Anyone using Copilot for M365? What gains does it bring you?
Posted by colne-valley@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 97 comments
Hi,
The C-Suite has asked us to look into Microsoft 365 Copilot and how it might benefit our business. They’ve been chatting about AI with their counterparts in other businesses and seem quite excited about the efficiencies it could bring. That said, the request feels pretty broad (!) so I thought I’d reach out to see if anyone here is already using it or exploring it in their own business.
If you've got any example use cases and any examples of where it's made an impact then that would be really interesting to hear.
Cheers
perthguppy@reddit
I’ve been using it since launch.
It’s good to summarise teams meetings and put together action items. And it’s good at summarising teams chats that are pointless.
That’s really about all I’ve found I use it for. Don’t really use it in outlook, word or excel. When I needs help with scripting etc I just use chatGPT
Djdope79@reddit
Team premium would be cheaper to summarise meetings
TBone1985@reddit
But you have to record, right, many of my clients won't allow recording.
perthguppy@reddit
Yep. I’d recommend teams premium is much better value.
Spagman_Aus@reddit
This is how it should have been structured and priced, into individual apps not a huge monthly $ add-on.
utvols22champs@reddit
Do you have to have additional Teams license for the AI piece? We want to use it for providing minutes. I looked at Read.ai but I’m concerned about DLP.
llDemonll@reddit
It’s really good at taking notes.
ashley_au@reddit
also for note taking and summary reports in clinical settings
Hollow3ddd@reddit
Permissions are based on what user has access too. Basically, read what it generates, it's pretty easy to catch it.
Hacked accounts and the AI elements are scary though. So I get the concern.
irrision@reddit
It works well for notes and summarization. We have the license for it.
igaper@reddit
You actually don't need copilot license for it. Just teams premium it's way cheaper. It's actually great as it not only summarises the meetings, but also shows who spoke when and where did the thing from summary was talked about.
perthguppy@reddit
If you have m365 copilot, no, but if you don’t want m365 copilot and just want the teams AI stuff, then teams premium license is an addon license for teams that has all the same teams AI stuff. No you don’t get a discount for having both lol
utvols22champs@reddit
Cool, thanks. We just have M365 Business Premium and Teams Voice. I would never expect a discount from M$, they might go broke.
Unable-Entrance3110@reddit
It's downright awesome for creating PowerPoint presentations too. Not that I do a lot of those, but just having a nice, multi-slide presentation on the topic you want which you can then lightly edit is huge for my (admittedly casual) use case.
SquirrelOfDestiny@reddit
I used it this week for a presentation. Used voice-to-text in Word to dictate what I wanted in the presentation, then referenced the Word document in Copilot in PowerPoint to generate the presentation for me. Then transferred it over to the corporate template. A task that would normally take me half a day was complete in about 45 minutes.
HaveBug@reddit
If your corporate template is in template format, copilot will use when building your presentation. Just have it open when you kick off the create prompt.
Hollow3ddd@reddit
Same. Helps with email chains you are thrown into late as well.
audaxyl@reddit
You could use Teams premium license for that, it’s cheaper.
BeyondRAM@reddit
Only useful in teams and outlook, summarize emails, meetings, replies to emails. The copilot app (which is an microsoft store app and also available in outlook (new) and teams as an app) is really useful cause it has the access to all your emails teems chats meetings calendar one drive files etc, so you can ask basically anything you want. Excel word powerpoint and one note integration are (for me) useless and I think they just wanted to integrate them to say “now office has ai”… maybe the excel integration will be more useful in the future
BeyondRAM@reddit
I got to learn how to use copilot agent which I think is the thing that gonna be great
ExceptionEX@reddit
"copilot write me a resignation letter, make the tone snarky, yet professional, make sure to mention that one of the key reasons I'm resigning is that they think they can use a magic AI product to make our company more "efficient" when in reality the biggest way to save the company money and make it better is to dump a lot of the dead weight in the c-suite.
