Exercise: Conduct market analysis using Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft Copilot is accessible through Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Bing (where it was formerly known as Microsoft Bing Chat). This exercise utilizes the Microsoft Copilot chat functionality in Bing. Within Bing, Microsoft Copilot is a generative AI service grounded in data from the public web in the Microsoft Bing search index only. It doesn't have access to organizational resources or content within the Microsoft 365 Graph. For example, it can't access documents in OneDrive, emails, or other data, even when commercial data protection is enabled.
When you use Microsoft Copilot, it's important to provide context and resources when you craft your prompts. The quality of the response is a function of how the user crafts the request. By following these tips and choosing the right conversation style (either More Creative, More Balanced, or More Precise), you can have a great conversation with Microsoft Copilot and get the most out of its capabilities.
Exercise 1 - Conduct a market analysis using different conversation styles
As the Director for Market Research at Tailspin Toys, you must conduct a market analysis of the toy industry to provide to the company's Senior Leadership Team (SLT). Your goal is to identify the latest trends, consumer preferences, and the most popular toys in the market. You plan to use Microsoft Copilot to generate the analysis. In doing so, you'll apply the different best practices for creating effective prompts. Perform the following steps to conduct the market analysis using Microsoft Copilot:
In Microsoft Edge, open a new tab and enter the following URL: https://bing.com
In Microsoft Bing, in the list of tabs across the top of the page, select Copilot. Doing so opens Microsoft Copilot.
On the Copilot page, note the toggle switch at the top of the page that allows you to select either Work or Web. While your request is a work-related task, you need Copilot to access the Web to conduct its market analysis of the Toy industry. If necessary, select the Web toggle switch.
Below the list of predefined prompt examples, you can choose a conversation style. Select the More Balanced option if it isn't already selected by default.
In the prompt field, enter the following prompt and then select the Submit icon:
I'm the Director for Market Research for Tailspin Toys, a U.S. based toy manufacturer. Conduct a market analysis of the toy industry to identify sales figures, the latest trends, consumer preferences, and the most popular toys in the market.
Review the market analysis that Copilot generated. You realize that a general request such as the one you submitted provides basic information such as market trends, consumer preferences, and toy trends. However, you're also interested in gathering data on the toy industry, including market share and consumer feedback. You realized that you were a little too vague in your prior prompt since you failed to request this specific information. You remember the best practice suggestions from your earlier training - Be polite and iterate, iterate, iterate. Enter the following prompt to amend the market analysis:
That analysis was great. However, I'm also interested in including data on the toy industry, including market share and consumer feedback. Please amend your prior analysis to include this information. Thanks!
You realize that you're getting closer to your goal, but you're still missing some key information. After reviewing your prior prompts, you realized that you provided Copilot with your overall objective, the scope of the analysis, and the data that you needed. However, you failed to ask Copilot to analyze all this information so that you can make informed decisions on Tailspin Toys’ business plan for the upcoming year. To correct this shortcoming, enter the following prompt:
I think all the data is complete. With all the information that you captured, please analyze the data and identify patterns, trends, and insights that can help me determine what Tailspin Toy's business plan should be for the upcoming year.
You really like the information that Copilot provided. However, since this project is your first opportunity to provide a market analysis report to your company's SLT, you're not sure if you're covering everything that might be of interest to them. You decide to have Copilot help you determine if you're missing anything. Enter the following prompt:
Please analyze the data in this market analysis and business plan. Is there any other information that a toy company would typically request for market analysis and business plans that I failed to request? If so, can you please amend your responses to include this information. Thank you!
Based on the information that Copilot provides, you realize that you can really maximize the effectiveness of your reports by having Copilot include an analysis of these areas. To put the finishing touch on your reports, enter the following prompt:
Please amend the market analysis to include an analysis of each of these areas for the Toy industry. Also update the business plan that you created for Tailspin Toys based on these insights. Thanks!
The market analysis and business plan that Copilot generated for you was based on a More Balanced conversation style. It's ideal for users who want a balance between precision and creativity. This style provides responses that are longer and more descriptive than the More Precise style. As for your reports, you wanted longer and more descriptive responses, since you felt that your SLT expects that level of detail. However, you're curious as to how the reports would look using the More Creative style. This style provides responses that are more imaginative and creative. Let's explore how Copilot's responses would be different using the More Creative style.
Open a new tab in your Microsoft Edge browser and enter the following URL: https://bing.com
In Microsoft Bing, select Copilot to open Microsoft Copilot.
