The value of AI with Copilot for Microsoft 365
In today’s fast-paced business environment, staying ahead of the curve means embracing the transformative power of AI. Microsoft is leading the AI charge with Copilot: a revolutionary tool designed to enhance productivity and streamline operations in the workplace.
In this series of blog posts, we’re taking a deep dive into the world of AI and Microsoft Copilot. In his latest blog, Matt Dunkin, COO here at AspiraCloud, clarifies the confusion around all the different Copilots, shares the differences between Copilot in Bing and Copilot for Microsoft 365 and highlights the real value of Copilot for Microsoft 365.
Read on:
We have already written about the number of different Copilots in an earlier article and ascertained that there is often some confusion in the product name “Copilot,” and the difference between Copilot “in” or Copilot “for.”
At the time of writing, there are 13 different Copilots in existence. For this blog, however, I’m just going to focus on two:
1.) Copilot in Bing
2.) Copilot for Microsoft 365
What is Copilot in Bing?
Microsoft Bing is a search engine owned and operated by Microsoft. Copilot, Copilot in Bing or Copilot in Edge is effectively, an extension to Bing and enables a natural language interface to Bing. If you ask both Bing and Copilot in Bing to find something, it will likely return the same results, where Copilot will summarise the results in “natural language.” This is because Copilot uses a natural language interface and is grounded to the web. By the web, read Bing.
Copilot, when logged in to Microsoft 365, will also protect your commercial data, so if you copy that sales proposal into Copilot and ask it to summarise it, Copilot will not learn from the content. In summary, Copilot in Bing operates outside your network.
What’s the difference between Copilot in Bing and Copilot for Microsoft 365?
Copilot for 365 operates inside your network, working alongside the Microsoft 365 productivity apps you use every day, such as Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, and more. You can, for example, ask Copilot for Microsoft 365 to summarise your emails after a two-week break, catch up on a Teams meeting you joined halfway through (transcript required), summarise documents, produce presentations from Word documents and even create content – in a matter of minutes. The opportunity to increase productivity with Copilot for Microsoft 365 is significant and you can do this, confident that the data remains yours, no security boundaries are crossed, and your data is not being used to teach AI.
Copilot for Microsoft 365 is also grounded to the Microsoft Graph, such as your calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and contacts. Microsoft Graph has been around for many years and is used to extend Microsoft services – Copilot for Microsoft 365 is no different. Microsoft Graph is an API or a programmatic interface to your data and it uses the same login, same security model and same data models as all the other Microsoft 365 applications.
If you are working in Microsoft Teams and ask Copilot for Microsoft 365 to summarise your emails, Copilot for Microsoft 365 “asks” Microsoft Graph for those emails. Graph returns those emails to Copilot for Microsoft 365, which in turn, returns them to you in natural language.
What is Microsoft Copilot Studio?
Copilot for Microsoft 365 also includes Copilot Studio. Microsoft Copilot Studio is a graphical low-code tool for creating and maintaining copilots. It allows developers to extend Microsoft Copilot for 365 to use other data sources, such as an organisation’s CRM, MIS or other data repository, which becomes an additional grounding. This allows users to ask natural language questions of your data.
So, Copilot for Microsoft 365 is not just an additional monthly fee, it offers a much more powerful implementation of AI which can really increase your productivity across your organisation.
If you would like to learn more about using Copilot in your organisation and how you can become Copilot ready, simply contact us.