Also include several reasons why effective management that falls for gimmicks cost companies money, lowers moral, and ultimately ruins a company"
Then generate several images of common zoo animals in suites scratching there heads around a monolith with the AI on it
Breezel123@reddit
All of these bitter people here... Management asks you to evaluate a technology solution that exists. That is literally your job. They're not saying "make it work", they are saying "does this make sense for us?". OP can test and get back to them with his honest opinion.
Who else do you think management should ask this if not IT? It's not their job to be on top of every trend and know all the ins and outs, but it is their job to ask the experts in the field to evaluate new technologies and give a recommendation of whether it needs to be considered.
If management wasn't interested in new ways of working it would be far more worrisome. I would not want to work in a company where every new solution is waved off by C-level as just being a trend and "we don't need this kind of stuff here". Completely apart from the fact that in some industries it is important that companies stay up to date with the latest technology as this is what their customers expect.
ExceptionEX@reddit
Man, it was a joke, take a breath and enjoy your weekend.
sysadmin20214@reddit
How was the implementation? We started looking at it but setting up data restrictions for data within our tenant looked daunting and appeared to rely on other systems such as dlp and sensitivity labels which our org has not matured to implementing yet.
Breezel123@reddit
What are you worried about? Data leaving the company or data being accessed by people within the company that shouldn't have access?
sysadmin20214@reddit
More or less concerned about copilot using the data to train/ leaving company via copilot
Breezel123@reddit
You don't need to be concerned about this, Microsoft makes it pretty clear that enterprise data is not being used to train their models. Sure, you can only go as far as to trust their word but that's the case for all apps/vendors for any topic (payroll or hr software for example).
buy_chocolate_bars@reddit
I'm working on feeding JIRA/wiki/Sharepoint data to make it an internal ChatGPT4. IT's going to take me a while.
Breezel123@reddit
How are you doing that? Are you using copilot studio? Because they recently announced that agents created in studio would be available in the free copilot chat App, which would be huge. We tried adding the copilot studio agent to SharePoint and it's less than smooth, especially the authentication part. Setting up SSO is cumbersome even when staying within the same tenant.
Once the integration between studio and copilot chat is set up, you could create different agents and assign them to different people/departments and everyone would have the relevant personalised chats appear in the m365 app by default. And all of that for a couple hundred bucks a year (for a small org 25,000 messages a month are sufficient).
bs0nlyhere@reddit
Thank you for asking because I’m right there in this same situation with 365 and people asking about AI.
I wonder if copilot can summarize all the great ideas in this reddit post so I won’t have to open it at my desk later and take notes. Oh and, if it could set itself up securely and self deploy that would be cool. Oh and, I’d like it to train the few users who think they need AI. Oh and, somehow force me to remember to use it instead of doing things how I always have.
Unhappy_Clue701@reddit
You can use copilot within O365 apps for non-Office related stuff too. I regularly open the Copilot applet within Teams to spit out a starting point for a PowerShell script. For example, last week within Teams I told it to ‘write a power shell script to backup a file at login and keep the last five copies’. Five seconds later I had a script that just needed customisation with file names and save paths.
jamesc3rd@reddit
Summarizing or comparing documents. Writing a summary or opposing point to a document or email, just have to feed it some additional data to support the topic.
Also used it find differences in contracts that are being renewed.
Basic scripting is also a plus. Can I write a ps1 or bat script to do the task? Sure, but instead of spending the time on it, Copilot or ChatGPT can do it faster so that I can spend that time on something else.
