Exercise: Brainstorm project plan ideas using Copilot in Whiteboard
Microsoft Whiteboard is a digital canvas that allows users to collaborate in real-time, brainstorm ideas, and create content with ease. It's a versatile tool that business professionals can use for various purposes, such as project management, design thinking, and education. Whiteboard’s features include free-form drawing, sticky notes, and templates that you can customize to suit your needs.
Operations Managers can benefit from Microsoft Whiteboard in several ways. Whiteboard can help increase collaboration by allowing multiple users to work simultaneously in a digital space, making it easy to share visuals and ideas. It also provides a space that you can use for projects, brainstorming, workshops, retrospectives, designing, strategic planning, and for solving problems that may have moving pieces or need more visuals. Whiteboard can help increase productivity by providing a space to doodle, share prototype sketches, or compile a list of product name ideas.
In this exercise, you're in the role of an Operations Manager who wants to install a new boiler into your building's heating system. Your long-range goal is to create a project plan for the installation process. You want to use Copilot in Whiteboard to suggest the steps needed to complete such an installation. Think of this exercise as basically an AI-assisted sticky-note exercise.
Have you ever participated in a brainstorming session before that involved sticky notes? Meeting attendees write ideas on sticky notes and then stick them to a whiteboard or to a wall. From there, the meeting facilitator rearranges the notes by organizing them into various categories, removes duplicate ideas, edits ideas for clarification, and so on. When you finish the session, you end up with stacks of ideas, organized into categories.
Well, that's really what this exercise is - just a virtualized sticky-note exercise, all with the help of Copilot in Whiteboard. However, in this case, instead of having a room full of people brainstorming ideas and writing them on sticky notes, Copilot takes their place. Watch as Copilot generates a list of ideas, writes each one on a graphical sticky note, and attaches the notes to your Whiteboard canvas. As the meeting facilitator, you can then edit and delete any of the notes. And then with your final list of notes in place, you'll have Copilot organize the sticky-notes into various categories. Doing so aids future documentation and helps ensure that none of the notes are overlooked when creating the project plan.
Exercise
As the Operations Manager at Adatum Corporation, you're planning to install a new boiler into your building's heating system. However, before you begin the installation process, you want to use Copilot in Whiteboard to suggest potential steps that companies typically complete when updating their heating system. You then ask Copilot to categorize all the suggestions to make it easier to find related ideas and group them together. Using Copilot in Whiteboard in this manner helps facilitate future discussions that you plan to have with your team involving the installation process.
In your Microsoft Edge browser, open a new tab and enter the following URL to go to the Microsoft 365 home page: https://www.office.com
On the Microsoft 365 home page, if a Whiteboard icon appears in the left-hand navigation pane, then select it now and proceed to the next step. Otherwise, select the Apps icon, and on the Apps page, scroll down to the Explore by category section, and in the Productivity tab (which should display by default), select Whiteboard.
Sign into Microsoft Whiteboard.
On the Whiteboard home page, select New Whiteboard.
On the ribbon at the top of the page, select the Whiteboard drop-down arrow. In the Board name field, enter Boiler installation project plan and then select the checkmark icon.
If a Suggest content with Copilot window appears, then proceed to the next step. Otherwise, in the tray of icons that appears above the taskbar at the bottom of the page, select the Copilot icon. In the menu that appears, select Suggest.
In the Suggest content with Copilot window, enter the following prompt:
I'm the Operations Manager for Adatum Corporation. We're installing a new boiler in our heating system. Please suggest the steps we should follow to install the new boiler.
If a Suggest content with Copilot window appears, then proceed to the next step. However, if you receive a message indicating that "Something went wrong. Please try again." or "Copilot couldn't process this prompt. Please rephrase it." then select the Generate suggestions arrow in the bottom corner of the Copilot window.
Sometimes Copilot completes the process it's working on but stumbles a bit before displaying the results. When you select the Generate suggestions arrow again, it usually displays the results without much delay. However, if you receive a similar message a second time, then select the Generate suggestions arrow a few more times. If you keep receiving this error after three or four attempts, then simplify the prompt by entering the following text:
Please suggest the steps we should follow to install a new boiler in our building's heating system.
By default, Copilot generates ideas in groups of six. In the Suggest content with Copilot window that appears, note the first six ideas that it generated. Copilot gives you two options here - you can either attach the ideas to your whiteboard if you're satisfied with the suggestions, or you can have Copilot generate more suggestions. Notice how the Insert (6) button indicates the number of ideas that Copilot generated - in this case, 6. While six suggestions are a good starting point, you want to dig deeper into the tasks needed to install the security product, so select the Generate more button.
Tip
If Copilot displays an error message of any kind, then select the Generate more button again. Do this any time you receive an error message.
Note how Copilot generated another six ideas, so the Insert (12) button now displays 12. While you can keep generating more ideas, for the sake of time, let's insert the 12 ideas currently presented. Select the Insert (12) button.
When you select the Insert button, Copilot attaches the suggested ideas to your whiteboard in the form of yellow sticky notes. As with a real-world brainstorming session involving actual sticky notes, you can edit a particular note, delete it, lock it from future removal, and so on. In Microsoft Whiteboard, these activities are supported through standard whiteboarding functionality.
