Microsoft 365 Copilot Quick Start!

0:01Microsoft Copilot really is everywhere. And indeed, if you are a Microsoft Office user or you use Microsoft 365 every day in your working life, then you will not have been able to avoid Copilot. So, for example, in Microsoft Excel, you will have seen the Copilot logo down at the bottom right-hand corner just here. It's that sort of multicolored thing. I don't know what it's supposed to be, but it's the same sort of thing in Microsoft Word. You can see there's the Copilot logo at the bottom right. And you can also see slightly more obviously this box here that says, Describe what you'd like to draft with Copilot.

0:32Or even in Outlook, you might have spotted it. So top right-hand corner this time, there's the Copilot button. Or if you prefer to use the Microsoft Office apps in the browser. So I think I've got PowerPoint. There we go. PowerPoint on the web here. Well, it's very similar. So again, you can see the Copilot button just down here on the right-hand side. Or if you like to look at your files in OneDrive, then you'll again see the Copilot button on the right-hand side there. But also as you hover over individual files, you'll see, yep, there's a little Copilot logo.

1:02And even look at my desktop here. I've got the Copilot app pinned to my taskbar. I've actually got two different Copilot apps, but more about all of that later. So it really is rather hard to avoid. And of course, using Copilot in all of these different places that I've just quickly shown you here is exactly what we're going to learn about in this course. But anyway, first things first, what is Copilot? So I'm just going to start a new browser tab here. And I happen to be using Microsoft Edge browser, which may or may not be the same as you.

1:34But I'm going to get you to do what I'm going to do in a second. But I'm going to use Copilot to understand what Copilot is. I mean, maybe I'm easily amused, but for some reason it does amuse me to ask Copilot, what is Copilot? So for me and my Edge browser, the main part of the screen here is a Copilot conversation. So I'm going to ask Copilot, what is Copilot? And send that into Copilot. And it's going to have a think about that and come up with some suggestions. So it says Copilot is your AI companion from Microsoft. The one you're talking to right now.

2:05Designed to help you think, create, learn, plan, analyze and get things done across your digital life. So you get the idea. See, I mean, we can scroll through here and look at this. But what I'm really looking for, and I have to say what you will notice throughout this whole course, is that the responses that we get when we use Copilot will be slightly different every time. And that is because Copilot is using generative AI. It is generating responses. It's generating fresh responses every time.

2:36So for me as a trainer, I'm a planner, so I like to plan the examples I'm going to show you. But those examples might not give me exactly the same responses that I'm expecting when I come to hit record. And that's what I'm finding here, because I was rather hoping that it would say that Copilot was a generative AI assistant and that it was part of a sort of a family of different Copilot experiences. So Copilot just on its own. Well, yes, it is an AI assistant, but as we will learn, Copilot has got lots of different guises.

3:08It pops up in lots of different places. So I'd like you to think of Copilot more of as a family of AI assistants, and it's using generative AI. But now I'm going to ask Copilot, what exactly is Microsoft 365 Copilot? So what is Microsoft 365 Copilot? Because that is, of course, actually the theme of this course. So what is Microsoft 365 Copilot? And this is where it says this is the AI built directly into the Microsoft 365 apps that you use every day.

3:41So blah, blah, blah. So I'm kind of hoping it's going to say something about being in your work. There we go. So it's a work focused AI layer. So as we progress through this course, I am assuming that you are using Microsoft 365 Copilot associated with your work email address. And it's telling us that it can actually access your emails and your meetings and your chats and your files and whatnot. And we've got some examples as to what it does throughout those different office applications. So, yeah, I've got an interesting overview there of what Copilot is.

4:12Now for you, what I would like you to do right now is in your browser. Maybe, I don't know, maybe you actually use Google Chrome. I would like you to ask your browser, what is Copilot? So let's just do that again here in Google Chrome. So I'm just going to hit enter there. And whatever browser you're using, I'm betting you will get some kind of AI overview. So I happen to be in the Google world now. So it's not using Copilot to generate this AI overview because Google has got its own generative AI solution, which is Gemini.

4:46So all very much the same kind of thing. But if I switch to AI mode here, then I'm getting the same kind of response that we saw a second ago from Copilot to explain exactly what Copilot is, blah, blah, blah. So there are different generative AI solutions. You're probably already using one either inadvertently or on purpose in your regular browser like I am here in Google Chrome. Or maybe you've had a go at using ChatGPT. That's another generative AI assistant. But our focus for the rest of this course is going to be Microsoft 365 Copilot.

