How to Use Copilot in Microsoft 365 for Operations Employees

I want to show you how an operations team might use Copilot with Microsoft 365. We’re going to look at this day with an operations team. We’re going to start with drafting a shift summary. So let’s get started with that.

Drafting a Shift Summary

So I’m looking at Copilot in Microsoft 365, and what I want Copilot to do is summarize a shift report. So I’m going to go down here to the prompt. I’m going to put a /. Then I can look up the document that I want it to summarize. Here it is right here. Let’s put that in and let’s run Copilot.

Here’s a summary that Copilot created. It created the summary from this document up here. Let’s take a look at it. This document has all the information, but it’s not formatted very well at all. It’s not really organized. So let’s go back and look at Copilot and this is a new feature in Copilot as of the fourth quarter of 2024.

And then just to edit in pages, what this allows you to do is go beyond just copying this information and then pasting it into Word. For example, I can edit it right here in Copilot. So let’s do that.

And this is called Copilot pages. So what I can do here is I can edit this and then when I am done with it, I can export it or copy it into Word. So I want Copilot to do more formatting on this particular document. I am going to ask Copilot to summarize the shift overview information into a table. So let’s go ahead and do that. I will run the prompt here so it gives me the table here. And what I can do is edit this in pages. It will push it over here into the Copilot pages. And what I can do with this then is I can move it up to the space that I want it. I’m going to put it right here. And now I have got that information in a table form that I want for this particular report. I can delete the other information. And now this report is starting to look a lot better to me.

It’s easy to take that information from another report, summarize it and format it with Copilot. And with the edit pages functionality that’s new in Copilot, it makes this whole task a lot easier. And now I can take this formatted information and use it how I want to. I can copy it into Word, I can just send it as it is to other people in my organization. So it makes summarizing the information a lot easier to do.

Operating Procedures

The next thing I’m going to do is look at some operating procedures I have, and one is to replace a piece of equipment, a conveyor belt. I have got a pretty lengthy document and I want Copilot to help me with this to make it a little easier to read and understand. So an easy way to use Copilot is to look at OneDrive. All the documents in OneDrive are available through Microsoft 365. And what I want to do here is I want to look at this document right here. It has a little Copilot icon. You can see that let’s open up Copilot. It will automatically reference this document. And what I want to do is create an easier reading document. So I am going to ask a question. So I have a simple prompt here. I am going to ask Copilot to create a draft of this document with simpler language. Let’s go ahead and do that.

So here’s Copilot’s draft of this. I can take this, I can copy it into Word, I can make additional changes on the editing and the format I want to, but this is a pretty good summarization of that longer document. So Copilot has saved me a lot of time here.

Finding Documents

Next, I want Copilot to help me find this document. This document could be anywhere in my Microsoft 365. Copilot will go out and try to find it. It could be in SharePoint, it could be on OneDrive, it could be a number of different places. But Copilot will go and find that document. So I put my prompt in the Copilot. I want to find this document about conveyors and this is perfect. So this saved me a lot of time. Copilot went out and looked at all the documents I have saved in Microsoft 365 and found exactly the one I wanted. We can open it up here, and here’s the document right here in the PDF format in which it’s stored, and I can use this as I want.

Rewriting Reports

Next, I have a safety incident report that I want Copilot to help me rewrite to make it a little clearer and easier to understand and make sure it’s well written. I want Copilot to help me rewrite this safety incident report. It was previously created, but I want Copilot to make it just a little easier to understand and make sure that it’s well written. So here’s a report here in OneDrive. You’re going to open up Copilot, ask a question. Here’s the prompt I’m going to use down here. So let’s go ahead and run Copilot.

Copilot is finished. I’m going to copy this into Word. On the left, I have the safety incident report that came out of my other system. You can see that here. It needs to be formatted, and frankly, Copilot did a really good job. On the right is the Copilot version of this. You can see that here. It’s nicely formatted, it’s easy to understand, it’s easy for someone to read. So Copilot took some basic information I had on the safety incident, made it easier to read, and reorganized it.

Drafting Sensitive Emails

And finally, one of the managers on the operations team needs to reach out to an employee of his with a delicate situation, the sensitive topic, and he’s going to use Copilot to suggest a draft. So let’s go ahead and do that. So the manager is starting with Copilot and asks Copilot to draft an e-mail message about this employee. Here’s the start of the prompt. So I’m going to add some information so Copilot has a better idea of what the subject of the e-mail should be. And here it is addressing some late arrivals with an employee and seeing what the impact on their team is. And all the manager wants is just a draft of an e-mail so they can take that form that in their own words and start a conversation with that employee. So here’s a prompt. Let’s start Copilot.

So this is a good outcome. Copilot has taken some basic information about what the manager wanted to say to his employee and actually made it look pretty good. Now the manager can take this and can change it and then send it out and start the discussion that he needs to have with his employee. It’s to save the manager quite a bit of time because this is not their strong suit, but it gives him a little edge. So he’s going to use this and start the discussion with the employee and resolve the problem.

Conclusion

So in this demonstration, we looked at how the members of an operations team might use Copilot with Microsoft 365 to make their day just a little bit easier, make them more productive, and get a lot of things done. We looked at the ability that Copilot has to summarize information, reformat it, rewrite it. We also saw how Copilot can find documents in Microsoft 365 and give managers and employees some initial thoughts on how to tackle difficult subjects. If you’re ready to deploy Copilot in Microsoft 365, download our free guide with the link here.