Microsoft Copilot: Your Everyday Productivity Partner

The full conversation from the webinar above, lightly edited for readability. Timestamps mark each section.

0:01 · Welcome & Introductions

Jenn: Hello everyone, and welcome to Macro Technology Group’s webinar series. This session is focused on the tool most of us are a little curious about — or, in my case, a lot curious about: Copilot. I’m Jenn Iannuzzi, Macro’s marketing manager, and my role today is to be Nicholas’s wingwoman as he takes us on a tour of Copilot. There’s no one more qualified to be our pilot today than our favorite technical account manager — Nicholas’s love for the tool runs deep.

Nicholas: Yes, it does, Jenn — thank you for that introduction. For those of you who haven’t met me yet, my name is Nicholas Frangopoulos, technical account manager here at Macro Technology Group. Like Jenn said, I probably use Copilot in my daily workflow more than anybody else at the company. So I’m excited to jump into this with all of you, and proud to have Jenn as my co-pilot for this presentation.

1:02 · What We’ll Cover

Jenn: Let’s look at what we’ll cover today — and feel free to use the Q&A feature on your screens; we’ll get to your questions after. We’ll introduce you to your new work bestie, go over some prompting essentials (and if you use generative AI tools, you know how important that is), and then take you through live demos of Copilot in action: daily communications, repurposing content, my least favorite subject — Excel — and Copilot’s power in your daily meetings. And because we’re a cybersecurity services provider, we’ll go through some best practices and security measures. Then we’ll talk about next steps and open it up for Q&A.

2:12 · What Is Copilot? (Copilot vs. ChatGPT)

Jenn: Let’s level-set on what exactly Copilot is and how it compares to a tool we might be more familiar with — ChatGPT. You’ve likely seen that swirly, colorful icon appear in your Microsoft 365 apps, and if you’re like I was, you might be a little afraid to click it. Part of Nicholas’s job today is to help us conquer that fear. Take it away, Nicholas.

Nicholas: Sure. So what is Copilot? Copilot is an AI assistant developed in-house by Microsoft, built right into Microsoft 365. That means it integrates really well with all your Office 365 apps — Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint — and with that integration, your data stays safe inside your Microsoft ecosystem. Compared to a tool like ChatGPT — which was made by OpenAI — Copilot is not a third-party standalone tool; it works directly with your Microsoft applications, whereas ChatGPT only works with the info you feed it. So Copilot keeps your data safe and secure within your Microsoft 365 environment. With ChatGPT you’re feeding it the info — and, much like the concerns around social media companies selling off data, you’re not always 100% sure your data isn’t out in the wild, even if they claim otherwise.

Jenn: Thanks, Nicholas — I didn’t realize the security risks were fundamentally higher with ChatGPT. And seeing as we work for a company that specializes in cybersecurity, you can bet I’ll be focused on mastering Copilot.

4:12 · Prompting Essentials — The Three-Step Blueprint

Jenn: A lot of that mastering, with generative AI tools like Copilot, comes down to prompting — essentially telling the AI what you want, who you want it for, and how. The better your prompt, the better the output. There’s a lot of information out there on prompting, so Nicholas put together a simple framework that’s memorable and works.

Nicholas: We like to follow a three-step prompting blueprint. First, tell Copilot who it should act as — in our sample prompt, “I am a professional business analyst.” Next, tell it what to do — say exactly what you need: “Summarize the key insights from the attached quarterly sales report, focusing on sales trends and areas for improvement.” Finally, tell it how it should sound and be structured — “Present the summary in clear, concise bullet points suitable for an executive audience.” If you’re about to present to the board, you don’t want it to sound like you’re explaining it to the co-worker in the next cubicle. These are the important people in your company, and your presentation should reflect that.

6:06 · Demo — Drafting a Difficult Email

Jenn: Great foundation. Every time I go to draft an email, the Copilot icon in the top-right corner calls to me — but I’ve been writing my own emails since the late ’90s (please don’t do the math on how old I am). So tell me why I suddenly need Copilot.