5:19And in the next video, we're going to take a look at where we actually find that.

0:01What you're looking at here is the Microsoft 365 Co-Pilot app. And there are a couple of things I want to point out to you. So firstly, looking at the bottom left-hand corner, I am logged in with a work email address. And if I click that, I do just need to tell you that my demo work email address is simonamillam at Green Beans UK. So Green Beans is just my demo work setup that I use for, you know, for these recordings for my demo. But the point is for you, this should show your work email address, not a personal email address.

0:32So that's the first thing to be aware of. And then secondly, notice down on the taskbar here, I've got this app pinned to my taskbar. So there's the icon. And in fact, if I just zoom in, can you see that it's the Co-Pilot icon with that little Microsoft 365 flag on it? And that is really important and we'll see why later. But the reason why I want to point that out is that there is also a non-Microsoft 365 Co-Pilot app. And I've got that pinned on this other end of my taskbar down here.

1:03So I really need you to make sure that you've got the Microsoft 365 version of the Co-Pilot app. So this is your gateway to your entire Microsoft 365 work environment. And you can see that the Co-Pilot AI assistant where you can ask Co-Pilot questions is very much leading the way. It's very much a Co-Pilot first experience. But if you click on this app launcher here, that's where you can get to your other Microsoft 365 apps, whether it's Teams or Outlook or SharePoint or go into yet more apps as well.

1:35But that's all part of this Microsoft 365 Co-Pilot app. It is your gateway to the rest of your Microsoft 365 environment, but Co-Pilot leads the way. Now, if you've already got this ready to go in your system, then that's marvelous. But yours might not look quite the same as mine because, of course, I've got these different agents down the side. I'm going to have different recent chats down here. You know, there might be a few differences to exactly what you see on the screen. But if you're pretty sure that you've got this thing that says Message Co-Pilot and the ability to get your other apps, then I'm pretty sure you probably do have this already on your system.

2:10But if not, we're going to start off by making sure that you have got this so that you can follow along with the rest of this course. So if you've never seen this before, what we're looking at here, what I want you to do is simply go to the browser of your choice. So I'm going to go to Chrome, for example, and go to office.com. So office.com. And this is where you will need to sign in with your work email address. Now, because I've done this before, it remembered my work email address. And you can see down the bottom left hand side here where I showed you before.

2:41Yes, I'm logged in with that Green Beans demo work account. So that's what I want you to do. Go to office.com and log in with your work email. And you should get this, which is the browser based version of the app. You can see I'm still in the Chrome browser here, but it's very much the same sort of thing. I've got the app launcher to get to your other apps and whatnot. So that's probably the easiest way to get to this. Or maybe you do already use Outlook on the web. Maybe you've got a shortcut somewhere to get to your email on the web.

3:11I mean, I do find this sometimes. Those of us who tend to use the full desktop applications like Word and Excel and PowerPoint that are locally installed. We don't sometimes encounter the web based versions of things that often. But you might have a link to your web based email. And if you do, what you'll find from here, you've got that app launcher. And from there, you can also get to that Microsoft 365 Copilot app. But this should very much be your starting point for everything you do in Microsoft 365. So whichever way you've got to it, either from typing in office.com and signing in or by navigating from your web mail, whatever it is.

3:48I would also like you to download the desktop app. Now, that's not critical. If for whatever reason your IT department doesn't want you to do that or you don't want to do that, then that's OK. You can carry on with the web based version for this course. But if in doubt, I would download and install the desktop app. It gives a slightly better experience. But as I say, there's not much in it. It's not a disaster if you can't or don't want to do that. But anyway, if you do want to go ahead and do that, then I would suggest you go ahead and make sure you pin it to your taskbar.

4:19So mine's already pinned. I'm right clicked on the icon here. So mine's already pinned. So I've only got the option to unpin. But you should have the option to pin it. That means it's always going to be available for you. Now, if you need to do this, then I really do want you to pause the video and do it now so that, as I said, you can follow along with the rest of this course. OK, let me just close down the browser based version of the Copilot app so that I don't confuse myself. And let's go into the actual app itself, which, as you can see, looks almost exactly the same.

4:49But it's a bit more immersive because I haven't got the browser tabs and it gives, as I said, a slightly better performance. But anyway, this is where you can ask Copilot stuff, much like we did in the last video. And as you imagine, we are going to be doing lots of examples as we progress through this course. But the question I want us to address is why should you use this for your work instead of just randomly using whatever AI capability you stumble across in your browser that you happen to be using? You know, like we did in the last video with Copilot in the Edge browser and Gemini in Chrome.

