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Category: CoPilot

  • How to Get Started with AI Using Microsoft Copilot: A Simple Guide for Everyday Users

    If you use Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, or Teams, you might have noticed a new helper called Copilot. It’s part of Microsoft’s AI tools and makes your work easier, faster, and even more fun.

    But what exactly is Copilot? And how do you use it if you’re not a tech expert?

    Let’s break it down.

    Copilot Is More Like a Brain Than a Program

    Think of Copilot like a smart coworker, not a robot that always knows the correct answer. It’s designed to help you think, write, plan, and solve problems, but it doesn’t always get things perfect.

    That’s why it’s best to treat Copilot as a thought partner. It can help you:

    • Draft emails
    • Summarize documents
    • Create presentations
    • Brainstorm ideas
    • Analyze data

    But you’ll still need to review and guide what it gives you.

    Which Copilot Do You Have?

    There are different versions of Copilot depending on your Microsoft license. If your workplace uses Microsoft 365, you might already have access to:

    • Copilot in Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams
    • Copilot in PowerPoint to help build slides
    • Copilot in OneNote to organize your thoughts

    You can check with your IT team or visit Microsoft’s Copilot overview to see what’s included in your plan.

    Be Smart About AI Advice

    AI is exciting, but there’s also a lot of misinformation out there. Some people claim there’s “no risk” in using AI or training it with your data. That’s not true.

    Here are a few things to keep in mind:

    • Training AI on sensitive data can be risky—it might remember things it shouldn’t.
    • Check the sources of any information Copilot gives you.
    • Be cautious about who you learn from—some “AI experts” may not have real experience.

    If someone is giving you AI advice, ask about their background. Just like you wouldn’t take legal advice from someone who’s never studied law, you shouldn’t take AI advice from someone who’s never worked with it.

    Learn for Free—No Extra Cost

    You don’t need to pay for expensive courses to learn how to use Copilot. Microsoft offers free training that’s easy to follow:

    • Get started with AI on Microsoft Learn
    • Copilot for Microsoft 365 Training Hub

    These are included with your Microsoft license—no extra fees.

    Want to Get Better with Copilot? Build These Skills

    To get the most out of Copilot, focus on:

    • Critical Thinking – Don’t just accept the first answer.
    • Asking Good Questions – The better your prompt, the better the result.
    • Creative Problem Solving – Use Copilot to explore new ideas and solutions.

    Yes, Copilot can help you write a quick email. But it can also help you plan your day, solve tricky problems, and develop new ideas—if you know how to work with it.

    Final Tip: Start Small

    Try asking Copilot to:

    • Write a summary of a long email
    • Help you draft a meeting agenda
    • Create a to-do list from a Teams chat

    Once you get comfortable, you’ll see how powerful it can be.

    TechHouse

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  • Top 5 Copilot Prompts for Beginners: Get More Done with Less Effort

    If you’re just starting with Microsoft Copilot, you might wonder: What exactly should I ask it to do? The good news is that you don’t have to be a tech expert to start seeing real benefits.

    Here are five simple prompts you can try today to boost your productivity and confidence with AI.

    1. 📨 “Summarize this email thread for me.”
    • Where to use it: Outlook
    • Why it’s helpful: Ever scanned the first paragraph of a long email chain only to find out later that the real message was buried three replies earlier? Copilot can quickly summarize the entire conversation, so you stay on track and on point.

    Try it:

    “Summarize this conversation and highlight any action items.”

    1. 📝 “Help me write a professional response to this email.”
    • Where to use it: Outlook
    • Why it’s helpful: Whether you’re replying to a client or a colleague, Copilot can help you sound clear, confident, and professional.

    Try it:

    “Write a polite response confirming the meeting and asking for the agenda.”

    1. 📊 “Analyze this Excel data and give me key insights.”
    • Where to use it: Excel
    • Why it’s helpful: Copilot can spot trends, calculate summaries, and suggest charts—no formulas required.

    Try it:

    “What are the top 3 products by sales this quarter?”

    1. 🧠 “Give me three ideas for a new marketing campaign.”
    • Where to use it: Word, Teams, or OneNote
    • Why it’s helpful: Copilot is great for brainstorming. Use it to get unstuck or spark new ideas.

    Try it:

    “Suggest three marketing campaigns for children’s clothes via online markets in the US that would appeal to mid-market consumers of sustainable brands. Provide each one’s strengths and weaknesses.”