Nicholas: Before the demo — one of our account executives, Carly, had the wonderful idea to send me a “nastygram.” This is the kind of email that catches you off guard and leaves you a little tongue-tied trying to respond, so it’s a great use case for how Copilot can help you write to someone who’s not very happy, when you need to make sure all your words are right. Here’s the email: “Dear Macro Technology Group, I’m extremely frustrated with the lack of reliability and support we’ve been receiving.” Nothing’s getting resolved, and something needs to change. Maybe I haven’t had my first coffee yet, and I really want to handle this right. So I navigate up to the Copilot button, a little chat window opens, and I give it a prompt — telling it who I am, what the task is, and the tone. (While that loads: we never actually get emails like this at Macro. This is purely fictional — we love our clients and they love us too.)

Nicholas: Now that we have our response, take the time to review everything — at the end of the day, this is AI writing it for you, and none of us are strangers to things sounding a little too “AI-ish.” If you want to change the tone to something more apologetic, Copilot will usually surface those suggestions for you, but you can always tell it exactly how you want it to sound.

Jenn: What if you have a previous relationship with the client, and they read it and think, “This is not Nicholas”? How do you make it sound more like you?

Nicholas: There’s a copy-to-clipboard button at the bottom — drop it into your reply. It won’t send the email for you unless you want it to. And one thing I’ll point out, as someone who’s used the tool a lot: it learns how you speak by combing through your emails, and does an excellent job picking up your typical cadence and generating its response around it.

10:27 · Demo — Scheduling Meetings

Jenn: I’ve got it on good authority that Copilot can help me schedule meetings more easily. Take us through that.

Nicholas: Another example from Carly: she wants a one-hour internal meeting with me and Ken Widmer, our CTO, on October 30th. I’m pretty bogged down with day-to-day work — I don’t want to comb through everybody’s calendars and make my eyes bleed doing the overlay. So I click the Copilot button and give it a prompt. It returns our existing conflicts, shows we’re all available on the 30th for a one-hour meeting in these windows, and tells us where the conflict is. It won’t send the meeting for you automatically — that’s still something you do manually; the automatic side is a work in progress. And what it can see depends not just on your organization’s security settings but on the settings of the third parties you’re communicating with — for the demo we left it a little open to show the functionality, but rest assured you can control all of that.

Jenn: That’ll be the day — when it pops up and says, “Would you like me to schedule this for you?” Both of our optometrists would thank Copilot for saving our eyes.

13:43 · Demo — Repurposing Content (the standalone app)

Jenn: Now, my favorite part — writing. I’m a marketer and copywriter by trade, and I’ve experimented with generative AI since the first version of ChatGPT. Can it write? Yes. Can it write well? That depends a lot on our prompting lesson. I use it for outlining, ideating, feedback, and very early drafts — but where it saves me the most time is repurposing content across marketing channels. Show our audience how this works.

Nicholas: This is also a great chance to show the standalone Copilot application. Unlike ChatGPT, Copilot integrates with your Office 365 suite — but it also has its own standalone app; on newer computers you may see it in your taskbar with that colorful logo. The interface is familiar to anyone who’s used Gemini or ChatGPT. In this example, we take our last webinar’s script and want to turn it into a podcast, then use Copilot to write marketing emails around that podcast launch. I hit the plus, upload the document — our last webinar on cybersecurity — and give it a prompt following our three-step framework.

Nicholas: Before I hit go: we typically recommend giving it one prompt at a time so everything stays concise and there’s less chance of the AI “hallucinating.” But to show it can handle more than one task, we’ll have it generate the script and the emails together. Two tasks take a bit longer than one, but it’ll tell you what it’s doing before it starts outputting the script and then the emails. Once done, copy it to your clipboard, drop it into a Word document, and clean up or adjust the tone to your liking. Everything with AI — it’s there to be your assistant, not to replace your responsibility.

Jenn: As a marketer who leans on this for repurposing, I’ll rarely go with the output as-is — I’m editing anywhere from 70 to 90% of it myself. But it’s such a great start, and it saves me so much time. (And for those who don’t know: Nicholas has his own podcast — though it’s on a bit of a hiatus, so we won’t promote it.)