Que_Ball@reddit
Here's a snarky reply to an email asking if AI has any benefits to the company: Subject: Re: AI Benefits Inquiry Dear [Name of Sender], It's fascinating that in [Year], we're still debating the value of artificial intelligence. To answer your question directly: * Yes, AI has benefits. * No, I won't waste my time listing them. Perhaps a quick Google search on "AI in business" could provide some enlightenment. Sincerely, [Your Name] Disclaimer: This is a snarky response. While it may be satisfying to deliver, consider the potential consequences within your workplace before sending it. Alternative (Slightly Less Snarky): "Subject: Re: AI Benefits Inquiry Dear [Name of Sender], AI offers numerous potential benefits to our company, including: * Increased efficiency and productivity: Automating tasks, analyzing data faster, and providing insights that humans might miss. * Improved customer service: Providing 24/7 support, personalized experiences, and faster response times. * Enhanced decision-making: Analyzing vast datasets to identify patterns and make data-driven decisions. * Innovation and new product development: Generating new ideas, exploring new markets, and developing innovative solutions. I'm happy to discuss these benefits in more detail at your convenience. Sincerely, [Your Name]" This alternative provides a more professional and informative response while still subtly conveying that the question might be a bit behind the times. Ultimately, the best response will depend on your specific workplace culture and your relationship with the sender.
Ice-Cream-Poop@reddit
It's too expensive, we can't justify it.
hashkent@reddit
Is copilot / teams ai summaries available in Microsoft E5 or is it an add on?
Ice-Cream-Poop@reddit
Add on unfortunately 😞
Jepper333@reddit
the perfect for our company: we have big manuals with sets of instructions on how to handle certain procedures. now we have a copilot buddy who can answer quick questions.
for example: lots of customers have different VAT codes. so just a quick questions what VAT for customer X.
randomdude45678@reddit
How much time does that save versus just opening the doc and doing a CTRL+F for “customer x”
Jepper333@reddit
If you have multiple docs and procedures? A lot… and also interactions is kinda cool. As i said we don’t use everything for AI ;-)
sublimeinator@reddit
Pointing copilot at your documentation vs keeping current and new staff up on where it exists saves time.
The_Mad_Titan_Thanos@reddit
I love using AI for this. Long winded dry technical documentation can be torture to read in PDF form. Just upload the document and have AI summarize it for you or answer specific questions you may have.
phonescroller@reddit
Grabbing some popcorn for this thread. So far, for helping with things I feel it should know, (help with Power Apps / Automate / BI) … Chat GPT provides more correct answers. Copilot feels like the Bing of AI so far. The advantage might be combing quickly through internal data since Copilot could potentially be trusted (confined to your tenant) where Chat GPT would not. Disappointed with the first scenario I have not really explored the second yet. Interested to see experience of others.
perthguppy@reddit
Yeah it certainly feels like it’s either had a much smaller general training set, or it’s been tuned with additional training after that’s has drowned out the general knowledge.
ProgRockin@reddit
Yep, its only saving grace is that it's integrated with M365.
Senior-Reception-578@reddit
It’s funny all the lazy people with bad tech skills want it and think it’s going to solve everything for them. Some dude wanted Siri in so he can voice command things. It’s going to be funny when he realizes it’s not gonna do the work for him. All the people who actually do work don’t care for it. The biggest feed back I’ve gotten is it summarizes emails and stuff for you. Makes a whole lotta sense cause you ain’t eveeerrr read the emails and then have questions that’s addressed in the emails. Don’t tell me your too busy you got one job lol
NeverendingChecklist@reddit
Is copilot only being used internally for these use cases? How do you know any corporate confidential information isn’t going back out to M$ and being aggregated?
Round-Resident9233@reddit
That was my issue as well. They seem to either dont care or they dont have important data to "lose"
ARobertNotABob@reddit
Indeed. Not a consideration amongst Users, of course, but it's a nightmare for compliance if info is sneaking out via CoPilot.
clvlndpete@reddit
That information is pretty easy to find.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/copilot/microsoft-365/microsoft-365-copilot-privacy
MountainDadwBeard@reddit
Supposedly the paid private GPTs will draft a 90 page SOP and harmonize it with all your other SOPs and org chart.
My public version struggles with a 5 slide PowerPoint. Soooo this question depends on your implementation.