5:23And the answer lies in this green shield icon up here, so the top right-hand corner. Can you see there's a green shield icon with a tick in it there? And there's also a bit of information that says Enterprise Data Protection applies to this chat. And I do want you to click that link and take a look at this article. It's only a short article, but this is really important. And I need you to be very aware that when you're using Copilot Chat in Microsoft 365 for work or school, so when you're logged in with your work account in our case, then data protection is applied.

6:01And what that means is listed in these bullet points here. So the point is there's extra protection built into your work account that isn't guaranteed with a non-work account. So you can see here, for example, there we go, your prompts. So the things you type in, including any work content that you upload are not used to train foundation models. So this is reassuring us that whatever we put into Copilot, if we do it through the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, then whatever we put in is not used as part of the great big pool of Internet data required to build and develop these AI assistants.

6:41And it is not used to refine their performance and to train them how to behave. So that data is stayed secured within our work environment. And look, your chat data is encrypted during your chat session. So there's all this protection in place to ensure that whatever you type in and the responses you get and the documents you get Copilot to look at, we are reassured that that is stayed within our corporate environment and not kind of released out into the World Wide Web. So do take a look at this and make sure you are very clear that it's an excellent idea to always be using.

7:14Oh, where is it? There it is. Your Microsoft 365 Copilot app with that green shield to ensure that information is protected. And you might be thinking, well, is it really that much of a big deal? You know, why can't I just use, I don't know, regular, here we go, regular Edge and the Copilot that's in here or where were we back into Google and use AI mode here? Well, look, imagine you've got this Word document here. So I'm going to be using my example of my demo account here, which is a wine company.

7:44So green beans, organic wines. And let's imagine we've got a strategic document here. It's a nine page document here in Microsoft Word. But let's imagine that sales of our wines are declining. So we need to diversify. You know, things are not going well for the organization and we need to really change our strategy. So we've got a nine page document here talking about the change of strategy that we might address. There's lots of information about, you know, our 12 month roadmap for different products that we might be considering.

8:14There's lots of financials here about what units we expect to sell and how this is going to pull the company back from the brink of bankruptcy. You know, there's lots of strategic information here that is actually quite sensitive and it's very unique to our organization. So imagine this nine page document here. I wanted to create a two paragraph summary for an executive. Well, I can do that with Copilot. So let's just try that out in here. So I'm going to go ahead and upload that file.

8:44So I'm going to upload a file. Now, I have given you this file if you want to play along. So I've got it just stored in this folder here, but you'll need to grab that from wherever you download it to. So I'm just going to upload that file and I'm going to ask Copilot to create a two paragraph summary of this document suitable for a senior executive. OK, so let's send that into Copilot and it's going to do that work for me.

9:14It was a nine page document. Remember, quite a lot of detail. And look, this document argues that the company's core wine business faces structural decline driven by blah, blah, blah. And sure enough, to execute the strategy, the document outlines three complementary product concepts. Now, that is a fantastic summary of that nine page document all in two paragraphs there. That's exactly what I wanted. But I could have done that with, well, let's just try, for example, here in Edge browser, because look, I can here also upload a file.

9:44And I could have asked that same question or in where is it in Chrome here? If I go into AI mode and similarly, I can upload a file and ask that same question. But that would mean I would be uploading that rather sensitive, strategic Word document to the Internet. And that is not good from a data protection point of view. Believe you me, your organization does not want you to use these other AI tools for your work questions, for your work data, because that is a data security risk.

10:16That is a leak of sensitive company data. I cannot emphasize that enough. So you must follow guidance provided, hopefully, by your IT folks about what tools you should and should not be using. And because you are a Microsoft 365 user, then I'm pretty sure that the advice is going to be stay within the Microsoft 365 app and keep an eye on the green shield just to give you confidence there. So I think I mentioned in the previous video that we need to think of Copilot as a family of AI assistants.

10:47So the Microsoft 365 Copilot app is the one that's protected as per that green shield we've just looked at. So therefore, the alternative is another flavor of Copilot, you know, the one we get just through the Edge browser and whatnot. That is part of the Copilot family, but it doesn't have the same assurances that the Microsoft 365 one does. And this non-Microsoft 365 Copilot experience also has its own app. So that's what this other Copilot icon is pinned to my taskbar here.

