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Jan_Paap's avatar
Jan_Paap
Copper Contributor
Feb 22, 2024

Increasing Copilot functionality for internal Sharepoint

While doing the pilot to test copilot for internal use i noticed the results of prompts asking for information that are stored in our own Sharepoint intranet are inconsistent and not reliable.

How can i improve the results?

 I have all required access rights.
This is just a silly example. But not being able to search for templates, training data or processes stored in our intranet makes him less valuable.

If anyone has any leads of what i might have missed im thankful. 

  • Mark_Moore's avatar
    Mark_Moore
    Brass Contributor
    Sadly we are having the same experience, where 300 of us are trailing it, and I am the one leading and advising and giving lessons on Prompt engineering. This has little to do with prompt engineering, even though I realise the same prompts can generate different results, when it tells you it cannot find anything, then the same prompt 10 seconds later does return something, there is no confidence. Other instances are when I ask it to return "all references to project X in the last week, list as bullet points with links", it might return 3 references. When I run it again, it returns a different 3, so obviously it wasn't returning "all". The "lack of confidence" is the biggest factor in our trial, and it is unlikely that we will move ahead with a whole company roll out. Product released to soon
  • Hey Jan_Paap, thank you for the feedback. I'd recommend using the thumbs up/down feature to provide feedback on the response results. That would be the best way to surface response feedback.

    You can also check out our upcoming session on prompting fundamentals at our Copilot for Microsoft 365 Tech Accelerator here.

    We also have this document on our adoption site that breaks down the art and science of prompting. 

  • Buggz's avatar
    Buggz
    Copper Contributor
    This is a good question Jan. We have a SharePoint Intranet which I have the correct permissions to see the data I am searching for. There are pages which contain the data but when I search using 365 Copilot some information on SharePoint is returned and some is not.

    Using Jans silly example approach, I like to keep it simple, we have a page with all our office addresses listed. Some offices addresses are returned when asking Copilot and some are not. Are there any tips n tricks for adding data to an intranet page to make it more effective with Copilot? The data has been on the intranet since Copilot was released so it's not an indexing issue.

    I have gone through the Microsoft Prompting documentation and help my colleagues get more with better prompts.
    • Jan_Paap's avatar
      Jan_Paap
      Copper Contributor

      Hey Buggz,

      i switched off web grounding for copilot. i have the FEELING his results are more constant if i ask him about the intranet.
      Also, my results in trying different prompts so far:
      -in my example you see i told him "to have a look at IFB Memories in our Intranet" and he returned that he doesn't find anything.


      -if i simply ask him "what do you know about office dogs" he returns detailed descriptions of them and links to the proper intranet page.

      Result of me switching off web grounding? Just a better prompt? i honestly dont know

  • Our trials have led to the conclusion the only consistency is inconsistent results. For example when comparing 2 PDF files we received different results every time and occasionally Copilot would report it could not locate the documents it had used previously.
    • IanHo_SmartsSA's avatar
      IanHo_SmartsSA
      Copper Contributor
      After multiple insufficient or incorrect results, I have to label it as unreliable source of truth to be qualified as an assistance.

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