An Outlook on Copilot – the future of AI in the workplace?

The utilisation of AI in the workplace is accelerating, and one of the most popular, new AI tools currently being explored is Microsoft’s AI tool, Copilot.

Over the past few months, our MD, Mark Tunstall, has been using Copilot in his day-to-day working life, and whilst understanding that it’s still early days for the tech, he’s summarised his thoughts on the AI tool across a range of different Microsoft products.

“I’m Mark Tunstall, Managing Director of Orca and in this article, I’ll be giving my thoughts on Copilot, which I’ve been using now for a few months.

Outlook Desktop

Let’s start with Outlook, and in particular the Outlook Desktop application. Now, in my opinion, this felt like it was a rushed product. You need to be on the latest version of the Outlook Desktop to use Copilot, so I upgraded to this, which is where my initial problems began. There were various functionality in the latest version that just didn’t work, which is what led to it feeling like a rushed product.

So eventually, I ended up reverting to the old version of Outlook Desktop, which was quite disappointing. As a result, I can’t give it anything other than a D-.

Outlook Web Access

So, next, I trialed Outlook Web Access. Unlike the desktop app, you automatically get the latest version of Outlook, and I felt in here there were fewer bugs and glitches. Here, you can start to see the benefits of the AI technology kicking in as well. For example, if you ask it to write or summarise an email for you, it’ll do this, and it’ll do this quite well.

The real issue that I found with Copilot in doing this is the lack of learning about you, your personality, and your style of writing. It sounds and feels a bit Americanised and doesn’t quite come across as me. As a result, you tend to end up having to make lots of amendments to the content that it generates, meaning you end up spending as much time correcting it as you would just writing it out yourself in the first place.

I’m unconvinced by Copilot here, but at least it’s showing some potential, and for these reasons, I’ll give it a C-.

Copilot Word

So now looking at Word, to me there are real benefits here, certainly after the disappointment of Outlook. Now if you ask Copilot in Word to write content, it does a good job – it’s accurate and whilst it can sound slightly generic and robotic  it’s less of an issue than when writing content in Outlook (as when writing an email, it needs more of your personality).

Copilot in Word’s content summarisation is good as well, although one thing to be aware of is that if you’re asking it to generate content for you, it will warn you that it may be incorrect. Whilst it’s early days and you can therefore forgive that, if you’re having to fact-check the information inside the document all the time, does this affect the time saved by having the AI write it for you in the first place?

I can see some benefits here. A positive B+.

Copilot Excel

Now with Excel, I may be a little over-critical. The reason for this is that I like to think of myself as a bit of a power-user.

For me, Copilot in Excel felt weak. As a casual user, I could see some benefits through things such as trend analysis, insights and maybe help with formulas, but these are things I’m used to and quite ok with already.

However, as a finance professional, such as an accountant, I think the benefits will be lower. It felt rather beginner-level, and whilst the formulas help may be occasionally useful, I’m unconvinced.

Now, it’s still early days for Copilot and it may improve from the basics, but that’s not my biggest issue here. My biggest problem is that it only works if the document is stored in SharePoint, and I have to ask why. It feels unnecessary, this isn’t the case with either Word or Outlook, so I couldn’t understand Microsoft’s insistence on forcing you to work their way – very frustrating.

Purely for this reason, I’m going to have to give it an E-.

Copilot Teams

Finally, I’ve looked at Copilot for Teams, and this is where the AI felt genuinely useful. Whilst it’s limited in what it can do, what it does do, it does well. In particular, the transcription is hugely useful when you combine it with the AI. Summarising is good and you can pull out the action points, (annoyingly, some of these were missed upon occasion, so be sure to do a second check of these)  so overall this was good.

As a result, I’m going to give this a C-.

Summary

So, having used Copilot in a range if Microsoft applications over the past few months, and assessing the advantages as well as some of its initial issues, I can definitely see plenty of helpful bits, but overall I’m underwhelmed. It feels rushed, incomplete, compromised and it’s held back – Microsoft do need to do some extra work on it.

My opinion is that Microsoft are part of the problem here. I wish they would stop rushing to get the tech out and take a little more time to get it right. I also really wish they’d stop forcing users to work how they want you to work, as this really will hold people back.

Overall, a D, below average. Although it’s early days, and I do look forward to future developments.”