Nicholas: We’re rebranding. It’s sports-centric, for the sports fans around the tri-state area — so reach out after the call.

20:22 · Demo — Excel: Making Sense of the Numbers

Jenn: Everyone knows by now this isn’t my favorite topic — I’m a writer by trade, so math isn’t for me. But looking at our registrants today, there’s no doubt we have a lot of Excel users, so anything that makes Excel easier for power users and appealing for Excel-avoiders like me should be studied. Take it away, Nicholas — maybe this is my moment to grab a cup of coffee.

Nicholas: Don’t be gone too long, Jenn. A good tip: start a new chat for each task in the standalone tool — Copilot logs every task in your conversation history, so you can go back and grab something you forgot. For this example, Carly (who does a lot of our invoicing) gave me two sample reports — last month’s invoicing and this month’s — and we want the monthly profit difference, month over month. I upload them and prompt Copilot to highlight the differences in monthly profit.

Nicholas: As with words, when it comes to numbers you want to make sure everything’s accurate — especially with invoicing, double-check that the numbers are correct. Copilot analyzes the document, then outputs a report with key highlights and a summary table. We asked it to output to an Excel sheet, but it also gives you a quick on-screen summary. In the downloaded sheet it lists each company, the previous month’s profit, the next month’s, and the difference — Company A up $60, Company B up $44 — and it also shows where you lost profit, like Company G going from $252 to $212, down $40. Again, make sure it’s all accurate, but it’s a great way to save your eyes when crunching numbers.

Jenn: One thing this shows me, beyond the numbers, is that we all have repetitive tasks — daily, weekly, monthly. Think about what’s repetitive for you, and there’s likely a way Copilot can make it easier.

25:45 · Demo — Meetings: AI Notes & Transcripts in Teams

Jenn: My favorite part. One of the most practical uses of AI for me is being my executive assistant during calls. I was using an AI notetaker until I realized Copilot does it for me within Teams. Walk us through it.

Nicholas: This is probably my favorite and most-used feature. As an account manager I’m also a project manager, so I’m in a lot of meetings taking a lot of notes — but I want to be present, not typing away and asking people to repeat themselves. Copilot can take your meeting transcripts and turn them into AI-generated notes. Carly and I had a quick mock meeting this morning about a new prospect; I turned transcription on, and when it ended, Teams generated a recap. It summarized everything we discussed and created follow-up tasks assigned to each of us — I send the client’s info to Carly, Carly puts the quote together, and I review the completed quote and schedule a follow-up. I’ve been in five-minute and two-hour meetings, and the accuracy with which this catches everything is genuinely impressive.

Nicholas: One of the coolest things I’ve seen it do: we have varying relationships with clients — with some, we start meetings chatting about how their dog is. Copilot successfully filters out all that off-topic chatter so it’s not in your action items. I don’t need a task to ask about his dog next meeting — and it filters that out with an incredible amount of success.

Jenn: And if you do need to remember the dog’s name, it’s still in the transcript, so next time you can ask how Rover is doing — just not in the important information you’re sharing. One lesser-known benefit: we work with teams all over the world, and some partners and vendors don’t speak English as a first language. Copilot can understand heavily accented English — and filter out the fluff — so instead of “Could you repeat that?”, you get a polished meeting summary, follow-up tasks, and transcript on both ends. It makes mutual understanding much easier.

Nicholas: Great point, Jenn. Being able to confidently say that, regardless of language or accent, I’ll still get a concise summary and can follow up on the items assigned to me — that’s very helpful.

32:11 · Security & Best Practices

Jenn: I feel way more comfortable activating Copilot now, and I hope everyone watching does too. That said — with great power comes great responsibility. We had an internal debate about where that saying comes from; I’m not the Marvel expert.

