In the last of our Microsoft 365 Copilot specific guides for now, we will take a look at what the new AI tools bring to the venerable email app Outlook.
Summarising
There's currently three broad functions to the Outlook Copilot tool. The first of these is in providing summaries of either everything in your inbox for further investigation, or for a specific email - maybe that you've been copied into mid conversation and has a massive existing thread included. We won't delve into too much detail into this process as it's fairly self-explanatory, and any screenshots we might include would naturally contain so many confidential details they'd just be one big blur! You'll find the button to provide the summary in the top right when you have an email open or selected.
Text generation
Copilot for Outlook can also draft an email for you from scratch based on a prompt you provide. As is always the case, the more detail you include in your prompt, the closer it will be to what you were hoping for. To begin this process, find the Copilot icon in the top ribbon when you have a new mail or reply open:
You may have a larger version of the icon above depending on how you have your ribbon set
In the example below, we're going to draft an email from scratch. However, this also works for replies, and you can ask Copilot to reference content from existing text in the email thread in its generated response. Here, let's ask Copilot to generate an email that informs the company that we're going to be rolling out Copilot.
You can add extra detail about the tone you want to adopt or extra details about the process for it to include, but we'll leave it at that here and hit "Generate".
Copilot will then provide a suggested draft that you can use as a starting point (or use as-is if it's spot on). There's option to refine under the "Adjust" button, including changing the length, or changing the tone. If and when you're happy with what it has generated, just hit "Keep" for it to move that text into the main email body for you to tweak as necessary.
Finessing
The last feature included in Outlook Copilot is called "Coaching". This will analyse the text in an email you've written and suggest potential improvements before you send it. Let's give it a go:
Oh dear - Steve's not having a good day. By clicking the Copilot icon noted earlier and selecting "Coaching by Copilot", let's see if it can find some ways to avoid a meeting with HR...
Fortunately, Copilot has indeed identified the main problems in the email and has suggested decent alternatives. As the tone is the main problem with the email, we've shown those suggestions above, but as you can see, there's additional suggestion for Reader Sentiment and Clarity included as well.
It's probably worth noting that we've used the "Classic" version of Outlook in the examples above. The new version contains the same options. The only difference is the method to select them is slightly different.