Don Sesler, The Technology Whisperer: As the owner, I have the honor of leading a team of super-smart individuals who share my passion for helping entrepreneurs and business owners not fall victim to complex technology challenges that can kill productivity. We want to tame your technology so that it works for you and not the other way around. What technology problem is making your life more complicated than it should be? Reach out to me and tell me your story.

5 Tips Before Using Copilot M365

If you’re thinking about bringing AI deeper into your daily business workflows, then you and I are working on the same thing. For most of this year, we’ve been dabbling with tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, mostly using them as a smarter search engine, but over the last six weeks or so we’ve been busy trying to integrate Microsoft Copilot M365 into our Office 365 environment. And while our journey has been worth the effort, it hasn’t been without its fair share of headaches. Now that we’re past the very beginning of learning curve, I want to share five things I wish I had known from day one, hopefully making your effort go more smoothly than mine.

Five Things I Wish I Had Known About Copilot M365 From The Start:

  1. Copilot M365 and ChatGPT are not the same thing: I assumed Copilot was just ChatGPT with a Microsoft wrapper, but they’re built for different jobs. For me, ChatGPT still wins for general research and brainstorming, but Copilot M365 has the one crucial advantage of access to all our business-specific data including our emails, documents, and client files, everything we store within the Microsoft ecosystem. That means Copilot can learn and adapt to our business in a way that ChatGPT simply can’t.
  2. Copilot M365 is not the same thing as Copilot: When I first hit the Windows key and typed in “Copilot,” the tool that launched was the free version, and it connected to my personal account instead of my business account, which I didn’t realize until later in the week. Copilot M365 is integrated into Office much better than regular Copilot, so be sure you know which one you are using.
  3. The Cross-platform collaboration challenge: Some of our clients and partners work mostly with Zoho or Google Workspace, and the first time I asked Copilot to read a shared Google document, it said that it couldn’t access the information directly. It turns out that Copilot doesn’t have native access to external Google Docs unless they’re explicitly opened or integrated in a way that Microsoft 365 can recognize. This creates friction when collaborating across ecosystems.
  4. You need to be on the latest version of Office to use Copilot: I couldn’t figure out why Copilot didn’t show up in some of my Outlook Desktop apps. After a little digging, I discovered the problem: I wasn’t using the latest version. You have to be on the new version of Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to use Copilot, and while the new versions are missing a few features, getting access to Copilot made the switch worth it.
  5. Embedded Copilot chats don’t save or sync: When you use the Copilot tool inside Word, Excel, Outlook, or PowerPoint, that chat lives only in that document, and it vanishes as soon as you close it. Even worse, those in-app conversations aren’t visible in the main Copilot M365 app either, so there’s no way to revisit or build on them later. If the Copilot inside Outlook or any other Microsoft app gives you something valuable, copy it out before closing, or it’s gone for good.

About Those Hallucinations

It’s easy to start trusting AI tools more than we should, especially when you start to spend more time with the tool. AI hallucinations are real though, so we need to stay vigilant to the reality that the bots occasionally make stuff up. The best way to minimize hallucinations is to challenge AI to show its work, especially if you are planning to reference the material or use it to make important decisions. It adds time to the work effort, but it can keep you from heading down the wrong path.

Getting Started With Copilot M365 (Or Any AI Business Tool)

I’d recommend starting small. We began with one project, pointed Copilot to a few key emails and a Word doc to help it catch up, then used Copilot to find and summarize the old conversations and kickstart the work. It wasn’t perfect, but it quickly began to add value. Copilot may feel a little frustrating or even counterproductive at the start, but the more you use it, the better it gets at understanding your business. That same principle applies to most AI tools: the early days can be clunky, but if you stay with it, the long-term payoff is real.

If you have questions about what can (or cannot) be done with AI, feel free to book a consultation with me, and I’ll be happy to talk it over.