Microsoft Copilot is a powerful tool to improve productivity across Microsoft 365 products, including Outlook. Copilot in Outlook offers several capabilities for mail management and drives effective communication. Here are three useful ways to stay on top of your inbox.
Summarize Long Email Threads
Long email chains can quickly spiral into chaos, making it hard to track key details. Copilot in Outlook helps you swiftly extract the important details and action points from lengthy email threads (also known as conversations). It can seamlessly pull out key points from multiple messages and summarize a long conversation to see, for example, what decisions have been made on the project item being discussed.
To do this, choose an email conversation in Outlook and select Summary by Copilot at the top of the email thread. This AI will scan the thread and create a summary for you at the top of the email.
In the screenshot below, Copilot created a summary from an email thread with a support executive and highlighted the key points of discussion after I raised a service request and the next steps.
Professional Email Writing
Copilot can help you with composing a new email or a reply to an existing conversation, just provide a brief prompt to specify your needs and AI will help you get the right words. Once you’ve got a draft, you can adjust its length and tone to suit your style.
Here’s how to draft Outlook emails with AI assistant:
- While composting a new mail, select the Copilot icon from the toolbar.
- Select Draft with Copilot from the drop-down menu.
- In the Copilot box, type your prompt and use the Generation options icon to specify your desired length and tone.
- When you’re finished, select Generate and Copilot will draft a message for you.
- If it’s not quite what you want, choose Regenerate draft.
- Once satisfied with the result, select Keep it.
Note that Copilot can generate multiple drafts for the same email, each with a different length and style. For example, you can ask this AI to make the email more formal or casual, or to make it longer or shorter. You can use the arrows to cycle through each draft.
Once you’re done, you can make edits to the draft as needed to fill in or correct relevant information and send the mail across.
Email Coaching for Clarity and Tone
If you’re worried about whether your email is appropriate, Copilot’s guidance feature is the solution. In addition to assisting with drafting, it helps you create more effective emails. It analyzes your draft and offers suggestions to improve style, tone, and clarity, helping you convey your message in the best way possible.
Simply select Coaching by Copilot from the Copilot icon on the toolbar. Then, Copilot generates a report with recommendations to enhance communication. It evaluates whether the email feels warm, sincere, enthusiastic, apologetic, etc., and suggests ways to make it more positive or direct. Additionally, Copilot checks the clarity of the email and offers improvement suggestions. You can easily apply these suggestions to the draft before sending.
Copilot in Outlook not only helps you overcome the mental barrier when starting or continuing an email conversation but also improves your communication. Furthermore, the feature to quickly create a meeting invitation from an email discussion is available only if you have a Microsoft 365 Copilot (Work) license.
(Source: Make Use Of)
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