At this year's Microsoft Build event, Chief Executive Satya Nadella's keynote speech was a call to action for businesses to embrace the great strides that have been made with generative Artificial Intelligence and the immediate impact it has had on how people work today. He went on to say that AI is "the most important technology of our time" and that it has the potential to transform every industry, highlighting Microsoft's investments in AI, including the development of new AI-powered services, such as the Copilot suite.
Specific to the Modern Workplace, two Copilots that will be of particular interest to many organisations are Microsoft 365 Copilot as well Windows Copilot. These tools combine the power of large language models (LLMs) to leverage data held within the Microsoft Graph, and through Semantic Index for Copilot, to also use data held within a customer’s Microsoft 365 tenant, turning that content into a very powerful tool that enhances productivity and collaboration in the workplace to ultimately revolutionise the way we work forever.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is a generative AI technology based on GPT-4, a LLM created by OpenAI. Using a semantic index of all customer content, essentially mapping the relationships between the content and the end user, it helps Microsoft’s 365 Copilot to understand the context of the content and to provide relevant, real-time actionable responses to prompts requested through the interface.
It sits alongside all Microsoft 365 apps, much like an assistant, except behind the scenes, its sophisticated processing and orchestration engine combines the power of the LLM with both the Microsoft Graph and Microsoft 365 services to help end users to quickly generate documents, emails, presentations, manipulate Outlook calendars, create Microsoft Teams chat summaries or even develop business proposals using corporate branding, to name a few.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is a powerful AI-powered tool that will transform the way we work. By providing end users with real-time assistance and suggestions, it can help us be more productive, avoid errors, and be more creative. It will also help to improve collaboration by making it easier for team members to share ideas and to work together on projects.
Windows Copilot is an AI-powered assistant that is integrated directly into Windows 11 and available to open and use from the taskbar across all applications and programs. It is powered by the same LLM that underpins Microsoft 365 Copilot and is the first PC platform to offer unified AI assistance for end users, combining Bing Chat, as well as other plugins, to help end users to do anything directly via the new Windows Copilot sidebar.
It simplifies usage, empowers end users, and aids in customising settings, connecting across preferred applications, and action-taking where requested. It can summarise content being viewed within an application, can rewrite it, or even explain it if need be.
Windows Copilot is built on the same foundations as Bing Chat, enabling developers to extend plug-ins written for Bing or OpenAI’s ChatGPT to this AI-powered assistant. Features include:
According to the work trend index, the average employee spends 57% of their time communicating (in meetings, email, and chat) and 43% creating (in documents, spreadsheets, and presentations). Microsoft 365 Copilot and Windows Copilot is set to change this in a big way as it will enable a whole new way of working. Statistically, the combination of these AI assistants will enable end users to rapidly create documents, slides, write documents, build presentations, and even formulate PivotTables in Excel. They will also help end users to run more effective meetings, get up to speed on the conversation, organising key discussion points, and summarising key actions in a fraction of the time previously taken.
It’s safe to say that out of the box, Copilot is an enterprise-ready technology that will seamlessly integrate into the apps that end users consume every day, delivering results that are relevant and actionable, faster and more efficiently than ever before, marking a new era of the Modern Workplace that will fundamentally transform communication, collaboration, and productivity in the workplace.
There is no denying that the ability to understand and then leverage generative AI is a game-changer and the next big opportunity for businesses. SoftwareOne recognises this and are committed to helping them use AI to solve their most challenging problems. We work with organisations to assess their needs and goals for using Copilot technology to help determine the best way to deploy, providing training and support, as well as guidance and best practices, to help integrate these AI engines into an organisation workflow and business processes.
We are 1 of only 10 OpenAI Accelerator Program partners globally and are therefore best placed to help organisations prepare for and to start using Copilot to provide real-time assistance and suggestions as you work to improve productivity, efficiency, and security in the workplace.
The future of work is here, and it's powered by AI.
SoftwareOne Digital Workplace Services help organisations support the new way of working using Microsoft and Google tools to empower and make employees more productive.
SoftwareOne Digital Workplace Services help organisations support the new way of working using Microsoft and Google tools to empower and make employees more productive.
