AI Playground: Microsoft Copilot

[00:00:00] Patty Parobek: Hello and welcome to another episode of Leader Generation brought to you by Mod Op. I’m your host for today, Patty Parobek. Let’s get right into it.

[00:00:09] Patty Parobek: Over 61 percent of marketers are already using AI-powered tools to streamline tasks, to generate content, and improve strategic processes. So by now, most people have heard of Microsoft Copilot.

[00:00:23] Patty Parobek: But, they might not be aware or familiar with its specific capabilities. Microsoft Copilot is an AI assistant. It helps make work faster and easier by providing intelligent suggestions and automating tasks across Microsoft apps.

[00:00:40] Patty Parobek: So those are things like Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and two of our project managers tested Copilot in Mod Op’s AI Playground. I’m excited to introduce Ian and Jose, who will tell you about their experiences using the app and their honest reviews. Enjoy!

[00:01:05] Patty Parobek: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about you, your name, what’s your position at Mod Op. And the app you tested.

[00:01:16] Ian Pescod: My name is Ian, and I am Technical Project Manager here at Mod Op. And I’ve tested the app Copilot.

[00:01:27] Patty Parobek: And what were you trying to solve or get out of Microsoft Copilot when you first started using it?

[00:01:35] Ian Pescod: Mainly note taking during meetings, be able to, um, sort out key takeaways, action items, um, streamline that process as much as I, as I could, um, because that’s what I feel is one of the biggest challenges of what I do, just like being present in a meeting and not missing any details. And, um, you know, and then if I do miss stuff, like having to go through the whole recording and checking the transcript and I was using already ChatGPT for some of those purposes, copying and pasting the transcript.

[00:02:15] Ian Pescod: But that process was very tedious and, um, you usually couldn’t paste the entire transcript. You have to like. Cut it and it was a whole editing process afterwards that, um, I felt Copilot could could streamline a lot more.

[00:02:31] Patty Parobek: Was the note taking and summarization part of using Copilot the best thing about it for you? What all did you like about the Microsoft Copilot experience?

[00:02:42] Ian Pescod: Yeah, those two things are definitely the biggest benefits, um, at least in my line of work. Um, also even just asking Copilot questions during the, um, during meetings. Uh, let’s say I zoned out for 3 minutes, um, because I had to attend another project or, you know, uh, turn off a fire or whatever.

[00:03:11] Ian Pescod: Um, I can easily just ask Copilot during the meeting. What? Did we, or what did Patty, for example, just talk about for the past three minutes that’ll summarize it and then I’m back to speed. And if somebody asked me, I know what we’re talking.

[00:03:25] Patty Parobek: I love that example. It definitely happens to us all. So then you mentioned ChatGPT was another tool that you tested for that same challenge. Have you tested any other applications?

[00:03:38] Ian Pescod: Just, just those two. Yeah.

[00:03:40] Patty Parobek: And those are mainly what everyone’s using. So that makes a lot of sense. So then on a scale of one to five with one being very unlikely, five being extremely likely, how would you recommend Microsoft Copilot? For similar work.

[00:04:00] Ian Pescod: I would say it depends on on on people’s skill sets. Some people are very good note takers. Um, but for, I mean, even if you’re a good note taker, I still feel you would benefit greatly. Um, but mostly project managers are managing multiple projects and have to. Kind of have their attention on many things at once.

[00:04:20] Ian Pescod: So I would say a 5. Whether whether you’re very skilled or not skilled in note taking, um, it helps to fill in any gaps.

[00:04:29] Patty Parobek: Awesome. Well, thank you very much. This has been great.

[00:04:36] Patty Parobek: Tell us a little bit about you, the title you have it Mod Op and the application you tested.

[00:04:44] Jose Franceschi: My name is Jose Carlos Franceschi. I am Technical PM for the solution. Uh, innovation group. Uh, I’m fairly new to the company been using Copilot solution. Uh, mainly the note assistant part, but I also expanded it into all the Microsoft suite applications.

[00:05:06] Patty Parobek: Awesome. So when you start first started testing Microsoft Copilot, what problem were you trying to solve or what generally were you looking for from this application?

[00:05:20] Jose Franceschi: The main one was note taking during meetings. Uh, as a starter in the company, there was a lot of technical terms that I needed to understand and read correctly and the the notes that I was taking maybe weren’t up to par or maybe it’s fast enough.

[00:05:37] Patty Parobek: What overall did you like about Microsoft Copilot?

[00:05:43] Jose Franceschi: From the note, uh, taking part, the one of the things that I liked the most was the how exact was when it come to, uh, describing what each person was saying and also how the automation on it on how after the meeting is, it’s not only the transcript, but already process it and tells you the topics that were spoken, who was speaking about what subject, right? Like a, uh, like a general subject, and then a specific that every each person said and ends up with ends up with action items for everyone within the call. So that to me was just made my job so much faster and easier.