11:17So that, if I click that, that will take me to the app version of the non-Microsoft 365 Copilot assistant. And it's the same sort of thing, you know, it gives you a slightly more immersive experience. It gives you a bit more functionality, but this is not protected by that enterprise data protection. But by all means, use this for your personal stuff. Nothing wrong with that at all. So let's imagine. Oh, I don't know. Can you plan me an itinerary? Have I spelt that right? For two weeks in France with my camper van and dog?

11:55I don't like to drive more than three hours in one day. Yeah, by all means, go ahead and use just regular Copilot for this kind of personal stuff. It'll do a great job. But any work type queries. If you're thinking about uploading any work data, then you've got to be really careful. Always stick within the Microsoft 365 environment. And I could have even have done this same camping example in Microsoft 365 Copilot and it would have come up with similar results.

12:25But since this was obviously a non-work query, it made sense to me to use the non-Copilot. I'm quite intrigued now to see what it's going to come up with for this itinerary. Brilliant, it's come up with something interesting for me to look at there. And also, if you just look at the bottom left hand corner here, you can see that I'm logged in just with my personal Microsoft account and it's the free plan. That's fair enough. But for work stuff, here we go. This is what we should be using, the Microsoft 365 app. But also, while we're here, I should also just point out that there is also a mobile app that you can download.

13:00So while we're talking about apps, it seems like an apt place to mention the mobile app. And this, as you might imagine, if you're logged in with your work email address on your mobile device, this will mirror the conversations that you've been having in the desktop app here. So we can see this conversation that I had about summarising that document. And it will come as no surprise to you that I do indeed already have the Microsoft 365 Copilot mobile app installed on my Android device. And so let's just take a look at how the same Copilot response looks in that mobile app.

13:35So let me just flip to my other device. Right. You can see this is my phone and I've got the Microsoft 365 Copilot app installed on my phone just over on the right hand side here. So if I just go into that and I need to make sure that I am. Give it a second or two to load. Logged in with the same account. So it'll be the green beans organic wine account. There we are. I can see down the bottom there that, yes, I am logged in with the correct account. Excellent. So if I just take a quick look at the chats that I've already had, say executive summary request.

14:07Well, that is exactly the same request that we just did in the full app. You know, create a two page summary of this document, blah, blah, blah. And that's the result it gave me. Fantastic. So if you do like to use your mobile device, then you may consider downloading the Microsoft 365 Copilot app for your mobile device.

0:00You already know that Copilot within the Microsoft 365 environment provides that enterprise data protection as indicated by that green shield. But there is another kind of nuance in the Microsoft 365 Copilot experience that we do need to learn about. So picking up where we left off in the last video, you can see that I'm in the middle of this chat where we asked it to create a summary of that sensitive document that we're very glad was protected and kept within our Microsoft 365 environment. And what I'm just going to do on the left-hand side here, I'm just going to collapse these agents, you know, just going to tidy up a little bit.

0:35But also, I need to point out that if we're going to start another conversation with Copilot, it is best to start a new chat because it's going to keep any further messaging we have within the context of an existing chat. So I'm going to start a fresh new chat, so new chat. And what you'll start to see is that your chats will be building up down the left-hand side here, and we will talk in more detail in the next skill about using the ins and outs of the app, you know, another time. But anyway, I'm going to start a brand new chat with Copilot and I'm going to ask it, does Magenta fit in with our brand guidelines?

1:12And you can see that the autocomplete here is suggesting that because I did test this earlier. So let's hope that it comes up with the response that I'm expecting. But just to give you the scenario here before I send that into Copilot, let's imagine that I'm doing a bit of design work. I don't know, I'm putting together some materials and I want to know if I can use the bright pink Magenta color. Does that fit in with our corporate look and feel? So I'm going to ask Copilot and see if Copilot can answer that question for me. So let me send that on its way into Copilot. We'll give it a moment or two to chew on that. And throughout all of these recordings, I will be speeding up in the editing afterwards, you know, how long it takes to actually give me the response so you don't have to sit and look at a whirring screen for too long. But look, Copilot has said, based on your current brand guidelines, and it's providing me with a link to a document within my Microsoft 365 environment. Now, obviously, I can click that link to go and look at that or even list the key points from that document without me having to go and read it in its entirety or ask more details about that particular document. And, you know, the thing I'm trying to point out to you here is that it has found an appropriate document from within some SharePoint site or other within Microsoft 365 for green beans, organic wines, you know, this fictitious company,

2:28and it's been able to answer my question. So it's basically saying, no, do not use Magenta. And it's telling me what the approved colors actually are. So, you know, that's fantastic. So that document that it's pulled the information from is a document that I would have already had access to on whatever SharePoint site it lives on. So Copilot is not able to use documents that I don't already have the appropriate permissions to view. But the point is, I might not have known that document existed. In fact, though, if I go to, I think over here somewhere, yeah, I do have SharePoint already loaded. So if I knew that that document existed, I could have manually gone to it. So I think it's on the marketing site somewhere. So let's go to documents.