If you've never used Whiteboard before, try selecting (double-click) a specific note, and then in the menu bar that appears above it, you can select the Edit text (pencil) icon or any of the other options. Selecting the ellipsis icon at the end of the menu bar displays a menu of more options, such as deleting the note. Again, the idea behind Microsoft Whiteboard is to mimic real-world sticky-note exercises. Feel free to edit a note as you wish.
In looking at the suggested ideas, you feel they don't cover risk mitigation adequately. Select the Copilot icon at the bottom of the page and then select Suggest from the menu.
In the Suggest content with Copilot window that appears, enter the following prompt to generate more ideas about risk mitigation:
Suggest ways to mitigate the risks of installing a new boiler into the building's heating system.
Review the six ideas that Copilot suggested. You would like Copilot to include more details, so select the Generate more button.
You're satisfied with the 12 risk mitigation ideas, so select the Insert (12) button. Note how the block of 12 risk mitigation ideas is selected (see the outside border). If Copilot overlays the 12 risk mitigation ideas partially over top of the original 12 project plan ideas, you can select on this block of ideas and move it across the screen so that it no longer overlays the original 12 ideas. Don't worry about lining the two blocks up. Once you organize the notes into categories in a later step, they'll look nice and pretty. For now, just arrange each block so that you can see all the ideas. Doing so provides the visibility needed to see what areas Copilot proposed so that you can edit any of them if you wish.
You're now satisfied with the suggestions that Copilot created, and you've completed all the edits that you want done to the notes. You now want Copilot to organize the notes by category. Copilot determines the names of the categories and automatically organizes the notes accordingly. Select the Copilot icon at the bottom of the page and then select Categorize from the menu.
Note what happened. Copilot generated a set of categories and reorganized the notes accordingly. Each category of notes was assigned a different color to help identify the differences between categories. If the rectangle containing the notes isn't as large as it can be and still fit your screen, select the Fit to Screen icon on the bottom-right corner of the page. Doing so increases the size of the image until it can no longer increase it anymore without it exceeding the screen size.
Note the icon tray that appears below the organized group of notes. If you're not satisfied with the categories, select the Regenerate button on the icon tray that appears.
Tip
You can select the Regenerate button as many times as needed until you're satisfied with the categories that Copilot provides. Select this button several times and note the changes that Copilot makes each time. Besides changing category names, Copilot may add or reduce the number of categories with each regeneration.
After regenerating the categories several times, you realize that you're missing detailed steps concerning minimization of system downtime. You want to ask Copilot to add more ideas to your whiteboard session concerning this issue. Plus, you identified a note that you want to remove. However, since you already organized your ideas, you must change your whiteboard session back into the editing mode that you were before you categorized the notes. To do so, select the Revert button.
Now that you're back into editing mode, select a note that you no longer want, and then in the icon tray that appears, select the ellipsis icon. Select Delete from the menu that appears.
To have Copilot generate more ideas, select the Copilot icon at the bottom of the page and then select Suggest from the menu.
In the Suggest content with Copilot window that appears, enter the following prompt to generate more ideas about minimizing system down-time:
Suggest ways to limit heating system downtime when installing a new boiler.
Review the six ideas that Copilot suggested. You're satisfied with these ideas, so select the Insert (6) button.
Note how the block of six notes is highlighted with a line around the block. This block of notes is known as a note grid. You can move or resize a note grid just like any other element on your whiteboard. As you resize a note grid, the sizes of all the sticky notes inside it adjust accordingly. If the block of six notes overlays on top of one of the blocks of notes, select one of the outside lines around the note grid and drag the entire block of six notes to the side so that it doesn't overlay any of the previous notes. If you run out of space on the screen and part of the block falls off the screen, select the Fit to Screen icon on the bottom-right corner of the page.
You're ready to have Copilot organize the sticky notes, which include 18 notes - a block of 12 notes and a block of six notes. Select the Copilot icon at the bottom of the page and then select Categorize from the menu. In the Categorize selected notes?window, select the Categorize button.
Sometimes, the rectangle containing the notes isn't sized as large as it can be, leaving open white space all around your canvas. In this situation, the text size of the notes is often small and difficult to read. If this sizing issue occurs, select the Fit to Screen icon on the bottom-right corner of the page. Doing so increases the size of the image. If you keep selecting this button, it eventually reaches a point where it can no longer increase the size of the rectangle without it exceeding the screen size. Any further selection of this icon has no effect on the rectangle.
Review the categories. In the Copilot icon tray that appears below the rectangle, you can select the Regenerate button to create a new set of categories. In fact, select the Regenerate button several times to see how the categories change. Once you’re satisfied with the results, select the Keep it button.
Note how each category of sticky notes is a different color. You realize that you would like a short summary of the brainstorming session added to your whiteboard content. To do so, select the Copilot icon at the bottom of the page and then select Summarize from the menu. Copilot generates a short summary of the main themes from this whiteboarding session. Scroll down to review the entire Summary window. You're happy with the results, so select Keep it.
Select the Fit to Screen icon on the bottom-right corner of the page to fit all the sticky notes and the session summary onto the entire screen.