Copilot in Microsoft Outlook: Top 5 Uses (with Prompts)

02 Apr Copilot in Microsoft Outlook: Top 5 Uses (with Prompts)

Copilot Outlook for Microsoft 365 is Microsoft’s way of taking advantage of the power of GPT-4 — most commonly known for being the backbone of ChatGPT — and turning it into a tool for work and enterprise. Being a part of the 365 ecosystem, Copilot works in conjunction with every 365 program — including Outlook.

In this article, we’re going to go over how you can utilise Copilot for 365 within Outlook, to take your personal management and email capabilities to the next level — while also enriching your day-to-day work productivity in the process.

Top Copilot in Microsoft Outlook Uses

Email Prioritisation and Management

Emails are an important part of everyday business life. At the end of the day, being able to control and manage your emails is an art form that even the best in the office can struggle to do on a hectic day — and doing so can turn a hellish day into a perfectly manageable one.

Copilot for Microsoft 365 can help you organise and manage your emails incredibly quickly — there are lots of different tools within Copilot for Microsoft 365 that can do this, a combination of which will let you take control of your emails and ensure that you can make the most of your Outlook inbox —

• Focused Inbox: Copilot’s Focused Inbox feature will allow you to easily filter out any less critical emails from more important ones, meaning that you can immediately prioritise and go to the emails that require more attention and urgency.
• Smart Summaries: When organising your emails, having to click into the email and read through it can be time-consuming — especially if you have lots of emails to look at. By clicking the Copilot email and selecting ‘Summarise’ on each email, you can see the summary for that email.

You can simply also just ask Copilot if any urgent emails from today require attention, and Copilot will use its organisational data to check and find anything that it can flag as important. The best way of ensuring this is correct is by flagging important emails — this will let Copilot know which chains and conversations are important.

Drafting and Composing Emails

Much like every other platform that uses Copilot, Outlook has the generative capabilities of Copilot too. Drafting and composing emails has never been easier, as all you need to do is just ask Copilot to draft you a certain email and it will.

For example, you could ask Copilot to ‘Draft me an email about organising an email with John Smith about the upcoming merger, and a possible dinner party on 12/04/24’ and Copilot will provide you with an email that you can then tailor to your liking.

However, Copilot goes much further than this. You can also use Copilot to create personalised templates to ensure that drafting emails is easier than ever.

Generating Summaries of Email Chains

Using Copilot to generate summaries of emails and email chains is as simple as clicking the Copilot button on said email chain and clicking summarise. This will summarise the key points of that email, without needing to read through them or even enter a prompt.

Even more usefully, the summaries will come with provided citations that will link you to the email that it is citing from. This makes it easy to click into said email and gather full context, meaning that you’ll never lose the full picture if you need it.

Adapting the Tone of Emails

Once you’ve created your email with Copilot, you might not feel as though the tone is correct for whatever you need the email for. However, Copilot makes it easy to adjust the tone while still keeping the contents of the email the same.

All you have to do is prompt Copilot to then adjust the tone however you need to, and Copilot will adjust the email accordingly in a few seconds — saving you time on a redraft that may otherwise take minutes or even hours.

You can also use the Copilot coaching feature to help you improve the tone of your emails in the long run, teaching you how to write effective emails that will get the point across while still being legible and appropriate for that situation.

Let’s learn some more about how you can use Copilot to coach your emails!

Get Coaching on your Emails

Copilot gives you access to an assistant who will be alongside you throughout the workday — but, Copilot can also help you improve your skills as well as perform tasks.

All you have to do is click on the Copilot button and click ‘Coaching by Copilot’ — this will prompt Copilot to read your email and provide you with insights, coaching, and suggestions on how to improve your work.

You can go through and ensure that each suggestion is correct manually, and then incorporate said feedback into your work — making it even more authentic and improving your skills as an email writer. All of which can be done from inside the email dashboard.

How to Get Started

Copilot is one of Microsoft’s strongest tools — and any organisation that uses Microsoft 365 can take advantage of it. Its uses in Outlook range from helpful to generative, but still all-around help turn Copilot into an effective tool to ensure high levels of productivity in the workplace with ease.

If you’re looking to get started with Copilot but don’t know how to — reach out to us today. Our experts are here to help and will ensure that you have the helping hand that you need to get started with Microsoft 365 and Copilot.

Contact us now and see how we can help.