You don’t need to learn every AI tool before finding something useful to do with one. Start with a task you already understand: organizing notes, preparing a presentation, or finding information.
This guide brings together practical examples, governance resources, and learning materials from the HLS blog and other Microsoft teams. If you’re new to AI, begin with the exercise below. If you’re responsible for a rollout, head to the governance section.
Resource guide updated September 22, 2026.
Before you start: know your organization’s guardrails
Use the tools and accounts your organization approves. Before bringing work information into an AI experience, confirm:
- Permitted data: What can you enter, upload, or connect?
- Access: Who can use the tool and see the information involved?
- Human review: Who checks the output before someone relies on it?
- Ownership: Who handles questions, problems, and changes to a shared workflow?
For learning, start with public or fictional information. Patient information, unpublished research, and other sensitive data require approval for the specific tool and use case. A product setting alone does not establish compliance.
Try your first task: turn rough notes into a follow-up email
For: Anyone getting started.
What you need: Access to your organization’s approved Copilot Chat experience. Microsoft’s Copilot Chat overview explains access and eligibility. Features can differ by license, application, and tenant configuration.
Imagine you’re helping your team put together a welcome guide for new employees. You’ve had a planning meeting and need to send everyone a quick recap. You have a few notes, but haven’t written the email.
This example uses fictional people and information. Open your approved Copilot Chat experience with your work account and copy the whole prompt below, including the notes.
Try this:
I’m helping put together a welcome guide for new employees on our healthcare operations team. Turn these notes into a short, friendly follow-up email to the project team. Make it clear what everyone needs to do next.
Notes: Jordan will draft the welcome guide by Friday. Priya will review it next week. We still need a volunteer to organize an orientation meeting, and we haven’t picked a date for that meeting.
Read the draft alongside the notes. Check that Jordan and Priya have the right tasks and timing. The volunteer and orientation date should still be undecided. Correct anything Copilot adds that the notes don’t support.
Then continue in the same chat with a simple follow-up:
Make it shorter and put the next steps in bullets.
Keep this as a practice draft. The point is to ask for help with a familiar task, check the result, and tell Copilot what you want changed.
For more examples, see Microsoft’s guide to getting better responses with prompting.
Make reviewing the answer a habit
Before sharing or acting on AI-generated content:
- Compare names, dates, numbers, and commitments with the source.
- Look for missing information and statements the source doesn’t support.
- Open citations and confirm they support the claim.
- Apply the human-review requirements for your work.
An answer that reads well can still be wrong. When you assess whether AI helped, include the time you spent reviewing and correcting it.
Choose a path that fits your work
Everyday work
For: Business leaders, administrative teams, and operations staff.
Once you’re comfortable with a basic task, choose something you repeat: a project update, a presentation, or a document you rebuild each month.
Start with Copilot or Copilot Cowork: which tool to use, and when to explore different approaches to the work.
For a more advanced exercise, follow How to Set Up Copilot Skills in PowerPoint. Check that your organization has enabled the required capabilities before following the walkthrough.
Your next step: Choose one recurring task and practice with fictional or public content before moving to approved work information.
Clinical workflows
For: Clinicians, clinical leaders, and informatics teams.
Explore Dragon Copilot’s focus capability for examples of assistance within the applications where clinicians work.
Treat this as a workflow discussion first. Reading about a capability doesn’t mean your organization has deployed or approved it.
Your next step: Identify one documentation task and discuss it with your clinical informatics team. Confirm availability, the approved environment, and clinical review requirements before trying it with patient information.
Governance and responsible adoption
For: IT administrators, security and privacy teams, compliance leaders, and people responsible for AI rollout.
Start with our four-part Copilot governance guide, or watch the session recordings.
The series covers:
- Admin-center foundations: Access, agent creation, rollout ownership, and billing controls.
- Copilot Studio and Power Platform: Environments, connectors, data policies, and agent governance.
- Microsoft Purview: Information protection, sensitivity labels, auditing, and risk.
- SharePoint Advanced Management: Oversharing, content ownership, access reviews, and lifecycle management.
Recorded in 2025. Use the series to understand the foundations, then consult current product documentation for configuration and licensing. Microsoft’s enterprise data protection guidance is one important reference.
For an applied example, read Using Copilot in Sensitive Healthcare Teams Meetings. Discuss the scenario with your privacy, security, records-management, and IT teams before adopting it.
Your next step: Document one proposed workflow’s owner, permitted data, access requirements, approval checkpoints, and monitoring needs. For agents or usage-based services, include a consumption owner and review process.
Research and life sciences
For: Researchers, life sciences leaders, and data teams.
Explore how pharmaceutical leaders are putting AI into practice across research, manufacturing, and operations.
These examples can help you identify possibilities. They aren’t instructions to reproduce a regulated workflow without validation.
Your next step: Select one relevant example and identify the data, scientific expertise, validation, and approvals your organization would need to explore it.
Learn more from Microsoft
Our HLS blog is one place to learn. These official sources cover developments and guidance we may not address here:
- Microsoft Copilot Blog: Product announcements and examples across productivity, business processes, and agents.
- Microsoft Cloud healthcare and life sciences perspectives: Industry developments and customer examples across healthcare and life sciences.
- Microsoft Security Blog: Security, data protection, and governance perspectives.
- Copilot release notes and Copilot Studio updates: Product changes and release information.
When reading an announcement, check its publication date, release status, requirements, and supported platforms. Preview, planned, and generally available features are different stages. Even released features can roll out gradually.
Use the Microsoft 365 Roadmap for planning, rather than assuming a listed feature is available in your environment.
Earlier training and recordings
The Microsoft 365 Copilot Learning Series on-demand recordings remain available as a learning archive. Check current documentation before following older setup instructions.
Choose one resource and one small, approved task. Try it, review the result, and decide what you would change before using it again.
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