Exercise (optional) - Build a presentation from start to finish

Completed

Exercise

Imagine you're a senior marketing manager at Contoso. Your team is preparing for an executive meeting where you need to present the company's strategy for a new Chai Tea product line to be sold in Latin America. Your audience includes regional vice presidents and a CFO who expects data-backed recommendations. You have a business plan and a separate market research report to draw from. Your goal is to produce a polished, data-informed presentation efficiently without starting from scratch.

By the end of this exercise, you plan a narrative with Idea Coach, create a presentation from two source files with specific output parameters, generate and refine speaker notes for a CFO audience, use the Explain feature to review a chart, and complete a final coaching pass with Copilot in PowerPoint.

Download sample files

Throughout this exercise, you craft prompts that reference these files. Download both files and save them to your OneDrive folder before you continue.

• Promotion Plan for Chai Tea in Latin America.docx
• Market Analysis Report for Mystic Spice Premium Chai Tea.docx

Note

If either file hasn't synced to your OneDrive yet, wait a few minutes and refresh the file picker. You can start the planning step while you wait.

Plan your narrative with Idea Coach

Before you open PowerPoint, use Idea Coach to define your narrative. A focused planning prompt now produces a stronger first draft and requires less revision later.

1. Open the Microsoft 365 Copilot app at m365.cloud.microsoft. Select Idea Coach from the left navigation pane. If it doesn't appear, select All agents to search and add it.

2. Enter the following prompt:

   I need to present a Chai Tea product strategy for Latin America to regional vice presidents and a CFO. The CFO focuses on return on investment and market opportunity. Identify three to four key messages and suggest a narrative arc for an eight-slide executive presentation.

3. Review the key messages and narrative structure Idea Coach returns. Keep this output visible so you can reference it when writing your creation prompt.

Note

Idea coach doesn't create the deck for you. Remember, Idea Coach's strength comes in helping you develop your own ideas into actions. Continue to interact with Idea Coach until you find a good starting point.

Create a presentation from multiple sources

With your narrative plan ready, create the presentation by referencing both source files. Specifying your output parameters in the prompt means Copilot builds to your requirements from the start.

1. Open a blank PowerPoint presentation from your browser by navigating to PowerPoint online.

2. Select the Copilot icon in the bottom-right corner of the canvas.

3. Enter and submit the following creation prompt:

   Create an 8-slide executive presentation on Contoso's Chai Tea strategy for Latin America. Use the Promotion Plan document for the business strategy and recommended actions. Pull market opportunity data and regional trends from the Market Analysis Report document to support the market slides. Tone: executive—confident and data-driven. Audience: regional VPs and a CFO who value brevity and clear return on investment framing.

4. Type / or select + , then Add work content to attach Promotion Plan for Chai Tea in Latin America.docx, then repeat to attach Market Analysis Report for Mystic Spice Premium Chai Tea.docx.

5. If Copilot asks clarifying questions, answer using the key messages from your Idea Coach session.

6. Review the generated slides.

Generate and refine speaker notes

Next, let's generate notes for every slide at once, then refine the CFO-facing slides for delivery.

1. Enter the following prompt in the Copilot pane: Generate speaker notes for all slides in this presentation. Keep the speaker notes professional and concise. Present them as bulleted points that expand on, but do not repeat, the slides' content.

2. Navigate to the slide that covers market opportunity or ROI data.

3. Enter the following prompt:

   Rewrite the speaker notes on this slide to sound authoritative and data-focused. I'm presenting market opportunity and return on investment figures to a CFO who asks hard questions. Help me project confidence and anticipate pushback.

4. Review the revised notes.

Review content with an explain prompt

Your deck synthesizes data from two source files, which means some charts, tables or slides may include figures you didn't write yourself. Let's see how to use the Copilot to understand the data before you present it.

1. Navigate to a slide that contains a chart, table, or specific information you don't fully understand and enter the following prompt in Copilot:

   Explain the content on this slide so I can more easily understand and discuss the points as I present it to leadership.

2. Copilot returns a plain-language breakdown of what the chart, table, or slide shows, what the data means in context, and how it fits the narrative of the surrounding slide.

Run a final coaching pass

Before you wrap up, ask Copilot to surface any remaining issues across the full deck.

1. In the Copilot pane, enter the following prompt:

   Give me improvement tips for this presentation, both overall and slide by slide. Focus on narrative coherence, clarity of the executive message, and any slides where the data could be better supported.

2. Review Copilot's response and apply any changes using the Copilot features you practiced in this exercise.