IntelligentComment@reddit
Considering the cost, useless.
plumbumplumbumbum@reddit
I get a ton of email. Every morning my first step is to ask copilot to summarize all of my unread email as a to do list. It provides a nice bullet pointed list of every action item it can find with links to the specific email if I need more detail. I then right click the inbox and mark all as read. It really speeds up my day since I am able to get right down to the asks without needing to read through 40 pages of email threads. I am typically done with the list by 10Am
romej@reddit
What licence do I need to enable to be able to do this for Outlook? I am the adminsiitrator and have an e3.
plumbumplumbumbum@reddit
As far as I know it's just the Microsoft 365 copilot license. My daily driver also has an e3.
CoolJBAD@reddit
I've been using to get me started on things.
I'll open up word and write a prompt like:
Our company has issues with x implementation, general feedback has been x, x, and x. Please help me create a project plan for figuring out how to get to the root cause of these issues and can you provide a sample of a problem statement for one of the potential issues.
It generates a draft document on how to get to the root cause and an example such as poor documentation, change management, lack of training, misconfiguration, etc.
The example will usually help me scaffold my thoughts and can lead to clearer deliverables and a clearer scope for implementing changes in processes or tech.
I'm now starting to get pulled into our company's operations because of the changes I've been implementing or recommending. A lot of the projects that are coming my way really just need more thought, research, and clear goals, whether it is finance tech goals or HR tech goals.
The CEO is also taking notice, and I think I'm starting to become important at my company and I don't know how I feel about it. But Copilot has seriously been helpful in everything from thinking through operational structures, job descriptions, writing emails faster, etc.
dirtyredog@reddit
I wasted hours yesterday trying to get copilot to help me reformat incoming webhook data in power automate in the end I ended up reformatting the outgoing data instead because was like asking a crackhead for logic
irrision@reddit
Just use Claude or chatgpt next time.
dirtyredog@reddit
I've not used claude yet. If you've tried PA lately the incessant CoPilot popsup non stop but loses context faster than a toking-crackhead. In that scenario I was throwing questions at both cgpt and gemini while at it. But those too tended to get the incorrect syntax for different things. More like pot heads I suppose.
limp15000@reddit
Give a shot at Copilot chat which is included with all m365 subscriptions. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2025/01/15/copilot-for-all-introducing-microsoft-365-copilot-chat/
With that you can also build custom agents grounded in specific data which can then be used on a pay as you go basis.
SquirrelOfDestiny@reddit
I find myself mostly using it to search for documents. If I cannot find a document within a minute or two, I usually ask Copilot, giving it a summary of what the document contains, who might have worked on it, and where it might be. 60% of the time, it finds the document in the first attempt.
I've also started using it for PowerShell advice. My Github Copilot license expired when I finished university, and, while I use ChatGPT a lot, I really want to see how Copilot will do with the same prompts. I actually prefer the responses Copilot gives me; they take a bit longer to generate, but they're shorter and to the point. ChatGPT likes to give me super long responses, explaining everything, providing one or more ways to solve the problem I pose to it. Copilot just gives me the answer.
Kelsier25@reddit
My team was told to use it to write our self evaluations this year and then my manager used it to write his responses for performance reviews. Lol it worked surprisingly well for that.
HotTakes4HotCakes@reddit
That sounds awful.
Performance reviews should definitely not be machine generated junk. That sounds like the kind of thing Amazon would do to warehouse employees.
I'd want my team and/or management to actually take the time to do it thoughtfully, not half-ass it with a pablum generator.
norcalscan@reddit
Sometimes IT folk spend way too much of their lives in an analytical/minimal-empathy world and an employee review (or even a self-review) suddenly requires the mind to think completely differently. It's not for lack of care, but more for helping short-circuit the massive task switch that can be for some. Give it key points and observations from your analytical/non-empathy mindset, and it magically translates it to exactly what we'd say if we weren't encumbered with ADHD-riddled mind noise.
As others said here, sometimes the employees and managers know exactly where they stand due to daily/weekly communication and interaction, and the "review" is simply a corporate time-waste.
