Outlook is the easiest place to start with Copilot because the tasks are ones everyone already does. Here is a first week.
Day 1 — Summarise a long thread
Open any email chain with more than five messages and click Summary by Copilot at the top. You get the gist, the decisions and who said what, with links back to the messages.
Day 2 — Draft a reply
Open a message, choose Draft with Copilot, and type the two things you want to say ("thank them, and confirm Thursday at 2"). Pick a tone and length. Then — this is the habit — read it and change at least one sentence so it sounds like you.
Day 3 — Coaching
Write a reply yourself, then ask Copilot to coach it: tone, clarity, whether it reads as curt. Useful for the difficult ones.
Day 4 — Catch up
Back from two days out? In the Copilot chat, ask "what do I need to act on from the last two days?" It reads your inbox and lists it.
Day 5 — Find the thing
"When did we last agree a price with Northgate, and what was it?" Copilot searches your mail and files and answers with the source. This is the one people keep.
What it will not do
Send anything without you. Know things that are not in your mail or files. Get every number right. It drafts; you decide — and on a managed Microsoft 365 tenant, the security behind it (MFA, filtering, backup) is unchanged by any of this.
