compare myself to others... It's just one of those things that follows you from childhood to adulthood, resulting in me being quite careful when comparing in general.
I know it might sound weird, and I don't even know if it makes any sense comparing ChatGPT to CoPilot, but I just have two very small things I've noticed.
With Chat GPT I quickly saw a change in my vocabulary – for the better: I soon started using other and new words, entire phrases and saw myself emerging into an exiting world of new expressions both in writing and in speaking.
In this regard, Copilot is more tied to conventional language - for better or worse, so I don’t have the exact same experience when asking for a refinement of an email or a suggestion for elaborating a text.
Nevertheless, its strength at this point is – as I’ve mentioned before - that it’s connected to my entire workspace. This part of Copilot has already become such an integral part of how I operate, and I refuse to have it any other way!
Today, I played around with the prompts in Copilot lab. It’s intuitive to work with and I especially enjoyed the fact that you can save your most used prompts. I was searching for the possibility of saving “Custom Instructions”, as you can in ChatGPT, but I don’t think that’s a possibility (yet).
While putting Loop and Copilot to the test, it made me think that I wouldn't have considered investigating the capabilities of new tools like MicrosoftLoop and MicrosoftWhiteboard if it hadn't been for Copilot.
Overnight, I feel that collaboration is made much easier, more accessible and still super fun!
Imagine this: I'm facilitating a customer meeting with 2 other great colleagues. The customer is not really into recording the meeting, so we can't enable the record & transcribe feature... My colleagues and I are all eagerly taking notes -in different tools might I add (OneNote, Word, E-mail etc.).
A "lucky" someone gets appointed to summarize decisions and actions for us and to send to the customer.
No, no, no, no... Of course not!
Instead of working hard, I've been smart and prepared a page in loop, sharing it with my colleagues before the meeting, allowing everybody to input notes at the same time!
At the end of the meeting, I simply ask the copilot to do its magic, and voila!
We now have a structured summary with an action/task list, which integrates perfectly with other relevant Microsoft tools.
...But don't forget to give it your own personal touch, giving it the" oomph" and making sure that you shine through all of the AI-neatness. It's an assistant and never a replacement for what makes you you!
It's my last day of journaling, and boy, I've learned a lot in just 7 days, mostly about copilot, but also about work habits.
I'm a very spontaneous person with a willingness to adapt and embrace changes - especially when it comes to new tools. After the first day of using copilot, I was very eager to share my findings. So, being spontaneous, I reached out to our marketing department, and we agreed to share this copilot diary.
On day 3, I regretted that decision.
I simply had way too many things to do and not enough time to "work smart". But, I realized that I'd gone back to my normal routine, not using the capabilities of copilot. Working the way I was used to, made me feel more in control somehow. Until I received a message from marketing.
"How's it going with your next post?"
Yikes! It hit me what I was (not) doing, and immediately forced myself to change my way of thinking and working by reminding myself that I love new tools! Hence, I implemented copilot back into my work habits - again. What I learned is that you don't have to know everything in 7 days, but simply remind yourself on a daily basis to be curious about how Copilot can assist you and provide value in your daily work. Copilot isn't about getting to a certain destination of "perfect work"; it's another tool in your toolbox that you can work with, forget, then remember and let it help you.
