Exercise 1, Task 1: Use Copilot in Whiteboard to brainstorm project plan ideas

As the Operations Manager at Adatum Corporation, you’re planning to install a new boiler into your building’s heating system. However, before you begin the installation process, you want to use Copilot in Whiteboard to suggest potential steps that companies typically complete when installing a new boiler system.

Think of this task as basically an AI-assisted sticky-note exercise. Have you ever participated in a brainstorming session before that involved sticky notes? Meeting attendees write ideas on sticky notes and then stick them to a whiteboard or to a wall. From there, the meeting facilitator rearranges the notes by organizing them into various categories, removes duplicate ideas, edits ideas for clarification, and so on. When you finish the session, you end up with stacks of ideas, organized into categories.

Well, that’s really what this task is - just a virtualized sticky-note exercise, all with the help of Copilot in Whiteboard. However, instead of having a room full of people brainstorming ideas and writing them on sticky notes, Copilot takes their place. In this task, Copilot generates a list of ideas, writes each one on a graphical sticky note, and attaches each note to your Whiteboard canvas. As the meeting facilitator, you can then edit and delete any of the notes. And then with your final list of notes in place, you can have Copilot organize the sticky-notes into various categories. Doing so aids future documentation and helps ensure that none of the notes are overlooked when creating the project plan.

Perform the following steps to complete this task:

In your Microsoft Edge browser, sign in to the Microsoft 365 home page (https://www.microsoft365.com) and select the Apps icon in the navigation pane. In the Apps menu that appears, select All apps. Under the top section of apps in the Apps window, select All apps→. In the All apps window, scroll down and select Whiteboard.
In Whiteboard for the web, start a new Whiteboard session.
The Board name for this session defaults to Whiteboard X (where X is a number). Select this field and change the Board name to Boiler installation project plan.
Select the Copilot icon next to the menu bar at the bottom of the page and select Suggest from the menu that appears.
In the Suggest content with Copilot window, ask Copilot in Whiteboard to suggest the steps that Adatum should follow when installing a new boiler system.

[!NOTE] For this first prompt, we’ve provided the text so you can see what an effective prompt looks like when it incorporates the four key elements discussed in the Introduction unit. You must write all remaining prompts in this exercise, but in doing so, you can use this prompt as a model to emulate.

I’m the Operations Manager at Adatum Corporation. Our 50-year-old office building has a failing boiler, and I need to evaluate options for repair or replacement. Before starting the installation process, I want to brainstorm and organize the typical steps companies should follow when installing a new boiler system. Using your expertise, please suggest a comprehensive list of actionable steps for a successful boiler installation project.

If the Suggest content with Copilot window displays an error message indicating that “Something went wrong. Please try again.” or “Copilot couldn’t process this prompt. Please rephrase it.” then shorten the prompt. For example, enter:

I’m the Operations Manager for Adatum Corporation. We’re installing a new boiler in our company’s heating system. Please suggest the steps we should follow to install the new boiler.
If the Suggest content with Copilot window displays the same error, then shorten the prompt to its bare minimum. For example, enter:

Create a list of the steps that a company should take to install a new boiler heating system.

[!TIP] Sometimes, Copilot works best with direct, single-action prompts. Once you get a response, you can build on it with follow-up requests.

By default, Copilot in Whiteboard generates ideas in groups of six. In the Suggest content with Copilot window that appears, note the first six ideas that it generated. Copilot gives you two options here. You can either attach the ideas to your whiteboard if you’re satisfied with the suggestions, or you can have Copilot generate more suggestions. Notice how the Insert (6) button indicates the number of ideas that Copilot generated, which in this case is six.

While six suggestions are a good starting point, you want to dig deeper into the tasks needed to install the boiler system, so select the Generate more button. Note how Copilot generated another six ideas, so now the button displays Insert (12). While you can keep generating more ideas, for the sake of time, let’s insert the 12 ideas currently presented. Select the Insert (12) button.
Notice how Copilot attaches the suggested ideas to your whiteboard in the form of yellow sticky notes. As with a real-world brainstorming session involving actual sticky notes, you can edit a particular note, delete it, lock it from future removal, and so on. In Microsoft Whiteboard, these activities are supported through standard whiteboarding functionality.

If you haven’t used Whiteboard before, try selecting (double-click) a specific note, and then in the menu bar that appears above it, you can select the Edit text (pencil) icon or any of the other options. Selecting the ellipsis icon at the end of the menu bar displays a menu of more options, such as deleting the note. Again, the idea behind Microsoft Whiteboard is to mimic real-world sticky-note exercises. Feel free to edit any note as you wish.
In looking at the suggested ideas, you feel they don’t cover risk mitigation adequately. Select the Copilot icon at the bottom of the page and then select Suggest from the menu.
In the Suggest content with Copilot window that appears, ask Copilot to suggest ways to mitigate the risks of installing a new boiler into the building’s heating system.
Generate 12 risk mitigation ideas and then insert them into the Whiteboard. Note how the block of 12 notes is highlighted with a line around the block. This block of notes is known as a note grid. You can move or resize a note grid just like any other element on your whiteboard.

