Context
I took part in the "Microsoft 365 Copilot Early Access Program" as Quebec champion inside my organization "ArcelorMittal". To maximize the benefits of the program, each business unit has a champion whose the responsabilities were the followings :
Driving engagement and business transformation by combining technical knowledge with people skills.
Ensuring that all Copilot EAP Users in their BU have met the required prerequisites.
Serving as the local Copilot expert and training other Copilot EAP Users in their BU to derive value from Copilot.
Acting as the first point of contact for Copilot EAP Users in their BU for any questions or issues.
Identifying and sharing the business value that their BU is gaining from Copilot.
Speak the local BU language when that is not English.
I took the opportunity to document this new technology and make the information more accessible.
What is Copilot ?
Copilot is a new way of working that combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with your content in the Microsoft 365 apps. It can help you create and improve texts, summarize meetings, transform files into presentations, and much more. Copilot is not just a better way of doing the same things. It’s an entirely new way of working.
Copilot works with the apps you already use, such as Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel and Teams. You can also ask questions and get answers from Copilot using natural language. Copilot can access your data and files, as well as public information from the internet used to train the LLM, to provide you with relevant and personalized suggestions.
Copilot is safe to use with your data and files. They are protected and won't leak outside your organization. Copilot does not store or use ArcelorMittal data to train the models.
What did I do to help my business unit ?
Creation of a SharePoint Intranet
I have developed a SharePoint Intranet in order to demystify and summarize most ot the info accessible in the following websites :
Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot – your copilot for work - The Official Microsoft Blog : remarkable introduction.
How Microsoft 365 Copilot works : gert an inside look at how LLMs work when we use it in Microsoft 365.
Creation of a presentation related to the features (fonctionnal part)
Creation of a presentation related to the Architecture (technical part)
User sends data (text or files) to Copilot.
Anchoring Copilot makes calls to Microsoft Graph, a gateway to data of all kinds in the Microsoft Cloud. Here, it seeks access to your organizational data.
Copilot processes the information obtained, combining it with other types of data to obtain the most accurate and relevant answers: the pre-processing stage.
Copilot sends the modified message to LLM, which uses the semantic index to interpret user queries and produce sophisticated, meaningful, multilingual responses.
LLM sends the response to Copilot.
Copilot processes it again (post-processing), i.e. includes additional anchor calls to Microsoft Graph, security, compliance and confidentiality checks.
Copilot returns a recommended response and appropriate commands.
Copilot processes and orchestrates all this iteratively.
Note that Copilot relies on the Microsoft Search Cloud service, which provides and gathers information, and communicates with LLM, whose private instances use the authorization model provided by Azure Active Directory.