Kelsier25@reddit
We have a strong team that meets frequently throughout the week and we have frequent one on ones with our manager and skip level. Performance reviews are an HR formality and are highly constrained to using very specific corporate BS lingo. The process is a complete waste of time and Copilot did a great job of eliminating the time waste and letting us get back on task.
OverlordWaffles@reddit
Do you work for the same company I do? Lol
They were pushing hard for us to use Copilot for our self-evaluations. I didn't mind that specifically because I hate doing self-evals and all of it was in essay form.
One thing I don't like though is they're even pushing that we should use it to write even our emails and that "You will see an immediately noticeable improvement in your writing skills!"
Uh, not really if Copilot is the one writing them lol
Kelsier25@reddit
Lol probably. Do your self evals have to use very specific corporate BS lingo and make you choose goals and objectives from a list of general feel-good BS that doesn't relate to your job?
netsysllc@reddit
Has been handy for giving base templates for many docs. have used it to extract and parse data quickly from pdf files. is great for powershell, sql and other things like that. Also if you are using AI to analyze company data it is essential to use paid commercial products like copilot so your data does not end up in the public learning models.
buzzlit@reddit
The excel AI looks like it will save me a lot of time looking up formulas.
grimspectre@reddit
Hm. In its current state, it can't deal with anything bespoke. But it feels a lot better than googling. So the pre requisite is that the user must already know how to use Google. You ask, "but who doesn't know how to use gooogle!?", a shocking number unfortunately. The admin lady at my office doesn't, and she's only in her mid 40s. Could just be laziness, but idk.
GuyWhoSaysYouManiac@reddit
Not to make excuses for people who don't even try, but I've been doing this for 25 years and I do find it is getting objectively harder to find the right info via Google or similar searches, and Copilot (not the M365) actually has been helpful there. Too much garbage and useless marketing stuff out there nowadays.
mrrichiet@reddit
Exactly. And now you've allowed me to foresee the future when ChatGPT starts doing the same, urggh.
stonecoldcoldstone@reddit
all questions are redirected to the finance department with an estimate of the cost and a gdpr warning
i_accidentally_the_x@reddit
It’s essential for what they call the Enterprise Data Protection. The others can leak or retain data, or as ChatGPT state themselves it will be used to train the models. So for business stuff I use it a lot for documentation and help with writing.
liedele@reddit
I use it to make tables in one note. :)
HotTakes4HotCakes@reddit
What's funny is how often the positive responses to these questions feel AI generated.
Afraid-Donke420@reddit
Sorry you aren’t as productive lol
dimx_00@reddit
We use it internally. It’s like your own company search engine. You can ask it for documents or even to lookup information out of the documentation. It is also good at summarizing conversations and emails. I can ask it to summarize all of the emails that I got in the last 24 hours and it does a good job of telling me the important stuff.
It’s great for drafting policies and procedures. You do still have to do some work to fix a lot of things but it’s pretty good about giving you ideas where to start.
For coding I use 1o since Copilot is not that great with any complex coding questions.
I think it’s worth it for managers and C level positions or anyone that works with a lot of information in general.
PanicAdmin@reddit
Every single piece of medium to long text can be made swiftly with an AI, god knows how many presentation i've made with it.
SkyeC123@reddit
Our org has a license for it… Work-related, I use it for things I used to Google for since that site has become so ridden with ads and nonsense. Works great on various IT questions, excel formulas, stuff like that.
Also good for helping me with project planning or summarizing thoughts more clearly.
MinimumViablePerson0@reddit
Little things…the outlook convo summarization is kinda useful but other than that it has not been “game changing”. I did use it to CONCATENATE once
Forumrider4life@reddit
I can say I like it better than most of the alternatives because of compliance reasons… we can actually track the usage in Microsoft purview and essentially see what people are using it for and if company info or pii is used in it.
Traditional-Hall-591@reddit
I use it to write summaries for execs who demand I use AI. For everything else, I simply write the code.