As you resize a note grid, the sizes of all the sticky notes inside it adjust accordingly. If the block of 12 notes overlays on top of one of the existing blocks of notes, select one of the outside lines around the note grid and drag the entire block of 12 notes to the side so that it doesn’t overlay any of the previous notes.

If you run out of space on the screen and part of the block falls off the screen, select the Fit to Screen icon on the bottom-right corner of the page to display all the notes on the screen (the Fit to screen icon appears when a block is partially off the screen). You might need to select the icon more than once to fit the content onto the screen.
You now have 24 suggestions. Feel free to select any of the suggestions and edit them as you wish.
At this point, you completed all the edits that you want done to the notes. You now want Copilot to organize the notes by category. When you categorize the notes, Copilot determines the names of the categories and automatically organizes the notes accordingly.

[!WARNING] When you choose the option to categorize your notes, Whiteboard automatically selects the sticky notes that are currently in view on the canvas. It displays the selected notes within a border. Notes outside the current viewport aren’t included within this border, so if you proceed immediately, those notes that are outside the border aren’t categorized.

There are two ways to expand the selection so that all notes are included within the border:
- Show more notes on the screen. When you select the Copilot option to categorize notes, Copilot grabs everything that’s in view and places them within the border. To avoid the situation where Copilot doesn’t include all the notes within the border, zoom out or pan until all the notes you want are visible.
- Select everything explicitly using a keyboard command. Press Ctrl+A to select all objects on the canvas, including sticky notes that aren’t in view. Select one of the edges of the border and drag the entire selection of notes into the view on the canvas so that you can see all the notes.
For this task, select Ctrl+A to select all the notes.
Note how Copilot selected all the sticky notes, even ones that weren’t currently in view on the canvas. If some of the notes aren’t fully in view on the canvas, select one of the edges of the border and drag the entire selection into the canvas so that you can see all the notes.
With all the notes now appearing within view on the canvas, select the Copilot icon on the bottom of the window and select the Categorize option in the menu. Doing so displays a Categorize selected notes window. Select the Categorize button that appears in this window.
Note what happened. Copilot generated a set of categories and reorganized the notes accordingly. It also assigned each category of notes a different color to help identify the differences between categories.

Sometimes the rectangle containing the notes is small and hard to read. If this situation occurs, select the Fit to Screen icon on the bottom-right corner of the page. You can select this icon multiple times until the image is large enough to read, but not too large that it exceeds the size of the screen.
Note the icon tray that appears below the organized group of notes. If you aren’t satisfied with the categories, select the Regenerate button on the icon tray.

[!TIP] You can select the Regenerate button as many times as needed until you’re satisfied with the categories that Copilot provides. Select this button several times and note the changes that Copilot makes each time. Besides changing category names and relocating notes, Copilot might add or reduce the number of categories with each regeneration.

After regenerating the categories several times, you’re not sure which iteration you liked best. While Copilot doesn’t currently support going back to a previous categorization, it does allow you to start over. Select the Revert button to return to the starting list of yellow sticky notes.
To categorize the sticky notes once again, select the Copilot icon at the bottom of the page and then select Categorize from the menu. In the Categorize selected notes? window, select the Categorize button.
Now that you know how the Regenerate button works, for the sake of time, select it once or twice if necessary until you’re satisfied with the category results.
After regenerating the categories several times, you realize that you’re missing detailed steps concerning minimization of system downtime. You want to ask Copilot to add more ideas to your Whiteboard session concerning this issue. Plus, you identified a note that you want to remove. However, since you already organized your ideas, you must change your whiteboard session back into the editing mode that you were in before you categorized the notes. To do so, select the Revert button.
Now that you’re back into editing mode, select a note that you no longer want, and then in the icon tray that appears, select the ellipsis icon. Select Delete from the menu that appears to delete the note.
Repeat the process that you performed earlier to have Copilot suggest more notes. In this case, ask Copilot to suggest ways to limit heating system downtime when installing a new boiler.
Review the six ideas that Copilot suggested. You’re satisfied with these ideas, so insert them into your Whiteboard canvas. If the note grid containing the six new ideas overlays existing notes, drag the note grid to the side so that it doesn’t overlay any of the previous notes. If you run out of space on the screen and part of the block falls off the screen, select the Fit to Screen icon on the bottom-right corner of the page. You might need to select the icon more than once to fit the entirety of content onto the screen.
You’re ready for Copilot to organize the sticky notes. Repeat the earlier process to have Copilot categorize the notes.
Review the categories. Regenerate the categories until you’re satisfied with the results. At that point, select the Keep it button.
Note how each category of sticky notes is a different color. You realize that you would like a short summary of the brainstorming session added to your whiteboard content. To do so, select the Copilot icon at the bottom of the page and then select Summarize from the menu.

In our testing, Copilot sometimes generated a short summary of the main themes from this whiteboarding session; other times, it failed to do so. Scroll down to see if Copilot generated a summary. If so, select Keep it.
Select the Fit to Screen icon on the bottom-right corner of the page to fit all the sticky notes and the session summary onto the entire screen.