3:10But, you know, the point is, I don't, I didn't have to know that it was there and go and search for it. So there we go. There's the brand guidelines. I could have gone to look for that and found the answer myself, but I didn't have to because Copilot was able to give me the answer. So that's fantastic. But also, let me just pop back to the browser here. If I could just show you for my next example, that in my Outlook, let me just go to the Outlook calendar. So this is again for this fictitious demo account that I've got here. But just observe that I've got a few appointments in my calendar. So what I'm going to do this time for my next example, and again, I'm going to start a new chat because it's a different topic. Now, I could carry on with this same conversation if I had further questions about the brand guidelines and colours and whatnot.

3:52But, you know, I'm starting a fresh new conversation here. So I'm going to start a new chat and I'm going to ask it this time. Do I have a free two hour block in my calendar this week? Because I am too lazy to look at my Outlook calendar myself, I want Copilot to do it for me. So again, I'm going to give it a moment or two to go and have a look in my calendar to see what it suggests. And that's fantastic. So it's come up with, yes, there is a best available slot. So Friday morning, it looks like I do have three hours free. So it's after the team breakfast and before lunch. And yeah, so that's given me a bit of information there. That does look good. And because I'm a sceptical sort of person, let's just check that that is correct.

4:34And yes, we can see straight away on my calendar here that I do have this is the three hour block that it had identified in the answer to my question. So fantastic. Now, what I would like to point out to you is at the bottom left hand corner of the Copilot app that I'm using logged in with my demo Green Beans account, you can see here. Let me just zoom in that I'm using the Microsoft 365 Copilot premium experience. And if I click this little information button, what that means is it says your plan, Microsoft 365 Copilot. Your answers are powered by work IQ, which reasons over your meetings, emails, chats, files and more. So we have seen that in action. The responses that Copilot was giving me for those last two examples were taken from my actual work environment in my actual work files. And by the other example was my work calendar. So it's able to read those. And it's telling me here that this is powered by work IQ.

5:35And you will also sometimes see if you do look at any of the Copilot documentation that it's using the Microsoft graph, which is the technology that allows access to your Microsoft 365 data basically. And work IQ works with the Microsoft graph. And in fact, let me just zoom back out again. We could ask Copilot, what is the difference between work IQ and Microsoft graph? And let's just let's just correct my spelling mistake there. OK, so these are two technologies that you might hear about. And I think it'd be useful to see if it can summarize what the difference is between work IQ and Microsoft graph. Now, this is a bit of technical background detail that you as an end user, I do not expect you to care about the detail.

6:23But if you see reference to these technologies, then this is what it's talking about. So the core difference. So the Microsoft graph provides access to the data and work IQ is what it's described as an intelligence layer built on top of that data. So, yeah, you can see here a bit more detail. But I think for you, just be aware that there are technologies in the background that is supported because I've got this extra premium license that therefore allows Copilot to access that underlying data. And these are the two technologies that provide that. And for me, because I've got that premium license, look up here, I've got this little pair of buttons. Let me again just zoom in and you'll see that the work mode of this pair of buttons is currently switched on.

7:09That means I want the Copilot responses to prioritize information from Microsoft 365, my work data. But I could, if I preferred, say, no, please just use the web so I can switch between these two modes to determine what sources Copilot is going to use for the responses. And you might sometimes hear the term grounding. So if I choose work mode, then Copilot's responses are grounded in my Microsoft 365 data, in my work data, as opposed to being grounded only in the web. So that pair of buttons is there for me because I've got this premium account.

7:42But about halfway through recording this course, Microsoft decided to change this interface a little. And so I had to come back and edit this video because now my Microsoft 365 Copilot app looks like this. So instead of the work and web mode buttons, which were up here somewhere, well, instead, I've got this work IQ button. And when it's shaded like this, it means that work mode is switched on. So it's going to be using my work data, but I can click it to turn it off. So you can see it's now struck through, which is exactly the same as choosing the web mode instead. So this work IQ button works exactly the same way as the work and web mode buttons to switch between using my work data or just the internet. So I thought I'd better just mention that interface change so that when I talk about some of these other buttons and whatnot, do be aware that Microsoft makes small changes all the time. So the exact layout that you see might be different to the recordings. But anyway, back to the original video where I did have the work and web mode buttons because I have the premium Copilot account. So therefore I hear you cry.

