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Original poster

Using copilot (the paid version) to increase efficiency

35 replies

MrsBennetsPoorNerves · 04/04/2025 20:24

Just wondering if anyone can give me any tips and tricks for ways in which I can optimise the benefits of copilot to improve my efficiency in work? What clever things can it do that I might not have thought of?!

I have adhd if it makes any difference, so if there are particular things that any adhd-ers have found helpful in terms of keeping on top of their workload, I would love to hear about them!

OP posts:
loropianalover · 04/04/2025 20:25

They have a lot of info about this on their website.

www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/copilot/copilot-for-work

AgnesX · 04/04/2025 20:27

Do not put anything remotely commercial in confidence into it. Depending on you who work for your organisation will have a policy on it.

MissHollysDolly · 04/04/2025 20:33

Hi, ADHD’er here. I use it alongside the dictate function in work. I splurge all
of my thoughts and then ask copilot to do two things. First edit is to do a general
sense check/ tidy/ spell check. Then I ask it to do what I want eg turn this into a concise set of bullets. Or make this into a persuasive email of 500 words

Original poster
MrsBennetsPoorNerves · 04/04/2025 20:43

AgnesX · 04/04/2025 20:27

Do not put anything remotely commercial in confidence into it. Depending on you who work for your organisation will have a policy on it.

I am concerned about this. I have been advised that co-pilot is secure, unlike ChatGPT, but I would like to be certain.

OP posts:
Original poster
MrsBennetsPoorNerves · 04/04/2025 20:43

MissHollysDolly · 04/04/2025 20:33

Hi, ADHD’er here. I use it alongside the dictate function in work. I splurge all
of my thoughts and then ask copilot to do two things. First edit is to do a general
sense check/ tidy/ spell check. Then I ask it to do what I want eg turn this into a concise set of bullets. Or make this into a persuasive email of 500 words

Thank you that's really helpful.

OP posts:
Original poster
MrsBennetsPoorNerves · 04/04/2025 20:44

loropianalover · 04/04/2025 20:25

They have a lot of info about this on their website.

www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/copilot/copilot-for-work

Thank you. I have had a look at the website but found it slightly overwhelming, so I wanted to understand how real people were actually using it.

OP posts:
InfoSecInTheCity · 04/04/2025 20:51

MrsBennetsPoorNerves · 04/04/2025 20:43

I am concerned about this. I have been advised that co-pilot is secure, unlike ChatGPT, but I would like to be certain.

Show quote history

Unless the licence has been purchased by the company you work for and they have authorised its use you must not enter any commercially sensitive/company confidential data into it.

if the licence has been purchased by the company then data will be retained within the company tenancy and there will be contractual agreements in place regarding whether the data is allowed to be used to train the Microsoft AI model. You still need to ensure you understand the policy and stick to it, but there will be safeguards in place.

If you have purchased a licence yourself, do you know whether the data will be used to train their model? If it is then it could be made available externally? Do you know where the data will be stored or processed? Do you know whether there are any legal or client contractual requirements in place that dictate that the company/client data remains within a certain geographic location at all times? Do you know if Microsoft has been listed as a sub-processor of the data and clients/data subjects notified of this?

Its a minefield and you really don’t want to find yourself accidentally the cause of a data breach.

AgnesX · 04/04/2025 20:54

@InfoSecInTheCity thankyou for a succinct explanation (much clearer than I could have done).

Original poster
MrsBennetsPoorNerves · 04/04/2025 21:04

InfoSecInTheCity · 04/04/2025 20:51

Unless the licence has been purchased by the company you work for and they have authorised its use you must not enter any commercially sensitive/company confidential data into it.

if the licence has been purchased by the company then data will be retained within the company tenancy and there will be contractual agreements in place regarding whether the data is allowed to be used to train the Microsoft AI model. You still need to ensure you understand the policy and stick to it, but there will be safeguards in place.

If you have purchased a licence yourself, do you know whether the data will be used to train their model? If it is then it could be made available externally? Do you know where the data will be stored or processed? Do you know whether there are any legal or client contractual requirements in place that dictate that the company/client data remains within a certain geographic location at all times? Do you know if Microsoft has been listed as a sub-processor of the data and clients/data subjects notified of this?