    1. 📅 “Create a meeting agenda based on this Teams chat.”
    • Where to use it: Teams or Word
    • Why it’s helpful: Turn casual conversations into structured plans without starting from scratch.

    Try it:

    “Make a 30-minute meeting agenda from this conversation, including time estimates.”

    Final Tip: Start Small, Then Explore

    These prompts are just the beginning. As you get more comfortable, you’ll discover new ways to use Copilot to save time, reduce stress, and get more done.

    TechHouse

    Innovative Solutions. Practical Software. Friendly Support.

    Schedule a call  |  View Upcoming Events  |  Access our TechHouse Library of Articles

  • Copilot for Accountants: AI Isn’t Just for Marketing

    Marketing teams adopt AI tools quickly, while accountants often see different results. Some of our clients ask why this happens. Does Copilot lack features for accountants? Do we need special training? How can accountants gain the same productivity benefits seen in other areas?

    Why the difference in Copilot Adoption: Marketing vs. Accounting

    While 75% of marketers feel confident using AI tools, only 45% of accountants do. Whether creating blog posts, images, flyers, or video scripts, AI helps our marketing clients create content. Marketing professionals are quick to use AI and adapt it to their workflows. They often pick it up right away and see productivity gains almost instantly.

    On the other hand, our accountant customers typically find Copilot frustrating. Copilot does not easily create accounting content like month-end reconciliations or year-end board reports. This difference can make it seem like Copilot is better suited for marketing, leaving accountants behind. Is there any benefit to accountants? There is, but it requires a shift in how we think about software.

    What does Copilot Do?

    Before we can understand how Copilot helps accountants, we need to understand just what it does. Copilot offers four key capabilities that help accountants. As an AI-powered tool, Copilot runs on a neural network, like the human brain. That brain has vast stores of information. When writing, it chooses the next best possible word, like how we think by “connecting the dots” based on the information it has.

    1) Copilot understands language and generates text. It can understand written requests and “prompts” and respond narratively. In AI terms, this is a power of large language models (LLM) and GPT (Generative Pre-Trained Transformers).

    2) Copilot can enhance data analysis by visualizing data trends. It can parse information, whether numbers, words, or images, and categorize them. For example, it can highlight the top 10 customers in a table of invoice details.

    3) Copilot can free up valuable time so you can focus on strategic decision-making. Copilot’s foundational model, OpenAI, has absorbed information digitized online over the past 40 years. You can ask for accounting principles, IRS information, or even a template of a standard month-end report. Rather than running 10, 20, or more search engine requests with various answers, you can converse with Copilot and develop an understanding of the topic.

    4) Copilot can automate repetitive tasks like generating complex formulas or replicating budget baselines. Rather than spending hours tweaking complex Excel formulas, you can quickly understand your organization’s data.

    The transition from Excel to Copilot in Excel

    In the past, Excel courses focused on features and formulas. How do you use the navigation bar? What does each button do, and why?

    This approach doesn’t work when expanding Excel with Copilot. Copilot is more like having someone next to you who, though fallible, helps you problem-solve through collaboration. You can ask questions about your work, and it can help you learn how to solve an issue.

    In marketing, Copilot helps create a largely completed draft of a blog, proposal, or similar. Each of these deliverables is word-based. Although there are word-based deliverables in accounting and finance, accountants and finance staff live in tools like Excel. Rather than creating text, Copilot can help you solve problems and gain insights. Also, it can help you create steps more quickly. Copilot in Excel means you are no longer limited by the number of formulas you know or whether you can do pivot tables.

    Copilot’s Excel Superpower: Streamlining Workflows

    Two key best practices when using Copilot in Excel:

    1) Format your information in a table. Pivot tables are not available for Copilot to analyze at the time. Ensure all columns are labeled so that Copilot can understand your question.

    2) In general, Copilot processes input in 2 dimensions and 1 step at a time unless there is an if statement.

    Benefits

    • Automation: Rather than needing to know all the formulas and features of Excel, ask Copilot to add a column or prepare a table with sample data.
    • Summarization: Copilot turns complex data into simple summaries. For example, add a customer sales total column to an invoice detail table with one click.
    • Data Analysis: Spot trends quickly and make informed choices. Ask Copilot to use conditional formatting to highlight the top 10 customers or the top 3 products. You can apply and un-apply as you work through scenarios.

    AI and the Path Forward.

    Using AI tools like Copilot in Excel offers accountants a great chance to improve efficiency. As the business world changes, accountants must adapt and thrive. With the proper training and support, AI can be a powerful tool to get there.

