Microsoft Copilot Course: Your AI Virtual Assistant
Microsoft Office. All the office productivity tools you need.
Put your AI virtual assistant to work by learning efficient methods to communicate with Microsoft Copilot and maximise its output. This Copilot course highlights Copilot’s capabilities, with hands-on lessons developing your digital research, collaboration and design skills.
After comparing different versions, advantages, limitations, privacy, and data protection, we will delve into what can and can’t be done with Copilot.
Utilising Copilot on the Web, we will gain insights and improve writing and communication by instructing the AI to be creative, balanced, or precise. The accuracy of Copilot’s responses improves when you apply recommendations imparted from our expert instructors.
Increased productivity is achieved using Copilot 365 to analyse emails, appointments, and files. The greatest benefits are realised when we utilise Copilot 365 to compose, analyse and summarise content within your applications such as: Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Teams; and more.
Aims
You will be introduced to Microsoft Copilot, an innovative AI tool that assists in creating and managing files, sites and content with ease and efficiency. You will learn how to use Copilot in various situations and contexts, such as writing emails, creating reports, designing slides, analysing spreadsheets, and more. You will also explore how to use Copilot 365 productively to save time within your favourite Microsoft applications.
Outcomes
By the end of this course, you should be able to:
- understand the concept, features, benefits, and limitations of Microsoft Copilot
- communicate with Copilot on the Web to request tone and format, seek comparisons and summaries, and perform sentiment analysis, keyword prominence, and topic clustering
- use Copilot Notebook for advanced, tailored, and detailed prompts, ask questions, get help, and revise answers
- use Copilot 365 to compose and analyse content within Microsoft applications, such as Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and OneNote
- collaborate with Copilot 365 alongside Microsoft tools, such as Teams, Loop, and SharePoint libraries
- streamline the production of various types of files, such as forms, quizzes, blogs, reports, plans, lists, ideas, presentations, and agendas
- interpret and create images.
Content
What is Microsoft Copilot
- A brief discussion defining Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, and AI tools in general
- When, where, and why to use Copilot
- Comparison of the benefits and limitations of each version of Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT
- A discussion regarding commercial and data protection
- Available addons.
Working with your everyday AI companion – Copilot on the Web
- Effective communication to obtain the best results:
- initiating a chat conversation style: creative, balanced, precise
- directing and requesting a tone when composing
- entreating results in a specific format
- seeking comparisons in a table.
- Summarising websites, intranet pages, and PDFs:
- sentiment analysis: highlighting positive, negative, or neutral language
- keyword prominence: identify keyword importance
- topic clustering grouping related ideas into distinct topics.
- Recommendations, tips, and tricks on asking questions, getting help, and revising answers:
- improving the accuracy of answers
- providing context and background to improve accuracy and relevance
- utilising follow-up questions
- revising with additional information.
- Using Notebook for advanced, tailored, and detailed prompts:
- defining a clear goal
- specifying expectations such as tone, structure, inclusions, and exclusions
- editing and refining prompt iterations
- providing step-by-step instructions to guide the generation process
- tailoring the tone for the intended audience.
Working with your AI assistant at work – Copilot 365
- Use ‘prompts’ to reference, retrieve, and gain insights from your:
- Outlook and Teams contacts
- Outlook meetings and emails
- SharePoint and OneDrive files
- OneNote notes and PowerPoint slides.
- Compose and create:
- forms, surveys and quizzes
- blogs and reports
- plans, lists, and ideas
- presentations and agendas.
Using Copilot with core Microsoft applications
- Word
- draft new content
- reference and analyse related documents to create new related content
- summarise, ask questions, and instruct Copilot with commands.
- Excel
- get suggestions for formulas and charts
- gain insights about your data
- a brief discussion on ‘Copilot for Finance.’
- Outlook
- get coaching tips and suggestions on clarity, sentiment, and tone
- summarise an email thread.
- PowerPoint
- create new presentations from scratch, or from Word documents and PDFs
- format with your organisation’s branding, themes, and templates
- generate summaries and ask questions.
- OneNote
- generate ideas and ask questions
- create to-do lists
- rewrite notes and pages for improved clarity
- summarise sections and pages.
Using Copilot to collaborate:
- within Teams: meeting assistance, post-meeting recap, and document integration
- within Loop: co-creation, suggestions to brainstorm, sync apps, and document integration.
Work with images:
- interpret photos, drawings, menus, posters, and more
- create an image from text instructions
- create images from a document.
Intended audience
Anyone interested in using Copilot to improve their productivity and communication would benefit from this course.
Prerequisites
This course assumes little or no knowledge of Copilot. However, you should have a general understanding of personal computers and the Windows operating system environment. If you do not have these skills, we recommend attending Microsoft Office with 365: Essentials before attempting this course.
Delivery modes
- Face-to-face, presenter-taught training in a computer lab
- Online training via the platform Zoom
Face-to-face classes
These classes run in a computer lab, and you do not need to bring your own device.
Online classes
You will need your own device.
Materials
Course materials are shared electronically via Dropbox.