This National Small Business Week, make sure everyone in your company understands AI
Whether you are running a startup or an already thriving small business, harnessing AI-driven solutions will help you discover new opportunities, streamline operations, and make data-driven decisions with confidence. Understanding and exploring the possibilities of AI is essential for small businesses and key to unlocking growth, driving innovation, and maintaining a competitive edge. The first step is understanding the potential of AI for your business. Microsoft has developed several online resources to help. In recognition of National Small Business Week, we have curated a list of those resources that may be helpful for small business professionals who want to get started with AI. Establish an AI foundation Start your AI journey by visiting the Microsoft WorkLab and examining a rich collection of content that addresses the real-world scenarios of how AI is impacting work today. New articles are regularly added that will help you understand not just AI’s high-level capabilities, but also the nuances of AI and how to directly apply AI to your day-to-day work. Key resources include: Up-to-date market research on all the ways that AI is impacting work, like our latest, the AI Data Drop. This study provides insights into how employees feel about AI and how long it takes most employees to build effective AI habits. Regular podcasts with business leaders, like our recent discussion with Bryan Hancock, McKinsey’s Global Talent Leader, on the different ways that managers can unlock AI’s potential for their teams. In-depth guides that detail how AI can help the different parts of your business, such as How Sellers Can Use AI to Better Engage with Customers and How Marketers Can Use AI to Unlock Breakthrough Creativity. Build your AI skills When you're ready to build a deeper AI skill, you explore the Microsoft AI Learning Hub. You’ll find a variety of tools to help you go from understanding AI to preparing for it. You can learn the mechanics of using the technology and even how to build it into your own apps and services. Start with the learning journey for Business Users, which is foundational for getting an underlying understanding of AI, and then move into a more detailed guidance on how to use and implement its capabilities. If you’re an IT professional, look at the learning journey for IT Professionals, which provides a thorough grounding on the particulars of AI adoption, deployment, and small business concerns, like data classification and regulatory considerations. To define your own path, get skilling recommendations based on your job responsibilities and objectives. No matter where you want to go, you can use the AI learning assessment to define a customized learning journey to get you there. Put AI to work To put your AI skills into practice or if you’re already using Copilot for Microsoft 365, visit the Microsoft Copilot Lab. This site provides easy, visual introductions into what Copilot is and how it helps you do more no matter which Microsoft 365 app you are using. These tools are designed for professionals that need a fast, tactical grounding so they can benefit from AI every day. One example is the prompt writing guide, which explains how to write effective prompts so Copilot can deliver exactly what you need. This toolkit teaches the art and science of prompting. It walks through a series of easy initial prompting exercises like writing an AI-powered email or creating an image, so you’ll understand how to edit a prompt to tailored it to your scenario. Microsoft Learn has a series of freely available, advanced courses to help you gain a deeper understanding of Copilot, how it works with the apps in Microsoft 365 and best practices for everyday use. Get started National Small Business Week may be an annual event, but you can build your AI skills year-round. Join the Microsoft SMB Tech Community to network with other professionals using Copilot. You can come here anytime to ask questions, get help, keep up with the latest AI news specific to small and medium-sized businesses and find out about upcoming online or local events.Create and share Copilot agents in SharePoint in a few clicks
Go behind the scenes to learn more about Copilot agents in SharePoint, powered by your content. What could be better? Copilot agents are built in Copilot Studio via our new, built-in lightweight agent builder experience in SharePoint. CJ and Karuana discuss the broader vision of Copilot agents and show you how to put this new capability to work within your SharePoint sites in Microsoft 365 - including IT management details and licensing insights. Check out the new Microsoft 365 Copilot agents in SharePoint adoption hub: https://aka.ms/SharePoint/agents. In addition, review the recent, related blog, "Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2: AI Innovations in SharePoint and OneDrive" by Adam Harmetz and Jason Moore. And review this short explainer video, "Copilot agents in SharePoint" taken from the "Microsoft 365 Copilot: Wave 2" event with Satya Nadella and Jared Spataro event broadcast - watch now:Prompts collection
