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About this lesson

Ask Copilot to summarize conversations and draft email replies. 

Quick reference

Summarize and Draft Replies

Ask Copilot to summarize emails and draft considered responses that are appropriate to the situation. 

When to use

We can use Copilot to summarize the key points from long emails and also help us draft approrpiate responses to messages. 

Instructions

Summarize by Copilot

We can summarize any email message in our inbox. 

  • Open the message in the reading pane. 
  • Click Summary by Copilot. 

Copilot will produce a concise summary of the message. 

Draft Replies

We can also ask Copilot to assist us when replying to an email. This is particularly useful when we have to create an email delivering bad news. 

  • Open the email. 
  • Click the Reply button. 
  • From the Message tab, click the Copilot icon. 
  • Click Draft with Copilot. 

  • Type the prompt: 'Generate a reply to the customer Deb Ashby. Apologize and let them know that rude behavior is not tolerated. Also, apologize for the room not being ready'. 
  • Click Generation options. 
  • Choose a Neutral tone. 
  • Choose Short length. 
  • Click Generate. 

We can make any changes to the generated reply by typing them into the prompt area. 

  • Click Regenerate. 
  • Click Keep it.
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  • 00:04 In this lesson, we're going to take a look at how we can use Copilot in Outlook to
  • 00:09 summarize a long email and draft a response.
  • 00:12 So you can see here in the inbox, I have a customer complaint.
  • 00:16 Now, this customer complaint is just coming from a customer to me,
  • 00:19 but because there's just one of me, I'm effectively sending this to myself.
  • 00:24 And it's important to note that because it does throw up a few strange responses in
  • 00:29 Copilot because this is an email from me and to me, so just bear that in mind.
  • 00:34 Now notice at the top here, we have Summary by Copilot.
  • 00:37 So if I just quickly want to summarize the main points from the email below,
  • 00:42 then I can do that.
  • 00:44 And it's given me a few paragraphs there just outlining the key points
  • 00:49 covered in that email.
  • 00:51 And this relates to a customer complaint at a hotel where they received bad
  • 00:55 service and an unclean room.
  • 00:57 Now, if we close that down, let's respond to the email by clicking on Reply.
  • 01:02 Now as soon as we do that, notice at the bottom, we have a few suggestive prompts.
  • 01:07 So it's reading the context of the email and
  • 01:10 it's providing relevant responses such as apologize and offer them a voucher.
  • 01:15 And if we select one of those,
  • 01:17 it's going to open up the Draft with Copilot pane.
  • 01:20 Alternatively, we have another way of getting to that by clicking the Copilot
  • 01:25 dropdown on the Message tab.
  • 01:27 We have a Draft with Copilot option,
  • 01:29 which will reopen that same little window where we can type in our prompt.
  • 01:33 If we click the generation options at the bottom,
  • 01:36 this is where we can adjust the tone, and we can even set the length of the email.
  • 01:41 Now, I'm going to keep mine on Formal and Short.
  • 01:45 Let's construct our prompt.
  • 01:47 So I want to generate a reply to the customer, Deb Ashby.
  • 01:50 I want to apologize and
  • 01:52 just let them know that rude behavior is not tolerated at this hotel.
  • 01:57 I also want to include in my reply an apology about the room not being ready.
  • 02:01 So there is my prompt.
  • 02:03 Let's just check our tone and our length.
  • 02:06 I'm going to change this to Neutral tone, and
  • 02:08 we're going to keep the length on Short.
  • 02:10 Let's click on Generate draft and see what Copilot comes up with.
  • 02:15 And there we go, it has drafted that email for me.
  • 02:19 I'm very sorry to hear about your unpleasant experience at our hotel.
  • 02:23 It then goes through it, apologizes for the rude behavior of the receptionist,
  • 02:27 and then further down, it reiterates that the complaint is being taken seriously,
  • 02:32 and also talks about the cleanliness and the readiness state of the rooms.
  • 02:37 So this is pretty good.
  • 02:38 However, it's addressed to Dear Manager.
  • 02:40 Now, this has something to do with how I have this set up.
  • 02:44 It's a mail from me and to me, but
  • 02:46 I'm just going to use Copilot to change the greeting line to Dear Deb.
  • 02:51 So let's type that in and click on Regenerate.
  • 02:53 It's going to go away, it's going to recreate that draft, and
  • 02:57 instead of saying Dear Manager, it should now say Dear Deb.
  • 03:01 Notice again at the top, we have two versions of this draft, so
  • 03:04 if I wanted to go back to the previous version, I could.
  • 03:07 Now let's change the tone.
  • 03:09 We can just type in Make the tone more direct.
  • 03:13 This version is going to be a bit more to the point than the previous versions that
  • 03:16 we've created.
  • 03:18 And you can see here it does have a more direct tone.
  • 03:21 And I can see again I need to adjust who this email is being addressed to,
  • 03:25 as it's just picked up an email address, so we can do that by typing in our prompt.
  • 03:29 I'm just going to say, Change the greeting line to Deb this time.
  • 03:34 Because Deb is more direct, we're not going to include a dear or a to.
  • 03:38 So away it goes creating a draft, and there we have our direct email.
  • 03:43 If you wanted to change anything in these paragraphs, you can simply
  • 03:47 select the paragraph and type in what you want to change in the prompt.
  • 03:50 So really straightforward.
  • 03:53 Now, I'm going to say, Keep it, I quite like that.
  • 03:56 And now I'm ready to make further changes, further reviews, or
  • 04:01 I can send that off to the customer.

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