How To Learn Advanced Copilot

1. Check which Microsoft Copilot experience you have

Start by checking what your work account can actually access. Copilot features, work-data access and app experiences depend on licences and your organisation’s settings. Microsoft explains these differences in its guidance on the information Copilot uses.

Ask your administrator which apps and data sources are approved for your role. Try a low-risk task using a sample document you can already open. If Copilot cannot find it, check the location, account and access before writing a more elaborate prompt.

No amount of eloquence will compensate for pointing the tool at the wrong file.

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2. Write Copilot prompts with goal, context and sources

Microsoft’s prompt guidance describes four useful ingredients: goal, context, expectations and source. Make those concrete.

For a project update, name the audience, the reporting period, the exact source file and the required structure. Attach or reference the current file using the controls available in your app. Ask Copilot to mark missing information rather than invent it.

If there are three documents called ‘final’, tidy that up first. AI has not abolished the consequences of untidy filing.

Copilot prompt to try

Using the attached approved project update, draft a 200-word briefing for our operations director. Cover completed work, open risks, decisions required and next actions. Use only this file. Mark missing owners or dates as not specified.

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3. Use Copilot in Word to build a decision-ready document

Open your practice document in Word and ask for an outline before a full rewrite. Does the structure put the reader’s decision near the top? Is the important risk visible, or hiding below a cheerful introduction?

Once the outline works, request the draft. Microsoft’s Word prompting guidance recommends clear details about the audience, purpose, source material, format and constraints.

Compare the result with the source. Check names, dates and commitments, then refine a specific weakness. ‘Put the approval needed in the first paragraph’ is an instruction somebody can act on. ‘Make it more strategic’ is often an invitation to add fog.

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4. Practise Copilot in Excel with verifiable calculations

Use a small practice workbook with clear column names and consistent dates. Include a fictional project budget of £5,000 and actual spending of £5,600. Ask Copilot, where supported in your Excel experience, to calculate the variance and explain the method.

The overspend should be £600, or 12% of the budget. Check the formula and its references yourself. Then add an empty budget cell to another row and see whether the output handles the missing value sensibly.

Before applying the same workflow to a larger file, ask which rows and columns the analysis used. A correct formula applied to the wrong range is still a wrong answer.

Copilot prompt to try

Review this sample budget table. Identify missing values and explain how you will calculate variance before changing anything. Then show actual minus budget and percentage variance, using budget as the denominator. Flag rows that cannot be calculated.

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5. Turn Teams discussions into checked actions

Where your Teams setup supports it, use Copilot to extract decisions and proposed actions from an available meeting or conversation. Meeting access and the supporting record depend on your organisation’s configuration; Microsoft’s Teams Copilot FAQ is a useful starting point.

Ask for an action table with task, owner, due date and supporting context. Check it against the conversation or meeting record. If nobody agreed a deadline, keep it as ‘not agreed’.

Draft a follow-up message after checking the table. Confirm commitments with the people involved before sending. A plausible action list can create a surprising amount of work nobody volunteered to do.

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6. Build a reusable Copilot workflow for your team

Join the practice tasks into a weekly routine: check the project source, analyse the figures, prepare the update and draft the follow-up. Save the prompts with the input requirements and review checks.

Ask a colleague to run the process with a second fictional project. Notice where they need clarification. Improve the instructions until somebody else can reproduce the result without a guided tour of your thinking.

Record the time spent preparing and correcting the output. Agree a named reviewer for anything that goes outside the team. Once one workflow behaves reliably, add another. You do not need to automate the entire office before lunch.

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