Artificial intelligence (AI) promises big changes to the workforce and that includes the managed service provider (MSP) business. You need to be ready to implement AI tools and educate your clients about how to best use them for their needs. Among these new AI tools, Microsoft Copilot stands out as a game-changer due to the ubiquity of Microsoft solutions, with which Copilot is integrated. Read on to learn the latest about Microsoft Copilot and how it can make a difference in your business and the business of your customers.
What is Copilot?
Microsoft Copilot is an AI-powered productivity tool that’s designed to assist users in creating, designing, and collaborating more effectively within Microsoft 365 and other applications. It seeks to increase productivity for organizations of all sizes, including small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), by generating content based on user prompts within Microsoft apps.
Copilot goes beyond traditional productivity tools by offering personalized and interactive ways to access web content, applications, and organizational data. It does this by integrating organizational data with Microsoft Graph and the Microsoft 365 apps that businesses use every day, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. This helps users gain relevant insights from their data and start creating faster.
Copilot is based on Microsoft’s Prometheus large language model (LLM), which was built using OpenAI’s GPT-4 LLM as a foundation. It was first launched as Bing Chat in February 2023.
What is available now for Copilot and what can it do for your clients?
If you have an ENTRA ID, Copilot (formerly Bing Chat Enterprise) is free and included with all eligible Microsoft 365 SKUs. Copilot can help you and your clients create marketing materials and internal documents, summarize content, write code, answer complex questions, and more.
Here are some examples of what Copilot can do within Microsoft 365 apps:
- Word: Draft a proposal based on provided data from other documents, such as from Word, Excel, or PDFs.
- Excel: Simplify sales data by type and channel, then create a table from them.
- PowerPoint: Create a new presentation based on provided documents, including stock photos.
- Outlook: Summarize emails missed during time off, draft response emails, and sharpen tone of email copy.
- Teams: Get up to speed on conversations by quickly reviewing the main points, action items, and decisions without having to scroll through long threads.
Copilot is also available or will be coming soon to augment a variety of Microsoft apps you and your clients may be using, including:
- Dynamics 365 Copilot: This offers AI-powered assistance across business functions such as sales, service, marketing, operations, and supply chain, improving customer and employee experiences and increasing operational efficiency for Microsoft’s customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution.
- Copilot in Power Platform: An AI-powered assistant is now built into Microsoft’s suite of business intelligence, app development, and app connectivity applications, helping app makers build solutions and get suggestions for improvements.
- Microsoft Security Copilot: AI boosts Microsoft’s cybersecurity solution with tailored insights to better defend organizations with increased agility.
- Copilot Studio: This gives organizations a low-code tool to build and publish plugins directly to Copilot for Microsoft 365, helping organizations customize their Copilot experience as well as customer interfaces to improve responses and response times.
In addition, users can activate Copilot for Web to enable myriad benefits:
- Summarized search: Users can quickly conduct research and receive a summary of any topic by using advanced web search, image search, and news search capabilities.
- Search by images: Upload an image and Copilot can process it to aid in its output.
- AI-powered art: People can quickly create graphic artwork from prompts with Dall-E’s AI art capabilities.
- Suggested follow-ups: Copilot will suggest follow-up questions to your prompt, helping guide your web journey.
Copilot is available now for all users with an Entra ID. Use your Entra identity to login at https://copilot.microsoft.com/.
Can I use Copilot within my MSP business?
Copilot isn’t just for your clients; it has many benefits that you can use directly in your business. Here are some key features available now that can help you optimize your MSP:
- Research and learning: MSPs can harness Copilot’s advanced web search, image search, and news search capabilities to effectively research and learn about topics, ensuring they stay ahead in the ever-changing tech landscape.
- Graphic artwork creation: The integration of Dall-E’s AI art capabilities allows MSPs to create and present graphic artworks that align seamlessly with their prompts, enhancing the visual aspects of their presentations and communications.
- Specialized Copilot experiences: Microsoft extends Copilot experiences to various tools like Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Security Copilot, and Copilot Studio, tailoring AI-powered assistance to specific business functions, security needs, and customization requirements.
How to get started with Copilot
To get started with Copilot, it’s important to get the organization AI-ready. To prepare, start by migrating data to Azure and working with Microsoft 365 to build the foundation for the organization’s AI future.
Currently, Microsoft 365 users can use their Entra ID to connect to Copilot on the Web. Once signed in, users can begin chatting and generating content. Here are some solutions MSPs can implement to get clients ready:
- Implement Microsoft 365: Ahead of Microsoft 365 Copilot being released to Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), it’s imperative that interested clients learn how Microsoft 365 brings together identity, apps, organizational data, and security to become AI-ready. Start activating Microsoft 365 Business Premium, E3, or E5 for your clients today.
- Security: Begin adopting Microsoft security solutions such as Defender, Sentinel, and Lighthouse.
- Dynamics: Start using Dynamics 365 today; if you’re already a Dynamics user, activate the preview to learn how Copilot can impact your current CRM and ERP processes.
- GitHub: To use GitHub Copilot, you need to have a GitHub account and a Visual Studio Code editor. Then you can sign up for the Copilot technical preview and follow the instructions to install the Copilot extension. Once you have Copilot installed, you can start using it in any file that has a supported language mode. You can also use Copilot in GitHub Codespaces, which are cloud-based development environments that you can access from any browser.
More tips on how to use Copilot effectively
To maximize the benefits of Microsoft Copilot, MSPs can follow these tips for effective implementation and client success:
- Write clear and descriptive comments or docstrings for your functions and classes. Copilot will use them to generate relevant code suggestions and documentation.
- Use meaningful variable names and follow the coding conventions of your language and framework. Copilot will learn from your style and preferences and adapt to them.
- Suggestions should be reviewed, chosen, and edited to best align with needs. While Copilot is a powerful tool, it’s not a replacement for human judgment and creativity.
- Provide feedback to Copilot to help it perform better. By accepting or rejecting suggestions, Copilot will learn preferences and improve over time.
- Explore different modes and settings offered by Copilot to customize the experience. You can also adjust the confidence level, the number of suggestions, and the keyboard shortcuts of Copilot to suit your preferences.
- Use GitHub Copilot to generate whole functions, write tests, and fill in missing arguments.
- For enhanced customization, you can try Microsoft Copilot Studio, which also lets you build, test, and launch standalone Copilots and manage their access, data, user controls, and analytics.
- Encourage your clients to migrate data to Azure to improve performance, security, and computing cost when utilizing Copilot. Pax8 can assist with any migration projects you may have — learn more about Pax8 Professional Services.
In conclusion, Microsoft Copilot is not just a tool; it’s a transformative force that can reshape how MSPs operate and deliver value to clients. By staying informed about current features, upcoming releases, and implementing effective strategies, MSPs can harness the full potential of Copilot, paving the way for a more productive and innovative future in the realm of AI-powered productivity tools.
