Using Microsoft Copilot - Initial Impressions
This was originally produced as a podcast, you can listen here. But for those of you who prefer to read, I hope you enjoy the below.
WHAT IS COPILOT?
Copilot, now renamed Copilot Pro, integrates AI functionality directly into standard Microsoft apps like Word, PowerPoint, Teams, and Excel.
It effectively layers a large language model across all of your own files, emails, calendar, documents. It’s like having a personalised chat GPT based on your own data and so you draft documents, emails, create summaries all based on your own work.
One confusion is that Bing Chat has been rebranded as Copilot. So if you’ve been using Bing Chat and now see it’s called Copilot, it doesn’t mean you have the full Copilot Pro throughout all your programmes but you can use Copilot basically just like the free Chat GPT. It actually (at non peak times) even gives you access to GPT 4 without paying for it like you have to do with Chat GPT Plus so definitely worth giving it a try.
Copilot Pro, is a subscription costs around £30 a month per licence for businesses and £19 per month for individuals so even if your business is not rolling it out yet you can get a personal subscription and start testing it.
WHY WOULD YOU BUY A COPILOT LICENCE?
In the early testing they’ve found it saves people on average 14 minutes a day. This isn’t ground-breaking YET but that’s about an hour a week, for £30 a month to save 4/5 hours, it’s likely cheaper than your hourly rate.
Businesses have to pay for a whole year – £355 for each license.
One caveat on the personal subscription: the functionality is highly dependent on the files that your Copilot Pro account has access to. If, for example, work across two different businesses, two different email addresses, two different Microsoft accounts. I’ve only bought a Copilot licence for one of those businesses. I cannot use Copilot Pro to access files saved in the other businesses sharepoint.
I think it’s probably worth getting it, if you’re curious to test it out buy yourself a personal subscription, but remember you likely won’t appreciate its full capacity until it’s embedded across all your files.
HOW HAVE I USED IT THIS WEEK?
Now bear in mind this literally came out on Tuesday, it’s now Friday but I will continue to update as my experience develops.
But here are my two favourite uses cases so far:
ASKING QUESTIONS ABOUT YOUR OWN WORK
Firstly, the chat interface. With a Pro account you can go on to the old Bing Chat and toggle it from web to work. You can then ask it questions about your own work. For example, there was a project I was working on that paused last spring. I asked Copilot Pro “can you remind the key points about this project”. Just like Chat GPT generates text script, it generated a short summary. For example
Project A was to develop a small office building on this Site 1, feasibility studies were conducted with the team from x y z, this produced three options(then it lists the options).
Most importantly it references its sources so you can check that the info is coming from, say, the “issued” version of a file.
Just imagine the amount of time you waste, looking for past documents, projects. How often do you ask “where did we get to on that project?”, “what did we bid on that building back in 2015?”, “what was the board feedback from that proposal in 2021”.
Assuming you have the files, and in that case the minutes, all stored with correct access permissions in your One Drive, it should come up with useful, time-saving info.
GENERATING COHERENT POWERPOWER SCRIPTS
Another way I’ve used it this week was to generate scripts from PowerPoint slides.
I typically use very sparse slides and yet it wrote a comprehensive script.
It did hallucinate - on one slide I had 3 bullets about three different planning situations. It mixed them all up and invented some detail about houses in San Diego, I can assure you I have not worked on any houses in San Diego.
So as always, you have to double and triple check but the general message at the moment is it’s a great starting point, it can get you to a good first draft.
FILE STORAGE
On this point of file storage, key to Copilot's functionality is the Semantic Index.
Simply put, semantic index is an index that can understand context, so you don’t need to search for exact words anymore.
For example if you were looking for a lease for a building, in your files, traditionally you would have to search the precise file name. In contrast a semantic index would understand, for example, that Brewer Street is in Soho so if you searched for leases in Soho it would come up with the Brewer Street document.
A good analogy, I must admit that Chat GPT gave me, is that semantic index is like being able to ask librarian if you’re looking for a book in the library and don’t remember the exact title. You could say to the Librarian, “oh it’s a book by Jane somebody, that 18th century author and the title is something to do with Ego” and the librarian could say “oh you mean Jane Austen’s pride and prejudice”.
So why do you need to know about the semantic index? Because that helps to understand if you want copilot pro to give you better results, it needs more context, so the more files you have saved properly in your sharepoint, one drive, the better the results will be.
Just imagine two organisations, one has everything saved in share point, all the access permissions are properly controlled so everyone who is meant to access a file easily and quickly can. And another organisation where everyone’s files are saved on their desktops or even in their own personal One Drive files, they are not in team or project folders, they can’t be easily accessed other than over email.
The first organisation would be able to buy Copilot and go into Microsoft Word or PowerPoint today and say “write me a presentation on these projects from our company, share the biggest risks and costs” and Copilot could draft something pretty decent passable.
If the second company tried to do that, with files saved disparately all over the place they would get, frankly, pretty crappy, patchy results.
And it’s this point on file access which is a real point of risk.
If, for example, your boss has saved somewhere by accident this years bonus analysis spreadsheet in a file that is not completely private to them, somewhere that they don’t realise is actually a team-wide site not a personal site, then you could just search “what was so and so‘s bonus in 2023, what was their performance review, what was their one to one meeting notes”.
I am sure that scandals will happen this year because employees end up being able to extract more information than intended. If you’re someone who sometimes uses cryptic file names for things you don’t want other people to open that will not cut it as a strategy any more.
So simply any organisation’s priority before implementing Copilot far and wide, should be to make sure you’ve got good systems in place.
WHAT DOES COPILOT PRO MEAN FOR THE REAL ESTATE INDUSTRY?
I think this is great for the industry.
In my experience, most real estate businesses are still Microsoft based. This means adopting Copilot Pro is easy and feels comfortable. It’s embedded in the systems people know and have used for decades.
We’re a very document heavy, email heavy industry so anything that can start to cut through the layers of documentation, make it easier to find things, pull together information from different sources is great.
The most obvious parts of the industry to benefit will be people writing long, reports in similar but not precise replicated formats like valuers
People like development managers who have to constantly compile information from numerous sources will also be an obvious beneficiary. Honestly however, I think it will, it should, improve everyone’s productivity to some degree.
So happy Copiloting!
Please note the author has no relationship with Microsoft and this does not constitute buying or technical advice. The author is simply sharing their own thoughts and experiences.