    To close the technology gap, accountants need the support of a culture that values learning. Offering targeted training can help accountants feel more at ease with AI tools. When they see their peers using these technologies successfully, it can boost their confidence and encourage them to engage. Need help figuring out how to get started? Contact us for innovative hands-on training, workshops, and practical rollout plans for your team.

     

  • Microsoft’s CoPilot Products: What You Need to Know

    Microsoft’s CoPilot Products: What You Need to Know

    Since their launch in September 2023, less than a year ago, CoPilot products have undergone significant changes and improvements. This post will give you a brief overview of each of the CoPilot products, their main features, and how they can help you achieve your goals. You will also learn how CoPilot products are not just plug-and-play solutions but require careful planning, preparation, and customization to fit your specific needs and goals.

    How CoPilot Can Enhance Your Productivity

    Copilot’s AI-powered tools help you solve problems, create content, and research information. Depending on your subscription level, you can access different CoPilot products that suit your needs and preferences. Here are the main CoPilot products and what they can do for you:

    CoPilot in a Browser

    CoPilot in a browser is a free tool that lets you use AI to chat with Copilot, ask questions, generate content, and more. You can access it as CoPilot in Bing.

    CoPilot with Microsoft 365 Standard and Business Licenses

    If you have a Microsoft 365 Business Premium or Standard subscription, you can sign in to use CoPilot with an extra layer of security and protect your prompts from unintentional reuse. You can also use AI in productivity apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. To learn more, please read our “CoPilot Productivity Apps” article.

    CoPilot for Microsoft 365

    CoPilot for Microsoft 365 is a premium product that connects to your Microsoft 365 tenant. It can access exclusive information only known to your organization, such as:

    • Data stored in SharePoint and Email
    • Insights from Microsoft Graph

    Microsoft CoPilot for Sales and Service: Your AI-Boosted Helpers

    Microsoft CoPilot for Sales and CoPilot for Service are AI helpers that can enhance the productivity of your sales and service teams. Here are some of the things they can do for you:

    • Boost Your Productivity
      • CoPilot for Sales can help you save time, generate innovative ideas, build strong customer relationships, and close more deals.
      • CoPilot for Service can work with your contact center’s content sources to provide real-time responses, improving agent productivity and customer satisfaction.
    • Work Smoothly
      • CoPilot for Sales can provide real-time call insights, AI-generated meeting summaries, post-call analyses, and action items in Microsoft Teams. It can also craft contextual email responses, summarize lengthy threads, and create Teams Collaboration Spaces in Microsoft Outlook.
      • CoPilot for Service can integrate seamlessly with your existing workflow, whether that involves the agent console, Microsoft Teams, websites, or other apps.
    • Personalize with Data
      • CoPilot for Sales can use data from CRM platforms, large language models, Microsoft Graph, Microsoft 365 apps, and the Internet to personalize every customer interaction.
      • CoPilot for Service can connect directly to third-party knowledge bases like Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Zendesk. You can choose and manage the content sources that CoPilot for Service uses to provide real-time responses.
    • Streamline Your Workflow with AI
      • CoPilot for Sales can automatically connect external contacts to CRM contacts, streamlining your workflow and improving sales productivity.
      • CoPilot for Service can be extended with Microsoft CoPilot Studio. For example, you can boost your agent productivity even more with powerful CoPilot for Service actions. You can add more custom knowledge sources to the Copilot and set up authentication to ensure only authorized agents can use the Copilot to access information.

    Getting Started with CoPilot Products

    Like other business applications such as CRM or Accounting software, we recommend the following steps to get started with CoPilot products:

    • Select pilot and use scenarios for a staged rollout.
    • Prepare your tech platform, including data governance and cybersecurity.
    • Set up and configure your unique requirements.
    • Train team members and facilitate adoption.
    • Monitor and optimize performance.
    • Stay on top of the latest updates and changes in the CoPilot products.

    With the help of our friendly experts, you can make the most of your CoPilot product and enjoy the benefits of AI. We have extensive experience and knowledge in helping small businesses leverage CoPilot products for their specific needs and goals. We can also provide ongoing support and guidance to ensure your success with CoPilot products.

    Ready to Experience the Power of AI with CoPilot Products?

    Contact us to attend one of our planning workshops or schedule a one-on-one review. Don’t miss this opportunity to boost your productivity, creativity, and customer satisfaction with CoPilot products!