Nicholas: Uncle Ben, to Spider-Man — apparently that was Carly’s take, and it was the big debate in the office. Anyway — best practices. First, follow that three-step outline: who it should be, what it should do, and how it should sound. Second, remember it’s your co-pilot — you’re still the pilot of the plane. Use it to save time, not to replace what you do; this is artificial intelligence, and you’re still the human behind the machine. Third, keep it professional: one of the great things about Copilot is that it keeps your data within your ecosystem, but you may have clients working with PII, PHI, Social Security numbers, or credit card numbers — you still shouldn’t give that to AI, even if it stays in your internal environment, unless absolutely necessary.

Nicholas: And, as Ken and I touched on in our last webinar, you’re only as strong as your weakest link — which, for security, is usually the end user. Strengthen that link by training your employees on safe, effective use so they know what they should and shouldn’t do with the tool. To piggyback on that, you might implement an AI governance policy to maintain compliance. And once you activate Copilot, you get access to the Copilot admin center in your Microsoft 365 environment, where you can fine-tune what the tool can and can’t access.

35:36 · Next Steps: Adopting Copilot

Jenn: Other than rushing off to test it ourselves, how do you recommend teams and companies move forward with adoption?

Nicholas: Bring Copilot into your workflows. First, identify high-impact use cases — figure out where it can help most across your organization, whether that’s accounting or marketing. Then train those users — show accounting how to crunch numbers in Excel, show marketing how to repurpose content into a podcast script or an email campaign. Next, tying back to governance, create an AI acceptable use policy so employees use the tool for what they should — not goofing off making pictures, unless that’s their job. And you might want to book a Copilot workshop — that’s what I’m here for at Macro. We’ll send out the recording with my information; if your organization wants a workshop tailored to your specific needs rather than a high-level overview, I’m more than happy to do that.

37:44 · Audience Q&A

Jenn: Looks like it’s time for Q&A — we made it through in record time. And a shout-out: we’ve name-dropped Carly throughout, and this webinar wouldn’t have happened without her — she’s in the chat moderating the whole time.

[38:58] Sylvia asks: Does ChatGPT have subscriptions that protect your data? Carly answered that ChatGPT does offer an enterprise subscription with advanced data privacy — but Copilot licensing is a lot more affordable.

Nicholas: I’ll add to that, Sylvia. What we’ve typically found is that with the free, web-based ChatGPT, the items you feed it are effectively open; once you start paying for the service is when you start getting the protection. Whereas Copilot, from the ground up, is built right into your Microsoft applications — free version or not, your data is protected and stays within Microsoft.

[40:19] Sylvia also asks: do these only show up in the new Outlook, or are they in the Outlook program on your computer too?

Nicholas: This has been a contentious one for Microsoft. They’re looking to eventually retire classic Outlook, so they’ve been discontinuing features there. I use the newer version, because as support falls off, integrations get built for the newest product. You can get a Copilot add-in for Outlook Classic, but I wouldn’t personally recommend it — it may not work as well as the tool is being developed for future versions of Outlook.

Jenn: A reminder that Windows 10 end of life is October 14th — if you haven’t upgraded to 11 yet, it’s time, and we can help; reach out to Nicholas. James also asked whether this will be summarized and circulated — absolutely.

Nicholas: Yes, James — this recording will be emailed, with my contact information if you’d like to book a Copilot workshop. [42:19] And Sylvia asked whether you need to sign in to use the Copilot app: yes — the Copilot application uses the Copilot license assigned to your Microsoft 365 account, so to get the full features you purchased, sign in with your Microsoft account. There’s a free version in Edge that answers questions and discards them, but for full use, sign in with the license tied to your account. And to confirm what Carly told Peru — there is a premium version of Copilot; that’s the license you want for integration with the Office 365 apps. With the basic free version, the full functionality isn’t always there within the Office suite.

44:24 · Closing

Jenn: Carly has been addressing questions this whole time, Nicholas — moderator-plus; maybe we need to see her face on the next webinar. Thank you all so much for joining today. As Nicholas mentioned, the recording will be emailed, and he’s around to answer questions — if you want something specific for your organization, he can facilitate that as well.

Nicholas: Thank you, everyone, for joining. Had a lot of fun doing this — we’ll see you all in the next one.