Integrating Copilot into MS 365 products is expensive (I think it’s still $30 / user / month), so it’s probably not something we can look forward to any time soon at my institution.
However, I came across a sneaky workaround that enables you to use Copilot as part of your email workflow.
- Open Outlook in Edge: Go to https://outlook.office.com/ and sign in with your university account.
- Make sure Copilot is also signed in to your university account, and have the sidebar open by clicking the icon that looks like a ribbon in the top right corner.
- Open an email where you’d typically take a few minutes to respond.
- Prompt Copilot with (something like): “Write a response that [insert your intent]. Use the web page in the browser as context.” See the attached screenshot for an example…note that we are going to go ahead with this vendor, but I wanted to see what Copilot wrote.
- Copy the output and edit as necessary in your email Reply field.
I haven’t tested this at all, beyond the example I’m sharing here, so use this with caution. Remember that you’re ultimately responsible for anything you do with generative AI.
I’m also not really sure how I feel about having Copilot write my emails for me; I wonder if it depends on context. There are some use-cases that feel wrong: I probably won’t use it to write emails to my wife, but I’m fine using it to write emails to students. Maybe something to do with whether the email is about sharing ‘connection’ or ‘information’?
What I do know is that the social and professional norms around this kind of thing don’t exist yet, and we’ll need to figure out the boundaries of what we’re comfortable with.