Exercise 1, Task 4: Use Copilot in Outlook to personalize your outreach

At this point, you used Microsoft 365 Copilot to help complete your market research and create a sales proposal. You’re now ready to start building relationships. Your first target is the Contoso Hospitality Group, a major hotel chain known for its sustainability initiatives. You identified their VP of Operations as the key decision-maker and want to send a personalized email introducing Fabrikam’s EcoSense 360 solution.

You want to use Copilot in Outlook to craft a professional, persuasive message that references key industry challenges and positions Fabrikam as the ideal partner to help Contoso reduce energy costs and enhance operational efficiency.

Perform the following steps to complete this task:

1. In your web browser, go to the Microsoft Copilot home page, select the App Launcher (grid icon), select More Apps, and then select Outlook from the list of available apps.

2. In Outlook on the web, create a new email. Attach the EcoSense360 Hospitality Proposal.docx file from OneDrive that you created in the prior task.

3. In the body of the message, select the Open Copilot icon that appears next to the attached file.

4. The Copilot window that appears contains a prompt field and a menu of edit options below it. In the prompt field, ask Copilot to create a professional email to the VP of Operations at Contoso Hospitality Group introducing Fabrikam’s EcoSense 360 solution that references key insights from the attached sales proposal file. Keep the message concise and persuasive.

5. Review the results. You feel that more details are needed. In the Copilot pane that appears, ask Copilot to include key ROI details from the attached sales proposal.

6. Review the updated email. Notice how Copilot generated a new version of the email, which is draft 2 (2 of 2). You can select the back arrow to go to draft 1 of 2, which was the original version of the email that Copilot generated. Since you prefer to keep working with the latest draft, select the forward arrow to return to draft 2 of 2.

   [!NOTE] For each request that you make, Copilot generates a new draft of the email. You can optionally navigate to a prior draft and keep it, or you can ask Copilot to modify that draft (rather than the last draft). By default, you typically make each new request while viewing the last draft.

7. While you like the basic structure of draft 2, you feel that it would be more effective to include the ROI statistics in a bulleted list rather than paragraph form. Ask Copilot to make this change.

   [!NOTE] If your draft already includes the ROI statistics in a bulleted list, then ask Copilot to change them from a bulleted list to paragraph form.

8. Review the results (which is now draft 3 of 3). You’re satisfied with this final update, so you’re ready to insert the draft into the actual email. In the Copilot menu, select the Replace option.

   [!TIP] If you preferred one of the earlier drafts, you could select the forward or backward arrows to go to the preferred draft. Ensure the draft you want to use is displayed when you select the Replace option.

9. Review the results. Copilot should have inserted the draft into the actual body of the email. Now, once you use Copilot to draft the initial email, you can still use it to modify the email even after inserting the draft.

   • When modifying an actual email message, you must highlight the portion of the email that you want changed, whether it be a sentence, paragraph, or the entire email.

   • Or if you want Copilot to add more text to the email, you must position the cursor where you want Copilot to insert the text.

   In looking at the email, you decide to make one more change. You want to add a paragraph that discusses a post-installation partnership. Position your cursor in the email where you want the new paragraph to appear. When you do so, note how Copilot displays the Open Copilot icon.

10. Select the Open Copilot icon. In the Copilot window that appears, ask Copilot to add a paragraph at the end of the email about how Fabrikam partners with its clients’ during post-installation.

11. Review the results. Note how Copilot displayed this content in the email. You can refine the content by entering additional prompts, just as you did with the initial email draft, or you can accept it as is. You like the paragraph, so select Replace.

12. Review the results. Copilot inserts the generated paragraph at the cursor position in the email body.

13. After reading through the email one last time, you aren’t sure about the message’s tone. Drag your cursor over the entire email so that it’s all highlighted, and then select the Open Copilot icon.

14. In the Copilot menu, scroll down and select Change Tone and then select the tone that you want from the menu that’s displayed.

15. Review the results of the modified email that appears in the draft window. You still aren’t satisfied with the way it sounds, so try a different tone.

16. Review the results. You’re still unsure about the email’s tone, so this time ask Copilot to change the tone by making it sound friendly and confident but still professional.

17. Review the results. You want to compare each version, so select the backward and forward arrows to go back through the prior drafts. Review each one, and when you finally decide on one to use, make sure that’s the one displayed in the draft window. Then select the Replace option to replace the highlighted content in the email with this selected draft version.

18. Note how Copilot replaced the original version of the email with this modified version. Now that the email is finished, feel free to send it to your personal email address. Before sending, make sure the EcoSense360 Hospitality Proposal.docx file is attached, since the Copilot drafting process may have removed it from the email. If you send the email, verify you received it and it contains the attached document.

[!NOTE] When you use Copilot to draft or modify an email, it may remove any previously attached files from the email body. Always verify that your attachments are still present before sending.