[00:06:27] Patty Parobek: Are there any other features that you found to be valuable?

[00:06:31] Jose Franceschi: Yeah, for, Word document, uh, creating, uh, formats for different meetings, like when I, like I needed to have, uh, certain criteria of a meeting and I’ll have to, like, I’m struggling to say, like, how I want to structure it or what’s the format to be, as I create a prompt and ask it and it just pretty much gave me an entire document already separated, like. with bullet points prep, uh, prep, and like, that was super great.

[00:07:01] Jose Franceschi: Oh, uh, the outlook, the email, uh, also pretty much same situation. Uh, I was struggling like to create, uh, an email with proper wording that was understood by The people I was saying it, the people I was sending it to, that sounded, uh, like I, that my grammar was, for one, correct, and I wasn’t repeating the same words over and over and over, so it helped me also with creating, like, a format of the email.

[00:07:31] Patty Parobek: So have you used other or tested other similar applications for any of those use cases? So for note taking or note translation, uh, the. Word doc template assist or email?

[00:07:47] Jose Franceschi: No, for the note taking, I haven’t used any other assistant for the formatting, uh, and sometimes like note taking, like if I have, uh, written notes and I wanted to make them sound more accurate or more, or like in a better wording or better grammar, I usually use ChatGPT, which is pretty useful.

[00:08:09] Jose Franceschi: But directly embedded into a, like, into a suite, I haven’t used that in any, I haven’t used any other application like that.

[00:08:18] Patty Parobek: Just curiously, how do you find Microsoft Copilot compares against ChatGPT for email creation?

[00:08:28] Jose Franceschi: For email creation, I think it, it is better in the sense that it’s already there, I don’t have to go to another app and do it. Uh, but I do say this when it comes to ChatGPT and, and, and Copilot, maybe on my short experience with, uh, with AI, I do enjoy more the, the language of ChatGPT versus Copilot, ChatGPT is more conversational.

[00:09:01] Jose Franceschi: Like I can add small things here and there, like, as in a conversation, where Copilot usually, you give them something and it will give you the answer. Like there, and give you, it’ll give you like a simple version, a more convoluted version, and a super, like, specific version. And you can toggle between those and maybe refresh them, but it doesn’t really give you, like, the opportunity to, at least on the email, uh, format, it doesn’t give you the opportunity, like, to keep improving on.

[00:09:35] Patty Parobek: It makes sense. Are there any other applications that you found useful for Microsoft Copilot apart from the ones that we already discussed?

[00:09:44] Jose Franceschi: Not yet, but I’ve heard that the Microsoft Copilot, uh, like on the web, like the creating, like prompting to create something different is super useful. I just haven’t got the time to really use it and really get into prompting. It is a skill in itself. So I’m still hoping to get to try that in a little bit.

[00:10:05] Patty Parobek: Awesome. So then, last question. On a scale from one to five, where one is really unlikely, five is highly likely, how likely is this to be something that you would recommend to others playing the same role or doing similar work?

[00:10:26] Jose Franceschi: Um, for me it’s an easy eight, because if you’re already using Microsoft Suite, it is, like, There shouldn’t really be any question if you’re using like other platforms, maybe Google or Zoom or whatever, then maybe like connecting it might be complicated and maybe the other AI tools suit better. But if you’re using Microsoft, it is super useful.

[00:10:53] Jose Franceschi: Even if you’re using only for meetings, note taking the ultimate automation already, like I said, a product on itself.

[00:11:02] Patty Parobek: No, that is awesome. Well, thanks so much. This was an awesome interview.

[00:11:07] Patty Parobek: All right. Some great insights from Ian and Jose. I think what’s really interesting is that we’ve evaluated Microsoft Copilot before, probably a year ago in a formal evaluation process, and it did not do as well as when we’re testing it now in the AI Playground. And I think that’s important to note is that.

[00:11:30] Patty Parobek: Sometimes technology just gets better. So if you rule out an application for serving a specific purpose or satisfying your needs in, uh, three, six, nine months, that app could be significantly better. So don’t rule it out completely. Just put it back in the cycle if you start seeing new features and new developments and new reviews pop up.

[00:11:52] Patty Parobek: And that’s exactly what happened with Microsoft Copilot, and I’m glad that it did because it’s allowing us to get more value out of a tool that we didn’t think was going to be as valuable as it is.

[00:12:05] Patty Parobek: And that’s it for this week. So thank you, as always, for listening to this week’s episode. We hope you enjoyed the latest learnings from the AI Playground. If you have ideas of apps that we should review, email us at podcast at Mod Op dot com. That’s M. O. D. O. P. dot com. Plus, you can always visit Mod Op dot com slash podcast and listen to more episodes of Leader Generation and more episodes that have reviews on apps that we’ve tested in our AI Playground until next time. Have a great week.