Its a minefield and you really don’t want to find yourself accidentally the cause of a data breach.

Show quote history

Thank you for clarifying. The license has been authorised (by me!) and purchased by the company/set up by our IT company. I have been advised that the data will remain within our tenant and that people will not have access to any data that they wouldn't already have access to, but I have read some slightly alarming things online and I want to be 100% certain before we roll it out more widely.

Permission has not been given to train their model, and the data protection/privacy statements do cover us, but we won't be using it for client data at the moment (except for anonymised stats). Essentially, it has all been set up quite carefully. I guess I'm just a bit anxious about how far to trust that the data will be secure.

OP posts:
DiggoryVenn · 04/04/2025 21:15

I’m fairly new to it myself but some of the things I have found it useful for:

  • Create a PowerPoint based on a document. Needed adjusting but I reckon about 40% of it was there for me, including notes.
  • Ask it to plan for the week ahead - it will look at forthcoming meetings and try to pick out relevant documents, also trawl through your emails for anything due for completion.
  • Create minutes and action plan from informal meetings. Still not fully accurate but a good starting point.
  • Ask it to find information on a specific topic, e.g. where I know I’ve had previous email conversations. It will give references to the emails.

Not found it very useful on Excel so far.

Original poster
MrsBennetsPoorNerves · 04/04/2025 21:18

DiggoryVenn · 04/04/2025 21:15

I’m fairly new to it myself but some of the things I have found it useful for:

  • Create a PowerPoint based on a document. Needed adjusting but I reckon about 40% of it was there for me, including notes.
  • Ask it to plan for the week ahead - it will look at forthcoming meetings and try to pick out relevant documents, also trawl through your emails for anything due for completion.
  • Create minutes and action plan from informal meetings. Still not fully accurate but a good starting point.
  • Ask it to find information on a specific topic, e.g. where I know I’ve had previous email conversations. It will give references to the emails.

Not found it very useful on Excel so far.

Thank you, that's very helpful.

OP posts:
GargoylesofBeelzebub · 04/04/2025 21:28

I use it like a more powerful search engine.

For example I had to find specific parts of regulations for a document. Searching myself or googling would have taken hours. By asking ChatGPT which specific section of the regulations dealt with X it saved me time.

I also asked ChatGPT to summarise a particular change in regulations which saved me time writing it myself.

For a job interview I asked ChatGPT to answer interview questions about the company. And to give me interview questions and good sample answers for my particular professionalism including key challenges for the industry.

It's not perfect as sometimes there's a load of nonsense but as a tool it can save a huge amount of time.

Original poster
MrsBennetsPoorNerves · 04/04/2025 21:44

GargoylesofBeelzebub · 04/04/2025 21:28

I use it like a more powerful search engine.

For example I had to find specific parts of regulations for a document. Searching myself or googling would have taken hours. By asking ChatGPT which specific section of the regulations dealt with X it saved me time.

I also asked ChatGPT to summarise a particular change in regulations which saved me time writing it myself.

For a job interview I asked ChatGPT to answer interview questions about the company. And to give me interview questions and good sample answers for my particular professionalism including key challenges for the industry.

It's not perfect as sometimes there's a load of nonsense but as a tool it can save a huge amount of time.

Thank you. I have played around with chatgpt a fair bit, and feel like I have begun to understand its capabilities and its limitations. I'm just curious to learn how I can use copilot a bit more broadly.

OP posts:
pinkfloralcurtains · 04/04/2025 21:56

Use it as a personal assistant. You can ask it to book desks, meeting rooms, set up meetings etc.

TobiasForgesContactLense · 04/04/2025 22:00

I find in really useful for taking meeting notes and producing action lists. Not 100% accurate but definitely saves time. Also good for PowerPoint slides.

It is a bit hit and miss for writing stuff - I think it is too flowery and Excel is a bit crap.