8:47How does this look if you don't have the premium account? Well, what I can do, I can switch to one of the other users in my demo setup. And this alternative user is called Nora, Nora Nugget. So you can see down here, Nora Nugget is also in the green beans, organic wines demo setup here. And you can see that she only has the Copilot basic experience. You can see their Copilot basic as opposed to what I had, which was premium. And if I just click on the information bubble for Nora, you can see here your plan, Microsoft 365 Copilot basic responds using web data and anything you upload and anything you're viewing in the app. And it does also talk about AI assisted file editing, which we'll talk a bit more about in a different skill. But can you see that it's responding using web data? So for Nora, her responses are going to be grounded in the web rather than grounded in work. But if I just zoom back out again, because Nora is a Microsoft 365 user, you know, she's a business user. She's still look at the top right corner this time. She still has all of her conversations protected according to what we talked about in the last video. But the difference is she doesn't have that pair of buttons up here to be able to switch between work mode and web mode. So therefore, if Nora asks that same question

10:09that we tried logged in as me. So does Magenta fit in with our brand guidelines? And we'll see what Copilot does for Nora in response to that very same question. And it says, sorry, I don't have your specific brand guidelines to hand. So I can't give you a definitive yes or no. So it gives you a bit of random information about color branding and whatnot. But I'm hoping down here, so there we go. If you want, share your current color palette or your brand guidelines. Whoops, let's just scroll down again. And I'll give you a clear yes and no. So the point is for Nora, Copilot wasn't able to automatically go and look for an appropriate document and provide the answer directly. But Nora can point it to this particular file or upload the particular file. So let's just quickly do that. So Nora says, oh, yes, I do have the brand guidelines to hand, funnily enough.

11:00She says, where is it? There we go. So that's that same document that Copilot was able to find automatically for me when I'm logged in as me with that premium experience. So I said, use this document. And hopefully, if I send that into Copilot, Copilot will now be able to read the file and give me the give me the answer. So we'll see what it says. But can you see the difference here? Because Nora just has the basic experience. She has to know about the existence of that document in order to give it to Copilot. So for this particular example, she may as well have read the document herself. Ah, this is actually showing something that I wasn't anticipating and pointing out to you at this stage. But you can see that Copilot says, well, I tried to open that document you uploaded, but I'm currently hitting a file access limit. So Copilot has hit some kind of retrieval limit on their side. And if you just remind yourself of what we saw a minute ago about this particular plan that Nora has, it says availability may be limited during peak demand. So that was one of those limits that we've hit there. But generally speaking, Nora would be able to upload a file that then Copilot can use as part of its response.

12:04It can't find the file itself. We would have had to have uploaded it. And similarly, if I start a new chat and ask Copilot that same question that we tried about the calendar. So do I have a free two hour block in my calendar this week? And what we're expecting, now we know that Nora does not have the ability for Copilot to be able to look at her Microsoft 365 data. I'm expecting Copilot to say, sorry, I don't have access to your calendar or something like that. So we'll see what it comes up with. There we go. I don't have access to your calendar, so I can't check it directly. So look, bottom left hand corner again, where we saw that Nora just had that basic license, which is still protected, but can't access her work data.

12:52She does have the opportunity here to upgrade. And the reason why I wanted to show you this is because, yes, I mean, if you were the sort of person that actually gets involved in buying licenses, you could buy a new license. But look what Nora is going to do because she is just an end user who doesn't get involved in buying licenses. She's going to request a license. And what that will do, it will send a request to the admin who actually looks after the Microsoft 365 data and the Microsoft 365 setup within her organization. So let's imagine that she wants to be able to do this and this, so providing some sort of business justification for doing that.

