Your company has Microsoft 365 Copilot licences, and half the team tried it once. They typed "help me with this email", got a bland answer, and went back to doing it by hand.
The fix is a better prompt. Tell Copilot what you want and where to look, then test it on work you'd be doing anyway. The prompts below are a starting point for each app.
Copilot can see your emails, meetings, chats and files (only what you already have access to). A generic prompt ignores all of that.
A good prompt has 4 parts: a goal, some context, a source and your expectations. The goal is required, and the rest make the answer better. See Microsoft's guide to Copilot prompts for the full framework.
Summarise the meeting I missed yesterday. List the decisions and action items, with an owner for each.
Create a table of tasks I need to complete from my emails over the past week. Include who asked and the due date. Keep it concise.
Draft a one-page project update for {{ CLIENT_NAME }} based on {{ FILE_NAME }}. Use a friendly, professional tone with 3 headings.
Analyse this table and tell me the 3 biggest trends in plain English. Show a chart for the biggest one.
What did {{ PERSON_NAME }} and I last agree on for {{ PROJECT_NAME }}? Check my emails and Teams chats from the last month.
Once the basics work, try the features that go further than chat.
Researcher takes a few minutes to search the web and your work data, then writes a report with sources. Use it when a quick chat answer isn't enough.
Research how {{ TOPIC }} is handled in our emails, Teams chats and SharePoint files from the last 3 months. Give me a one-page report with sources.
Pin files, meeting notes and links in one place, then prompt across all of them. This tests whether Copilot sticks to your content.
Using only the items in this notebook, summarise the open risks for {{ PROJECT_NAME }} and list who owns each one.
Use it for a document you know exists but can't find. You get an answer plus the source file.
Find the proposal {{ PERSON_NAME }} sent about {{ CLIENT_NAME }} last quarter. Show me the file and who it was shared with.