A Day in my Copilot’s life

How much do you use Copilot in your workday and how does it benefit you? This is a question I’ve been asking myself lately because many people tell me, they struggle to see the value. I thought I’d try to answer the question by tracking my usage and trying to quantify the benefits (if any). Here is the result, a day in my Copilot’s life.

My workday doesn’t start at the office, it starts when I think to myself “what do I need to achieve today?” I could check my email, scan down my calendar, check my unread Teams chats and posts, and check the various notes I left for myself etc, or I could just ask Copilot to do this for me:

Dear Copilot, can you help me get ready for my day.  Please check my email and Teams for anything I didn’t action yesterday that might be urgent. Create a table with a summary of today’s meetings including a list of participants. If it is Monday, please give me a summary of the New Zealand sport results from the weekend and can you also let me know what the weather is going to be like today.

Bingo, while I am drinking my morning coffee, Copilot is giving me an overview of my workday. This is beats looking at several different apps to get the same information, and prevents me from seeing the overnight “urgent” emails that try to get my attention ahead of my planned work.

Next up, I want to sound knowledgeable when I arrive at work, so I ask Copilot to help:

Dear Copilot, give me a briefing on recent Microsoft news related to SharePoint, Teams and Power Automate. Include links to relevant blog posts and make me sound smart.

Now I am ready to face the day! I head to the office with a few things to think about on my commute. Where to next Copilot? The answer will of course depend on what the world decides to throw at me on today.

Working in the Office

Today, I used Copilot several times today to save me time.

First up for the day was a project meeting. I used Copilot to give me a summary of recent email from specific people in the project. This helped jog my memory on a few things and prompted me to complete an action I had missed from a Teams message. I felt more prepared for the meeting and saved time for both myself and my colleagues (less Steve questions asked).

Next, I used Copilot in Word to help me draft a document. I used a technique where I create a “brain dump” as a series of paragraphs and then select the paragraph and ask Copilot to rewrite and create an improved version of my initial thoughts. I was able to create the document at least twice as fast as doing the job the long way. This saved me at least an hour and I didn’t have to come back to the job several times over the next few days.

A client asked me for some stats on their SharePoint usage over the last 6 months to present to their Board meeting. I extracted the report data as a CSV and opened it in Excel. I used Copilot in Excel to create a graph include a trend analysis and pivot table.  Done in just a few minutes.

I attended several meetings where I used Copilot to record meeting notes for me. This allow me to be more present in the meeting, rather than trying to take notes while I listen. It also gave me a list of tasks, used to create a statement of work later. During one of the meetings I was asked about a question about unlicensed users and OneDrive, by morning briefing have given me the answer. I was able to answer the question on the spot.

I finished the day with a quick prompt to get a summary of things I need to prepare for later in the week. Something to think about on the way home? No, I’ll just put the cricket on the radio and switch off for a bit. I can read those notes later.

My week is not evenly distributed, some days I use Copilot more and others less. Like many people, I am still developing the new habits. Here are some other ways I have used Copilot to help me recently:

• Drafted a meeting agenda for a SharePoint Governance discussion.
• Reviewed a privacy policy to identify areas for improvement.
• Replied to several emails, where I didn’t have time to craft a response by hand.
• Create a post for LinkedIn.
• Brainstorm some ideas for a job description.
• Summarising content from Microsoft Ignite.

I have my challenges with Copilot too. Suggesting meeting times in Outlook has resulted in double bookings several times, costing me and the other meeting participants time. PowerPoint doesn’t give me a very good result creating usable slides, unless I am using a source document. Perhaps I am doing it wrong, but I have found myself giving up and “doing it myself” more often than not. I’ll put those tasks to the side for a bit and revisit them in the future.

So how much time did I save? It is hard to quantify, but I think around 20-30 minutes on a typical day, but more on this day because of the document I needed to draft. Time saving isn’t the only benefit, I was more prepared for my meetings, picked up things that had slipped down my inbox and keep across various projects and activities.

To get the real benefit from Copilot (or any other AI productivity tool), you need to develop work habits that use the features. Invest a bit of time upfront figuring out the things that can save yourself time and then practice, practice, practice.