On the Copilot page, you still want to be in Web mode, but this time you decide to try the More Creative conversation style. Repeat steps 4-9. Copy and paste in each prompt. Pay particular attention to the tone that Copilot uses when responding to each prompt. Also note how each response is different from its corresponding response that was based on the More Balanced conversation style.
Exercise 2 - Export a Copilot response
When you use Microsoft Copilot in Bing to research different things or answer different questions, you may decide that a response is so good that you want to export it just to save it for future reference. This exercise examines that export process.
When you select the Export icon at the bottom of a prompt response, Copilot displays a drop-down menu that allows you to select which file type you want to use for the export process. The way in which Copilot handles an exported response depends on the file type that you select. The three choices include:
- Word. When you export a response to a Word document, Copilot displays an Exporting window that disappears once the export process completes. So how does Word handle the document containing the exported response? If you go to the Word home page, at the top of the Most Recently Used file list, you should see a document with the file name BingAnswers-yyyymmdd-xxxxxx.docx, where "yyyymmdd" is the current date and "xxxxxx" is a unique ID that Copilot assigned to the file (this ID distinguishes the file from other responses that were exported on the same day). You should also see the location of the file. You can rename this file to something a little more user friendly that applies to the information in the file.
- PDF. When you export a response to a PDF, Copilot opens a Print window that enables you to print the selected response.
- Text. When you export a response to a Text file, Copilot downloads the response to an Answer.txt file in your Downloads folder.
Locate the first responses for the style that you preferred - either More Balanced or More Creative. In this exercise, you export that response to a Word document. Due to time constraints, you'll only export one response, which is enough to see how Copilot handles the export process. Perform the following steps to export the selected response:
- Select the down-arrow (Export) icon in the bottom-left corner of the response that you chose. In the drop-down menu that appears, select Word. An Exporting window should appear, indicating the export is in process. The window closes once the process is complete.
- In your browser, select the Microsoft 365 tab and then select Word in the navigation pane.
- In the Word home page, at the top of the Most Recently Used file list, you should see a document with the file name BingAnswers-yyyymmdd-xxxxxx.docx, where "yyyymmdd" is the current date and "xxxxxx" is a unique ID that Copilot assigned. You should also see the location of the file.
- Select the file to open it in Word and review the contents. Note that Copilot's entire response was exported - note just the core answer, but also the extraneous comments that Copilot included at the beginning and end of its response. If you decide to share this file with others, you should consider removing that extraneous text.
Note
If you export multiple responses from a given Copilot session, Copilot doesn't combine them into a single document. Instead, Copilot generates a separate file for each exported response. If you want to consolidate the responses into a single document, you can manually copy and paste each response into one document, or you can use Copilot in Word to do it for you. In fact, in a later exercise in this Use Case module, you'll use Copilot in Word to do just that - consolidate multiple documents into one.
A retrospective - Prompting best practices
In the previous exercise, you implemented several best practices for creating effective prompts. While it took you several attempts to gather all the information that you wanted, you successfully created the report that you envisioned. You also included other information that you never considered at the start. Let's review this exercise by analyzing some of the best practices to effective prompting that you implemented:
- Give Copilot a point of view from which to answer: You did so by telling Copilot that you were the Director for Market Research at Tailspin Toys, a toy manufacturer. This information helped Copilot understand the context of your request so that it could generate more accurate responses.
- Know what to avoid when creating a prompt: After your first prompt, you realized you were a bit vague in your initial request. Don't worry - vagueness is a common issue with many Copilot prompts. That's one of the reasons why Microsoft recommends the "Iterate, iterate, iterate" best practice. In this case, you corrected the shortcoming by asking for more detailed information. In fact, you kept building upon each successive request once you discovered that you were missing specific information.
- Be polite: You used basic etiquette when you interacted with Copilot. Doing so helped Copilot generate respectful, collaborative outputs. It mirrored the levels of your professionalism, clarity, and detail in the inputs you provide.
- Be curious: At a certain point, you couldn't think of anything else to add to your market analysis and business plan. However, instead of stopping at that point, you asked Copilot what other toy companies typically include in these types of reports, and then you asked it to include that information in yours.
- Iterate, iterate, iterate: Throughout this exercise, you demonstrated how working with Copilot is a dynamic and interactive process. You and your Copilot worked together to create content, solve complex problems, and learn new information based on your goals, expectations, and feedback. You realized that your initial prompt was just the beginning, and you kept digging deeper to generate more relevant outputs.
- Experiment with different styles: After you finished your first pass through the exercise, you repeated it using the More Creative conversation tone. When you experiment with different styles, you can often home in on answers or responses that fit your needs better than other styles.