Microsoft 365 Copilot, Your Microsoft best friend
Enterprise Agreement (EA) customers can soon start using Microsoft 365 Copilot as demonstrated by Microsoft starting first with Windows 11, followed by Edge and Bing. A minimum of 300 seat purchase is required for EA customers. Copilot transforms how work is done by leveraging large language models that interact with organizational data.
Microsoft 365 Copilot works alongside you (organizational data or information). Assuming you want to write a business proposal in Word format, Copilot can write an entire new document. This is possible as Copilot uses content from your own existing files and in instances where you want to reply emails in Outlook, Copilot can compose the replies for you based on content selected.
As a user of Copilot, you are also able to, in the case of PowerPoint, transform written content into visually well-composed presentations with the click of a button.
When it comes to Teams, you can use Copilot to generate meeting summaries laced with follow-up actions and discussions. Another feature is the ability to use business chat in Microsoft Teams to catch up on any information missed. All these features are possible through the bringing together of information from multiple sources to bring you up to speed.
In het kort
How Large Language Models (LLM) work in Microsoft 365 Copilot
The ability of Microsoft 365 Copilot to write business proposals, compose email replies and transform written content into visuals for presentations is because of the Large Language Model it works with.
In all the above scenarios, LLM works on a knowledge acquisition model. The Large Language Model gets its knowledge as a result of trained large amounts of public data, which includes books, articles and websites learning language, context and meaning in the process. Note however that, in all of this, the process respects privacy and keeps data safe.
Also, there is a “prompt” scenario that powers the Large Language Model. The prompt is carried out by simply asking a question or making a statement. Asking a question or making a statement in the prompt, triggers the LLM to produce response(s) based on its public data training. It will also give you responses based on the understanding of the context which is a part of how phrases are coined in the prompt.
The continuous asking of questions and getting responses enables the Large Language Model to temporarily get more context. Each subsequent prompt gets your full conversation sent to the LLM to generate relevant responses.
Core Components of Microsoft 365 Copilot
There is the Large Language Models hosted in the Microsoft cloud via the Azure OpenAI service. Copilot does not use the public OpenAI service that powers ChatGPT. Microsoft 365 Copilot, when in use, takes information from its own set apart instances of the Large Language Models.
Copilot capabilities are integrated into and compatible with Microsoft 365 apps. Microsoft Search is used for information retrieval to feed prompts and is used to help generate an answer.
The other component of Microsoft 365 Copilot is an orchestration engine. The Copilot orchestrator searches the Microsoft Graph for activities, ensuring it respects the user’s permissions and access to information in the process.
There is also the Microsoft Graph, which has long been foundational to Microsoft 365. This provides supplementary details regarding the relationships and activities related to your organization’s data. The Copilot system upholds per user access permissions for all retrieved content and graph information. This is crucial because Microsoft 365 Copilot will only generate responses based on the information accessible to you through explicit permission.
When a user asks a question in the form of a prompt in Copilot, the question or prompt is not directly to the Large Language Model. Instead, Copilot seeks more knowledge and context. It uses clues from the user’s question and is able to deduce that it needs to search for content sources relating to the organization in order to provide answers.
Microsoft 365 Copilot working for you
- Copilot removes the tedious tasks of performing manual steps of writing business proposal and email replies as stated earlier.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot can help save you time in the apps you are working on by generating content.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot can help generate a draft proposal by using content you have been working on. You working in OneNote or other documents that you have access to, like Word or PowerPoint files are examples.
- Copilot also combines Large Language Model’s training on how a proposal document is structured and then written with Microsoft 365 Copilot Orchestration for you.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot scans and takes relevant inputs from additional documents you have selected, adding the information to the prompt.
For further information on Microsoft 365 Copilot and how to acquire, license and use it to advance the productivity of your organization, contact our team of experienced Microsoft licensing experts for support today.