Lesson Content

**Feature Availability Notice**: The features described in this lesson require Microsoft 365 Copilot – an add-on subscription to Microsoft 365 that is separate from standard Microsoft 365 plans. Availability of specific in-app features varies by subscription tier. Verify your organization's access level with your IT administrator and check current capabilities at microsoft.com.

Copilot in Outlook – what it can do.

Where Microsoft 365 Copilot is enabled, Copilot can appear directly within the Outlook email experience to:

• Draft emails: Open a new email compose window and request Copilot to draft based on your brief
• Summarize long email threads: Get the key points, decisions made, and action items from a long conversation
• Coach your writing: Get feedback on tone, clarity, and appropriateness before sending
• Prepare for meetings: Based on meeting invitations and email context, prepare a summary of what is relevant to know going in

Using Copilot in Outlook effectively.

Email drafting: Provide the same brief-first framework from the writing courses – who, purpose, key points, tone. Copilot's in-Outlook drafts are a starting point, not a finished product.

Thread summarization: Especially powerful for returning to email threads after time away. Ask: "Summarize this thread – what decisions were made, what actions were agreed upon, and what is still unresolved?"

Critical review step for Outlook.

Every email drafted or revised with Copilot is sent under your professional identity. Before sending:

• Read the complete email
• Verify that every claim and commitment is accurate
• Verify that the tone is appropriate for this specific recipient and relationship
• Never assume Copilot understood context you did not explicitly provide

Copilot in Teams – meeting intelligence.

Where Microsoft 365 Copilot is enabled in Teams, Copilot can participate in your meetings (with participant notification requirements – check your organization's requirements) to:

• Generate meeting summaries: After a meeting, a summary of what was discussed, decided, and committed to
• Extract action items: Who agreed to do what by when
• Answer questions during meetings: "What have we decided so far?" in an ongoing meeting
• Generate follow-up communications: Draft the follow-up email based on the meeting summary

Critical review step for Teams meeting summaries.

AI meeting summaries can: miss nuance, misattribute statements, omit important context, or flatten the complexity of what was actually discussed. Before distributing any meeting summary as an official record:

• Compare against the actual recording or your own notes
• Verify that action items are correctly attributed
• Ensure that agreed decisions are accurately represented
• Have another meeting participant review critical summaries

Privacy considerations for organizational communication.

When Copilot operates within your organizational Microsoft 365 environment, it has access to your email and meeting data within your organizational tenant. This is how it can provide context-aware assistance. Review your organization's Copilot governance policy – IT administrators can configure what data Copilot can access and how it is used within your organization. Do not share sensitive information in contexts you would not share in any other Microsoft 365 tool.