Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat
- Coppage, Preston
- Snyder, Jason
- Trubitt, Lisa V
Description:
Getting Started:
Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat (a.k.a. “Microsoft Copilot' or “Copilot Chat”) with commercial data protection is available at Microsoft365.com/copilot by logging in with your M365 credentials.
Start chatting: Once you have signed in, you can start chatting with the AI-powered assistant. Use it to generate content, compare products, and protect data. You can also use it to create documents, presentations, and spreadsheets based on your commands and data sources. When chatting with Copilot, use natural language. Good prompts are the key to good answers.
Protect your data: Microsoft Copilot encrypts and protects user and business data. With enterprise data protection (EDP), prompts and responses are logged, retained, and available for audit, eDiscovery, and advanced Microsoft Purview capabilities. Chat data is not used to train underlying models, and Microsoft has no eyes-on access to it for purposes other than those specified under EDP.
Be sure to login to Microsoft365.com/copilot with your UAlbany M365 credentials to enable this data protection.
Data Classification Standards: When using any type of generative AI (Microsoft Copilot or others) it's important maintain alignment with the university's data classification standard.
Category 1 (Protected PII or regulated): Should NEVER be included in generative AI prompts or inputs.
Category 2 (Internal Use Data): Can be included in Microsoft Copilot prompts when logged in with your UAlbany account
Category 3 (Public Data): Can be included in generative AI prompts with Microsoft Copilot or similar AI tools.
Get help: If you need any assistance, you can refer to the official documentation.
Getting Started Prompts
Draft up a meeting agenda for a recurring leadership meeting
How do I create an Excel query to find the median of a range of cells?
I want this email to sound less formal (insert body of email)
Create an image for my slide deck explaining cloud storage that I will present to a customer
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FAQs
Who has access to Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat?
Staff & Faculty only. Student access isn't available currently - options for student access within our Microsoft licensing entitlements will continue to be evaluated.
What do you mean by “generative AI?”
Generative AI is AI (Artificial Intelligence) that can generate new content—like text, images, etc.—on its own. Copilot is a generative tool: you can prompt it with something, and it will generate a response based on its underlying AI models and the web.
What kind of questions can you ask Copilot?
Think of Copilot as a new, more powerful way to search the internet for answers. If you’re trying to learn about a new topic, start your prompt with “Explain this” or “how come.” If you have a lot of different articles with multiple perspectives on a topic but still can’t make a design, try asking, “Compare this option and another option in the form of a table” or “Give me the pros and cons on <topic of interest>.” And if you need more help with making content, you can ask Copilot to “write an email based on bullet points pasted below,” or “Create an image” in a specific style.
Copilot cannot answer questions about your work data, such as your emails, chats, and files, because it does not have access to those items.
How do I know that I’m in the protected experience of Copilot?
When you’re in the protected experience of Copilot, you’ll find the shield icon in the top right of the experience. Above the text box, you’ll find a sentence that reads “Your personal and company data are protected in this chat.” If you don’t find these cues, you don’t have data protection for your AI chat. To fix this, just sign at Microsoft365.com/copilot with your work account.
Can Copilot Chat access my email, calendar, Teams messages, etc.?
If you do not have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, Copilot Chat cannot access your shared enterprise data, individual data, or external data indexed via Microsoft Graph. You can however, choose to upload files directly into Copilot Chat.
How does Copilot Chat handle uploaded files?
Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat can analyze the content of files you upload into the chat box. This means Copilot Chat can provide new insights when working with PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, Excel spreadsheets, and more. To upload a file, select the (+) Add Content button in the chat box, or drag-and-drop files director into the chat box. You can do things like ask Copilot Chat about the uploaded file, ask it to summarize files, run data analysis or visualizations, and more.
Uploaded files are stored in your OneDrive for Business space and you can delete them at any time. Per enterprise data protection promises, uploaded files are not use to train models.