Kuufasd@reddit
Mostly for scripts
hi-test-tech@reddit
I use it a few times a week for various tasks. One of the ways it impresses me most is its ability to create Power Point presentations from scratch. It fills in reasonably relevant stock photos and does a passable job with formatting.
Drafting policies in Word is another common use case for me.
SquizzOC@reddit
We use it to summarize all company wide calls, our engineers use to it summarize their calls as well with clients.
Everything else I use ChatGPT for since CoPilot is still too young in its evolution.
DistinctMedicine4798@reddit
I’m surprised people actually pay for it
about90frogs@reddit
Sometimes I use it to write shitposts and it does a pretty good job. Other than that, I’ve found it useful for getting Powershell scripts started and searching for Teams messages.
_Tomin_@reddit
We have just rolled it out to some of our sales people to help transcribe their meetings, removing the need to take notes etc. It has been a game changer for them as they can just focus on the client.
I use it to start a policy/procedure document off, then build it out. Not really gone further than that so far.
TheyreEatingTheDawgs@reddit
I use it daily to find shit I know exists but cannot find anywhere. Something like “last week I spoke with someone on some team and he showed me a slide about something, find me the deck” and it’ll find it. Or, “I had a conversation with someone about something last week, what did he ask me to do?” and it’ll find it. Or I’ve got a follow up meeting with someone I’d spoken to weeks ago, so I’ll ask “remind me what we spoke about” or “who’s this guys again? Why are we meeting?” and it’ll tell me.
Sometimes it’ll respond with not the thing I’m looking for, so I’ll just add more context like”no that’s not it, it was in a table that said something else” and somehow it eventually finds it.
I probably don’t use 99% of what it’s capable of, but for that 1% it’s totally worth it. I almost never need to ask someone again about something I missed or forgot, I just ask copilot.
Intelligent-Magician@reddit
In Outlook, I mainly use it to improve grammar and make emails sound better. But what Copilot spits out often feels like it’s written by someone with a massive stick up their ass. ChatGPT does a way better job. And on top of that, it completely screws up screenshots in emails – annoying af.
Excel? I thought this would be Copilot’s moment to shine. But nope, it was basically useless for me.
The Teams summaries and similar features were actually pretty good. But let’s be honest, doesn’t that already come with a Teams Pro license anyway?
Haven’t tried it with Power Apps yet. Maybe that’s worth a shot, but so far... meh.
averageShouter@reddit
Copilot works "well" (I prefer ChatGPT tho) for making simple power apps without knowledge to automate stuff.
You can probably use power Automate, workflows etc. with the help of Copilot pretty well even tho u don't know alot about it
SenikaiSlay@reddit
It's good, even the free version on the desktop. The paid version we are testing with certain people in the organization, overall positive response.
jetcamper@reddit
It’s a ratshit.
dvb70@reddit
I find it really useful as a search engine for work documentation. As it has access to everything I have access to I can ask it to search for documentation covering x subject and if it exists it can find it.
It's actually pretty good as a search engine for internet searches as well as it sources it's information. So it puts a an explanation of your question together but also provides links to where it got this information. That's very useful for verifying what it's telling you if you suspect it's not quite correct.
ConstantSpeech6038@reddit
It heavily depends on what your company does to make money. It is a neat tool to create, edit and often fill in documents. It won't help you with optimizing your company's logistic chain.
BayPangoro@reddit
We’ve been using Copilot in M365, and honestly, it’s a game-changer for streamlining workflows. One standout use case: it writes drafts for emails, presentations, and reports in half the time—great for execs drowning in tasks. It also helps with Excel automation, like creating complex formulas or analyzing data without needing a deep dive. The ROI is solid if you have a team ready to embrace AI tools, but it’s only as good as the prompts you feed it. Definitely worth the C-Suite hype.
StarSlayerX@reddit
I love Co-Pilot able to make me starting templates of what I need on Power Apps, MS Forms, etc...