Basic prompts are visible in Copilot Lab and can also be used in apps. Copilot in Windows and in Edge uses the same history. You can change the names of the prompts or delete prompts. You can also export or share them. The history becomes quite confusing over time. There are many interesting prompts here in the forum or on the WWW. There are also many solutions for collecting and managing your own prompts (lists, loops, Excel etc.). This raises the following questions for me: Are adjustments to Copilot Lab planned in the direction that own prompts can be collected/managed? How do other users here in the forum do this or which tool do they use? I would be very happy to receive answers and they would be appreciated. Best regards AndreasMicrosoft Copilot Next Generation: Transitioning to a More Proactive and Predictive Approach
Hi folks, After attending Microsoft Ignite Switzerland 2024, I have been thinking about the future of M365 Copilot and how its capabilities could be enhanced with a proactive and predictive approach. Obviously, I understand the ability to create custom copilots, however, what I am referring to is, or could be, in a hypothetical future, various improvements baked in and activated by organization administrators. For instance, here are a couple of examples: Example 1: Based on the Microsoft Teams status on Monday morning, if a user signs in, proactively offer a recap of the previous week and an overview of the upcoming week, including days at the office and scheduled meetings. This should be done without even needing to ask the question. Example 2: Based on the Viva Engage profile activity, proactively offer recaps of items that might have been highlighted by communications managers or org-admins. Example 3: Based on the number of unanswered emails by the user prior to the end of the week, suggest a free time slot in Microsoft Teams to be blocked in their calendar. This will help wrap things up before the end of the week. Example 4: Based on the activation of the "office/remote" work location field in Microsoft Teams, offer the user the ability to postpone their office days if it's too crowded, or vice versa, encourage them to head to the office if their top 10 Microsoft Graph connections are already there. Example 5: Trigger Actions - it would be great to be able to connect with the entire desktop interface of the user, allowing us to open software programs, launch saved RPAs, and perform other actions as needed. Example 6: Custom keyboard shortcuts - Give collaborators the ability to save custom keyboard shortcuts to accelerate their time to value. For example, they could set up shortcuts like Ctrl + T for "Translate this". Example 7: Custom personas shortcuts - Give users the ability to save custom persona shortcuts to accelerate time-to-value. For example: Ctrl + Shift + R for 'Release Manager'. Example 8: Copilot profile section - Offer users a dedicated profile section where they can set up their conversation style, shortcuts, preferred languages, etc. Example 9: Microsoft vCard Integration - When a query is made in Copilot, such as @ user, offer a vCard on top of other information, including the profile picture. Example 10: Windows desktop application - Even if we can use Microsoft Teams floating window, it would be great to have the ability to pin an app in the Taskbar. Example 11: Predictive Document Collaboration - Anticipates who needs to collaborate on a document based on past interactions, suggesting collaborators and streamlining the process. Example 12: Security Guardian - Proactively identifies potential security threats and offers actionable recommendations to safeguard sensitive data. Example 13: Elgato Streamdeck integration - Imagine having the ability to use daily physical shortcuts on your Stream Deck with a dedicated Copilot profile. Feel free to jump into the conversation below, and/or vote for the idea. Dimitri LinkedIn | Medium | X | Microsoft | WebHow do we find shared custom GPTs?
Hi! I've just signed in to Copilot Pro (personal) and I'm exited to start messing about with custom GPTs (I have used ChatGPT Plus for a little while but would probably switch to Copilot Pro permanently if it gets a similar or better user experience). My question is how can I find custom GPTs other than the few Microsoft have provided, ie from other users? It would be great if there some kind of "GPT explorer" just like in ChatGPT Plus where I could find GPTs that other people have made so I don't have to reinvent the wheel and create my own custom GPTs for everything. Also, it would be great if we could customize the look and feel of our custom GPTs with a logo and such. -=/AndersGetting help from Copilot what I can ask / prompt Copilot - opinions?
Making Copilot available to users is one thing, writing prompts is another. What are the plans to help users use a Copilot? For me, the simple question is, where can I get help from what I can ask the Copilot for? Writing "Help" in the public preview Copilots gives me sometimes a well written text like this one in Power Automate: "Sorry, I couldn’t understand your question. Please rephrase it and try again. I’m able to answer questions that are about Power Automate and are written in English." and sometimes an error. Asking for help as a question like "What can I ask you?" gives the same message. In some implementations of Copilot we have examples provided, but I can imagine that it quickly becomes frustrating when you try something and it doesn't work and you don't even know what you can ask for. What do you think would be acceptable for end users?