13:28And Nora will be notified if the administrator approves the request for the purchase of that extra license for Nora so that she can have the premium experience like me. So she's just going to click OK to that. So really, just to round off this particular part of our learning, I'm going to pop back into being me. So my the, you know, the Simona login for the green beans, organic wines. And I am in charge of the purchases of the licensing for this demo organization. And this is the admin center, which you as an end user will never need to look at. But I'm just going to show you this briefly because I know here at CBT Nuggets, we do have an awful lot of IT folks that watch the training. It's not just end users. So as an IT admin, if we were to go into billing and then into licenses, what we will see is this demo organization has just purchased one copilot license. So one of one has been assigned and two Microsoft 365 licenses, two of two have been assigned. So the two E3 licenses have been assigned to me and Nora. Whereas if I just go back to this, you can see that the one and only copilot license has been assigned to just me and me only, not poor old Nora. And also at some point, it might not have come through yet, but on the

14:46left hand side here, license requests. So do you remember Nora did request a license? So sure enough, Nora has requested a license. It's pending there. So the IT folks could agree to either assign a license if they had some spare ones unassigned or to buy another license and assign it to Nora. So there has been some technical detail in this skill that I don't especially need you to remember. But as I said, the real showstopper that I do need you to be aware of as we progress through the rest of this course is that this extra license that we've been talking about is required if you want this premium experience so that copilot can directly access your work data and give you this work mode and web mode. And most of the examples I'll be doing throughout the rest of this course will be from my account where I have got that extra license to give me this premium experience.

0:01It is disconcertingly easy to get sucked into the world of AI. And for many of us, this is new uncharted territory. And so in this video, we're going to look at some good practices we should follow when using Copilot to make sure that we are using it responsibly. So the first thing is that we should observe that Copilot will always show us what sources it uses for the responses that it's giving to us. And therefore, we should check those sources. So what I would like you to do, well, you can see that I've already done something here. But what I'd like you to do is ask Copilot a question on a topic that you already have some knowledge of or an area that you have some expertise.

0:38So you can see here I'm logged in as Nora, one of my demo accounts in the Microsoft 365 world. And I've just asked a question of Copilot. How is Microsoft Copilot licensed? So as I scan through the response here, I can see these little references here. These are the citations telling me where Copilot got that bit of information from. And obviously, these are all clickable. So these are the sources that have been cited. And as I scan through these here, I can see, yes, Microsoft's been used as a source lots of different times, which is great.

1:08And if you go to the end, what you'll see, there we go. It will list all of the sources together for you here. So that's great. I've got that transparency. I can see where Copilot has got the response from. So as I say, hopefully you tried an example in an area where you have some expertise, and that will allow you to scan these citations to get a feel for, are these sources that I trust? You know, am I happy to use a response that has been drawn from some of these sources? Now, for me, given what I know about how much misinformation there is on the Internet around how Microsoft solutions are licensed, I'm not that happy with all of this. So what I'm going to do is just close that sources down.

1:47And I'm going to refine this response by saying, hmm, make this a 200 word summary. So I'm trying to refine the length of the response. And in the next skill, we will talk a bit more about how to create these good prompts in order to get the output you want. But I'm going to say make this a 200 word summary and only use sources from Microsoft. So I'm being very specific about what sources I want it to use. So this is going to give me a more refined output that I am happy with. I mean, I am responsible for what I use that Copilot has generated.

2:22So I can scan this and I can see, yeah, that's much more succinct. All of this has come from Microsoft. And yeah, I'm happy with that. So always check the sources. And the second point I want you to be aware of is that these AI assistants like Copilot aren't afraid to make things up if they don't quite understand your query or if they don't have quite enough information to fulfill what they think you want. So I've got an example here that I was playing around with before I started recording. So, again, I'm logged in as Nora. You can see I'm in Outlook here.

2:53And Nora has started to create an email. She's uploaded this file. And I kept the Copilot window open to show you what happened when I was playing around with this earlier. Now, of course, later on in this course, we will talk in more detail about using Copilot in Outlook. But the point I wanted to show you here was that Nora had started a brand new blank email and uploaded a file and then used Copilot with this prompt here. So write an email to Martin. So let's imagine Nora is sending an email to a co-worker called Martin summarizing Manchester highlights because, look, this file that she attached, this Excel file.

3:28In fact, I can show you the file has got three different tabs here for Manchester, Paris and London. So she just wants these Manchester figures, you know, some interesting insights for Martin. So that's what she asked Copilot to do. And sure enough, Copilot said, I've prepared a draft email for you to Martin. And it's giving me this paragraph. Well, a whole email. It says, Hi, Martin. I wanted to share a quick summary of the key highlights from our Manchester activities. Strong engagement, blah, blah, blah. Noticeable blah, blah, blah. Positive feedback. Well, I've just shown you the Excel file. There is nothing in here about stakeholder feedback or whatever else it said.

