Exercise: Draft a meeting reply using Copilot in Outlook
Operations Managers conduct much of their daily work in Outlook. For example, Operations Managers use Outlook to help:
- Coordinate projects. They receive updates from team members, stakeholders, and vendors through email. By replying within the same email thread, the manager can track the progress, address any issues, and provide guidance without cluttering their inbox.
- Approve requests. For example, budget proposals, purchase orders, and leave requests. Replying within the existing email thread ensures context, allows for quick decision-making, and maintains an audit trail.
- Troubleshoot operational issues. Because Operations Managers collaborate with cross-functional teams, email threads help document the problem-solving process, including discussions, decisions, and action items.
- Negotiate contracts, pricing, or terms with vendors. Because threaded emails maintain a record of negotiations, the Operations Manager can refer to previous messages and agreements.
In this training, you use Copilot in Outlook to summarize an actual email thread in your Inbox and then draft a potential reply to the latest email in this thread.
Important
Copilot scenarios in Outlook are only available on a user’s primary mailbox. They aren't available on a user’s archive mailbox, group mailboxes, or shared and delegate mailboxes that the user has access to. Microsoft only supports Copilot for Outlook on mailboxes hosted on Exchange Online. Additionally, Copilot in Outlook is only supported in Microsoft 365 work or school accounts and Microsoft accounts with specific email domains. It's supported both through Copilot for Microsoft 365 with your Microsoft Entra ID account, and Copilot Pro with your MSA account. Any Microsoft account using an account from a third-party email provider can still use Outlook, but won’t have access to the Copilot features in Outlook.
Also remember from previous use cases that Copilot in Outlook can create multiple drafts of the same email. They can have a different tone and length, along with different content. You can then navigate through the various drafts by selecting the forward and backward arrows at the top of the Copilot window.
As you review a generated draft, keep in mind the best practices you learned from previous training. Analyze the salutation, the complementary close, and the overall message tone and length. Also review the context of the message to ensure that its explanations aren't too simplistic or too complicated given the target audience.
Exercise
In this exercise, you want to use Copilot in Outlook to summarize an actual email thread in your Outlook Inbox. When you summarize an email, Copilot extracts key points from multiple messages and automatically provides a summary based on the message bodies of the thread. When you're working with a lengthy thread, this feature can save you a large amount of time determining who made what decisions and took what actions.
When you summarize a long thread, Copilot may ignore older messages in the conversation. There are limitations on how much data Copilot can pass into the large language models (LLMs). If this situation occurs, Copilot displays a warning indicating the summary doesn’t represent the full thread.
You then want to use Copilot in Outlook to draft a reply to this thread. You can see how Copilot uses the context of that thread in generating a potential reply.
In Microsoft 365, open Outlook.
Open an existing email in your Inbox. If possible, select an email that's a reply from another person to ensure the thread includes at least two emails (the original plus at least one reply).
The start of the email thread displays a Copilot option that says: Summary by Copilot. Select this option.
Review the summary created by Copilot. As you can see, Copilot summarized the decisions that were made in the thread, along with the suggested actions.
In the Summary by Copilot window, select the X in the upper-right corner of the window to discard the summarization. The selected email should remain open.
Select the Reply all option in the Outlook ribbon.
Select Copilot in the ribbon. In the drop-down menu that appears, select Draft with Copilot.
In the body of the message, a Draft with Copilot window appears. Below the What do you want this email to say? message is a Generation options icon. Select this icon to see the options that Copilot provides when creating your reply to this email thread.
In the drop-down menu that appears, you see that you can change the Tone of the email and the Length of the email. Set the Tone to Direct. Set the Length to Short.
Enter the following prompt in the What do you want this email to say? field and then select the Generate button:
Please draft a reply to this email thread. Thanks!
Scroll through the response. You realized that with a Direct tone and a Short length, there's no Salutation at the start of the reply (Dear xxxx/Hello xxxx, etc.) and no complementary close at the end (Sincerely/Best regards/Thank you, etc.). This tone bothers you, since you feel it makes the reply seem too impersonal. In the body of the message, you also think the reply lacks sufficient details to make it worthwhile. You decide to change the tone and length to see how it affects the quality of the reply.
At the top of the message, Copilot displays the start of the prompt that you just entered ("Please draft a reply to this email t..."). Select this section of the prompt to take you to the Rewrite with Copilot window. From here, you can edit the reply's tone and length. Change the Tone to Formal and the Length to Medium and then generate a new reply.
Review the response. Note the Salutation, the complementary close, the overall change in tone, and the new details that Copilot included.
Repeat step 12, but this time change the Tone to Neutral and the Length to Long.
Note the changes to the new reply.
While you're satisfied with the reply, you noticed a Tone option that you feel you must try out of pure curiosity. You decide to repeat step 12 one last time. This time, change the Tone to Make it a poem and leave the Length at Long.
Enjoy the response, and then select the trash can (Discard) icon in the upper right corner of the email screen to delete the draft of this reply.