Original poster
MrsBennetsPoorNerves · 04/04/2025 22:02

pinkfloralcurtains · 04/04/2025 21:56

Use it as a personal assistant. You can ask it to book desks, meeting rooms, set up meetings etc.

Yes, I'm quite interested in what it can do for me in this regard. I had a virtual personal assistant previously (a human one!) but I stopped it because it wasn't really working for me. I'm hoping that I can get technology to help me with some of the stuff that I've now had to take back for myself.

OP posts:
Original poster
MrsBennetsPoorNerves · 04/04/2025 22:05

TobiasForgesContactLense · 04/04/2025 22:00

I find in really useful for taking meeting notes and producing action lists. Not 100% accurate but definitely saves time. Also good for PowerPoint slides.

It is a bit hit and miss for writing stuff - I think it is too flowery and Excel is a bit crap.

Thank you. Will see what it can do for meetings and PowerPoint slides. Putting together decent slides would definitely save time.

The written stuff looks too obviously AI generated to me, generally, but it does provide a good starting point sometimes.

Disappointing to hear that the excel capabilities aren't up to much. I do a lot with data and had been hoping it might prove useful!

OP posts:
TheSassyAmberNewt · 04/04/2025 22:14

At my work we use the web/basic copilot for things like

  • summarising documents (upload a document and ask it to summarise it
  • rewriting things more succinctly - plug in text and ask it to reduce by 10%
  • take meeting notes in Teams
  • search meeting notes eg ‘tell me what Stacey said about budgets’
  • Write text eg write an email to John in a formal tone including these points… actually, please rewrite it in a slightly warmer tone etc

there’s also the M365 version which can do a lot more because you get the copilot button within programmes like Word, PowerPoint and Excel, and more functionality in Teams. I’m just getting to grips with it myself but I’ve just asked it…

  • write an executive summary slide for a PowerPoint deck,
  • sumarise the meeting so far - when I arrived 10 mins late to a Teams meeting
  • in Excel, it can suggest formulas eg I asked it to colour all the boxes in column M yellow if they contain a specific few words. It suggests the formula and then you click to accept and it does it for you. It can build graphs etc. Fab if you have an idea of what you want but don’t know the formula code or button to press.

Lisa Crosbie on YouTube is great at explaining tech at work, I learned the Excel bit from her in 10 mins.

shuffleofftobuffalo · 04/04/2025 22:14

My boss showed me round copilot day as he loves it - I didn’t realise the possibilities. I like the idea of it being used as a kind of PA finding documents booking rooms etc.

I found some of the writing styles weren’t great but I’m a fussy writer, I think it will help overall to save time so long as people care enough to check it over and not leave the stilted AI tone in there.

the turn it into a poem option is absolutely hilarious and I’m tempted to do this for all my emails in future.

babbi · 04/04/2025 22:20

@TheSassyAmberNewt

you might be the angel I’m looking for !!
Fo you mean during teams meetings you can ask copilot to take notes of the verbal discussion and be like a scribe ?
And then I could ask it to condense into a report for me ?

pinkfloralcurtains · 04/04/2025 22:24

babbi · 04/04/2025 22:20

@TheSassyAmberNewt

you might be the angel I’m looking for !!
Fo you mean during teams meetings you can ask copilot to take notes of the verbal discussion and be like a scribe ?
And then I could ask it to condense into a report for me ?

Yes absolutely. It will do your meeting minutes for you.

MollyButton · 04/04/2025 22:25

One thing I found surprisingly useful was asking it how to extract certain information from a spreadsheet. You might have to ask it to explain in a simpler way, but it was far quicker then either: doing it manual or working it out from YouTube videos.

TheSassyAmberNewt · 04/04/2025 22:27

Yep you can get it to transcribe a meeting. Its capability depends on whether you have the basic Copilot or the M365 version - the latter can do more.

TheCurious0range · 04/04/2025 22:27

I put the transcription of a very long meeting into it and asked it to identify the key points and supporting data and it did it reasonably well.

Sometimes I write a snippy email and ask it to remove the anger or make it sound friendlier

Sometimes I ask it for lunch suggestions