4:03So this has been, whoops, where was it? This has been completely fabricated. And look, it was far too easy for me to just glance at that and click the edit and send button, which pops it into an email here and enables me to send it on its way. So this is what we call fabrication or hallucination. It has been totally made up. But I am quite pleased to say that I had quite a tough time trying to get an example of fabrication to show you with Copilot in Microsoft 365. Most of the examples I was playing around with before I hit record, it said, sorry, I don't really have enough information to answer that or I don't have any specific details for your organization.

4:40But here are some general insights. You know, it did tell me that it was kind of making it up. But this was a good example where there's nothing there that says that it's completely made it up. Anyway, another thing to be aware of. So we talked about checking sources, checking for fabrication like this. Another thing to be aware of is any potential bias, because the AI response is only as good as the data that it's using. So historically throughout, you know, throughout our lives, we've had biases in data that's been captured.

5:10And I've got a fairly sort of stereotypical example to show you here. I think I had it. There we go. Just in regular Copilot here, not in the Microsoft 365 one. And look, I asked Copilot to draft a paragraph summarizing the main symptoms of a heart attack. And I'm glad that it understood my spelling error there. But look, it says here. So this is just a single paragraph. It says a heart attack typically comes on with crushing or tight chest pain that may spread to the arm. And that's exactly what I expected it to lead with. Now, I'm pleased to say that it did.

5:41In this one paragraph it produced, it did say that in women we may have more subtle signs like unusual fatigue, because I learned quite recently that this this pain going from the chest to the arm is most commonly experienced by men. Women don't often get that particular symptom. So I was pleased to say that it did, as an afterthought, mention that that might be different for women. But it still led with the very typical response that we see heart attacks being displayed like that in white men. So that reflects some underlying bias in the data that's out there on the Internet, because although I'm no medical expert, I believe that historically medical data has been largely gathered from white men.

6:22And so if you're not a white man, then your symptoms might be different. But the point I'm trying to make is that if that underlying data that Copilot is using is skewed, then that potential bias will be amplified by your assistant confidently stating that as a fact. And I did progress this conversation by saying, does this apply to both men and women and across different ethnic groups? And then it did expand a little on where differences do appear. So do be aware and on the lookout for any underlying potential bias. And then finally, be alert to inputting sensitive data into Copilot.

6:57And when we're talking about sensitive data, we're talking about company strategy and company competitive information or customer data or personally identifiable information or passwords, bank details, all of that sort of stuff. So if you're just using regular Copilot here in Edge, well, there's no data protection guaranteed here at all. We've talked about that before. So you should not be entering in any sensitive data if you're just using regular Copilot through the Edge browser here. Now, that's going to be a little bit different if you're using Microsoft 365 Copilot, because as we know, that is protected with those assurances from Microsoft that whatever you input here isn't used for training the underlying models that these AI assistants use.

7:38But you should be following your company guidelines as to what you are able to share when, you know, having a Copilot conversation within the Microsoft 365 environment. And I think for me, I think to myself, OK, what I'm about to input here might be a bit sensitive, but would I be allowed to share what I'm about to type in here with a co-worker? And if you would be, then it should be OK to share it with Copilot in Microsoft 365. But if not, then you shouldn't. But as I say, your organization should have guidelines around that. So make sure you follow your own internal policies.

0:01Hopefully you didn't find this challenge too tricky. The first task was to get Copilot to generate a paragraph of text you can use in an email to your manager to ask for that extra Copilot licence. You can see here the prompt that I used and as indicated in the task we want to make sure it only uses sources from Microsoft. This is the response I got. I thought that was a bit wordy, a bit too marketing-y but as we will learn in the next skill and as you might want to try now you could ask it to refine it a bit and make it a bit shorter or to make it less sort of sales-y.

0:33But yeah, hopefully you've got something that you could potentially use if you do indeed find yourself in need of that extra Copilot licence. And then task number two, using Copilot to create a one-page kind of like a cheat sheet on how to use AI responsibly that you could share with your team. So I think I did that as Nora. So there we go. This is what I typed in. Create a one-page sheet on how to use AI responsibly to share with my team. We all use Microsoft 365 with the extra Copilot licence. Now I wanted you to add that bit on just to make sure that it did give you valid best practices knowing exactly what you're using.

1:04But I think this was quite an interesting output. So yes, using AI responsibly and yeah, scanning through this I think there was some really good points here. So if your organisation does not already have any guidelines this sort of thing could be a really good starting point for producing some guidelines for other people to use in order to ensure that everybody is using AI responsibly.