Unlock your productivity: Here are our Top 10 tips for using Microsoft 365 Copilot every day

This story reflects updated guidance from Microsoft Digital—it was first published in 2024.

Imagine having a personal assistant that helps you navigate your daily tasks effortlessly. Microsoft 365 Copilot offers just that, allowing you to work smarter, not harder.

And the best part?

You don’t need to be a prompt engineer to use it.

“We did over a month’s work of surveying different groups to find out what their daily top Copilot scenarios are. Our extended team whittled them down to 10, from over 100. They had to be things you could use every single day.”

Cadie Kneip, readiness business program manager, Microsoft Digital

Here in Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization, we found 10 scenarios for using Copilot every day in an experience we’re calling Monday morning with Copilot. Many of the scenarios are one-click actions, making them beginner-friendly. They’ve been thoroughly researched and tested by our Copilot readiness team.

“We did over a month’s work of surveying different groups to find out what their daily top Copilot scenarios are,” says Cadie Kneip, a readiness business program manager on the Readiness team in Microsoft Digital. “Our extended team whittled them down to 10, from over 100. They had to be things you could use every single day.”

Originally, our Readiness team did an intensive training called the Copilot Power Hour. “It was like drinking from a firehose,” says David VanGilder, also a readiness business program manager in Microsoft Digital.

“We were able to integrate the scenarios into a robust skilling model that provides an easy-to-follow path for customers to onboard and extend their knowledge of Copilot.”

Tricia Gill, principal content program manager, Content Excellence team, Data, Platform, and Growth

We winnowed the good ideas we got from that exercise down to 10 scenarios that we thought would be a good way for teams like yours to get started using Copilot. “We made sure to focus on the ideas that are for everybody,” VanGilder says. “It’s not for power users.”

After our 10 scenarios were defined and learning assets made available to Microsoft employees, Microsoft Digital partnered with the Content Excellence team in our Data, Platform, and Growth organization, which creates impactful and educational customer-facing learning content for Microsoft customers.

“We were able to integrate the scenarios into a robust skilling model that provides an easy-to-follow path for customers to onboard and extend their knowledge of Copilot,” says Tricia Gill, a principal content program manager on the Content Excellence team. “This is enabling us to help customers realize value even faster.”

The partnership between the two teams has been key, says John Martin, a director of content operations on the Content Excellence team. “We love to see how our efforts as Customer Zero translate beyond Microsoft,” he says.

1. Catch up on long email threads with Copilot in Outlook

This is one of many tips that don’t need a prompt—you just open a thread and select the Summarize button. Copilot then provides a summary at the top of your email.

You could use this when your boss adds you to an email thread that has been going on for a long time and asks you to solve a problem that’s buried somewhere in all those many emails back and forth. Copilot can save you the 30 minutes it might take to wade through the entire thread.

“It has annotations of where it found things,” VanGilder says. “If you click the number, it’ll take you to the source, so you can get the full story.”

“With Copilot, the prompt ‘Recap the meeting so far’ gets you caught up when you’re five minutes late, and you don’t have to disrupt the meeting by asking.”

David VanGilder, readiness business program manager, Microsoft Digital

2. Recap Teams meetings with Copilot in Teams

You can use this tip to recap an entire meeting, or if you join late, you can recap only the part you missed.

For example, when you return from vacation, instead of spending days catching up by watching the recordings of several meetings, you can quickly read a text summary of each meeting.

“With Copilot, the prompt ‘Recap the meeting so far’ gets you caught up when you’re five minutes late, and you don’t have to disrupt the meeting by asking,” says VanGilder.

3. Summarize your week with Copilot

Say you’re working on two or three major projects and several minor projects. It can be a lot to keep track of.

With this prompt, Copilot shows you the past week of chats and emails, and you can easily see them in a table that includes whether you’ve responded.

“What’s really lovely about this one is that people already know how to do the first half of this prompt,” VanGilder says. “But the second part, to put it the results in a table—that creates a nice display of results. I was able to get caught up on all my projects quickly.”

4. Generate meeting notes with Copilot in Teams

Copilot can list key topics and action items from a meeting. If you’re the meeting host, this can be very helpful, as you’re probably used to spending the meeting with your nose buried in OneNote. With Copilot taking your notes, you can be an active participant in your meetings.

“There’s more than one way to use this functionality,” VanGilder says. “Instead of clicking ‘Generate meeting notes,’ I can type in the prompt and add ‘and put the results in the form of an email I can send to participants.’ I do quickly proofread it, because it’s not called Pilot, it’s Copilot, so you do need to check its work!”

5. Draft email with Copilot in Outlook

Of course, many of us are experts in sending and receiving emails for work. But sometimes you have to write an email that’s especially challenging.

For example, it could be that there’s some friction about the subject, and you want help in being diplomatic. Or maybe the recipient doesn’t want or need a lot of technical details, and you’d like some guidance on making it understandable to a general audience.

“This is one that will help you look good,” says Cadie Kneip, a readiness business program manager within Microsoft Digital.

6. Get ready for your day with Copilot

In movies and TV shows, when a busy executive walks into their office, an assistant is standing there to say, “Good morning, So-and-so called about the XYZ project, and you have a meeting at 9 o’clock with the Such-and-such team.”

This tip turns Copilot into that assistant for you. It summarizes major items from the preceding day—emails, Teams messages, and meetings. It also gives you a table of your upcoming meetings for the day.

You don’t have to use the part of the prompt that requests an “inspirational tone” or “a touch of fun,” but it shows the power of Copilot prompts. “It’s a good example that shows how users can tailor the prompts,” Kneip says.

7. Discover what was said with Copilot

This tip is for times when you remember that someone messaged you but you can’t find it, or you want to recall what a key stakeholder said about a project.

“This prompt uses the Context IQ, and that’s really the magic of Copilot,” VanGilder says, referring to the forward slash (“/”) you type when entering the prompt. “You can use it to search for documents, meetings, or people.”

8. Boost your brainstorms with Copilot

This tip also uses the smart search feature of Context IQ. You might not use it daily, but it can save you a lot of time.

The Microsoft Digital readiness team used this tip to generate plans for Camp Copilot, a three-week training program. “The prompt we gave was, ‘I want to do a fun, interactive, summer training session for employees. Can you come up with a few ideas?’” Kneip says.

One Copilot user came up with an innovative use for this functionality: They used Copilot to write an email responding to a customer complaint, supplying the tool with the company guidelines for such responses to help shape the output. After refining Copilot’s draft email into the final version, they said the Copilot draft had been 70-80% complete.

9. Create presentations from your ideas and files with Copilot in PowerPoint

You probably won’t use this tip every day, but it’s helpful because it removes the struggle of staring at a blank page.

“People will collect information from customers, put it into a Word document, and then use Copilot to convert it into a PowerPoint presentation,” VanGilder says. “It has a lot of use in training and selling.”

10. Uncover relevant files with Copilot

If you’ve ever needed to find a file but couldn’t remember exactly what it was named or where it was located—and who hasn’t?—then this tip’s for you. Copilot can search for files related to a specific project or topic.

The prompt was suggested by an attorney at Microsoft, who asked if Copilot could help find files. VanGilder’s response was, “Give it a try and let me know what happens.” And it worked!

“This one’s an exciting prompt that people are absolutely in love with, to quickly find what you’re looking for,” VanGilder says.

Learn more

We hope these 10 scenarios help you and your organization get more out of Copilot. When people see how easy these tips are—many of them need just a click or two—they’ll be inspired to save time and mental effort themselves.

Check out our full Monday morning with Copilot experience.