Microsoft 365 is a well-known business productivity product that is popular and useful. The use of AI to introduce Microsoft Copilot, a new tool, has further elevated this business suite’s functionality, efficiency, and productivity to a whole new level. Microsoft 365 Copilot is the latest AI-powered productivity layer integrated with all your favourite Microsoft suite products to help you eliminate the time-consuming, manual effort of regular tasks you conduct with these apps daily.
In this guest post, we delve into the Microsoft Copilot platform and explore how it can boost productivity in the workplace.
What is Microsoft Copilot?
Microsoft introduced Copilot, an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that uses large language models (LLMs) to understand natural language and produce high-quality, detailed text based on input. These large language models learn from various text inputs and are trained on billions of words from multiple topics and sources.
The tool’s primary goal is to increase employee efficiency using common applications like PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Teams, and Outlook. Microsoft’s GPT-4 language technology was included in Copilot, developed in partnership with GitHub and OpenAI.
Importance of Microsoft Copilot in Productivity
With Microsoft Copilot, you can increase productivity across multiple aspects:
- Highlighting important points of conversation in Teams, such as areas of agreement or disagreement.
- Suggesting actions in real-time during a meeting.
- Allowing you to quickly summarise lengthy email threads.
- Generating suggested responses in Outlook.
Here are a few more methods you may use Copilot to boost employee efficiency:
Unleash Creativity
Copilot, a feature of Microsoft Word that uses artificial intelligence, lets you quickly get started on your creative project by providing you with a draft that you may modify and refine. Similarly, Copilot in Excel lets you quickly and simply build professional-looking data visualisations while improving trend analysis.
Increases Productivity with PowerPoint
With a few quick and simple commands in natural language, Copilot allows PowerPoint users to transform their ideas into a professional presentation. By handling tasks like formatting slides, collecting relevant photos, and more, the tool enables users to get the most out of the PowerPoint application and helps them create effective presentations.
Make Better Use of Outlook and Teams
Outlook users can handle and manage their inboxes using Copilot, which helps them spend less time on repetitive activities and more time fostering collaboration.
Business Chat
Copilot’s corporate Chat integrates with a variety of apps and corporate data sources to generate the information and insights you need from huge amounts of data, facilitating the free flow of knowledge throughout the company.
Microsoft Copilot’s Features
The following list contains Microsoft Copilot’s main features:
- AI-Based Code Recommendations: Copilot uses OpenAI to provide real-time code and function suggestions right from your editor. The technology can translate natural language prompts into significant coding recommendations across multiple languages because it has been trained on a vast number of code lines.
- Automated Code Completion: Copilot, at its core, is an advanced AI pair programmer that provides intelligent code completion suggestions while you code. Either start writing the code you want to use or write a clear, natural language comment explaining what you want the code to accomplish, and Copilot will provide you with these ideas.
- Natural Language Processing: Copilot is a customized version of the GPT-3 NLP model, particularly developed on publicly accessible, open-source code. The goal of natural language programming is to allow computers to read and write just like people. Most NLP models are developed for virtual assistants, chatbots, and other applications.
Advantages of Microsoft Copilot
The Microsoft AI-powered Copilot offers numerous advantages, including the ability to help you with various writing forms (formal, informal, creative, instructive, etc.) and increase your productivity to new heights. Below is a more detailed explanation of the tool’s benefits:
- Saving Time: You don’t have to spend much time writing tasks with Copilot because the platform makes it easy to automate them. It can manage difficult, time-consuming, and repetitive activities, allowing you to focus on more important, strategic tasks.
- Enhanced Accuracy and Effectiveness: With Copilot, you can eliminate problems like typos, grammatical errors, and other writing style problems while also increasing accuracy and efficiency. By verifying that your writing is accurate, coherent, and clear, the tool helps you in improving and enhancing it.
- Increased Creativity: You can completely exclude the possibility of boring and repeated writing in everyday tasks by using Copilot. The tool can help you improve your writing by adding new/innovative ideas, catchy terms/phrases, or alternative expressions.
How To Use Microsoft Copilot
Integration with Visual Studio Code
Copilot can now be found in Visual Studio Code. Thus, you may use VS Code anywhere as it’s installed on your computer. The tool offers a whole line of code or function based on the context it extracts from the code you are working on. Developers may combine and suggest code implementation by having VS Code send data to the Copilot when they type a function name or comment in the editor.
Using Copilot in Different Programming Languages
By downloading the additional Copilot Labs extension, you can use Copilot in more programming languages. This allows you to quickly access several new features. You can translate code into whatever language you choose with one of these features. This is how you can do it:
- Install Copilot Labs.
- Open a file in the VS Code editor where you want to translate some code.
- Hold off until the Copilot Labs icon shows up.
- Choose the code section that you want to translate.
- Your highlighted code will show up here, under the Language Translation section.
- Select the language (Ruby, Python, .Net, CSS, Java, PHP, C#, Go, etc.) that you want to use to translate your code.
Conclusion
Microsoft Copilot is your copilot when it comes to increasing productivity at work because it works with you in the regular apps you use, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, Outlook, and more. We’ve discussed in this article how Microsoft Copilot can help you increase work productivity, let your creativity flow, and upskill employees.
To find out more about Microsoft Copilot and how it may increase productivity, get in touch with Stallions Solutions. We are a specialised business that offers excellent service quality and solutions that lead the industry.
