Applied AI and Microsoft 365 Copilot

Build a practical understanding of AI before applying it to everyday Microsoft 365 work. Learn how to set a clear brief, use appropriate source material and review the result.

Combine guided Copilot practice with responsible-use habits and an action plan for your workplace. 

Managers and team leaders, administrators, HR and learning teams, finance and operations professionals, and digital champions. Designed for people who already use Microsoft 365. No coding experience is required.

• Explain the main forms of AI, how language models work and where their limitations matter.
• Match business questions to descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analytics.
• Apply responsible-AI principles, security boundaries and verification habits.
• Write structured prompts with clear goals, context, sources and expected outputs.
• Use Copilot to support documents, analysis, presentations and everyday Microsoft 365 work.
• Explore reusable skills and agents with human oversight and an adoption plan.

DAY 1
AI foundations and responsible use.

01. AI: a shared vocabulary

• Machine learning, deep learning, NLP, RPA and generative AI.
• Match AI approaches to business problems.

02. How language models work

• Training, tokens, context, grounding and retrieval.
• Recognise hallucinations, bias and reasoning limits.

03. The analytics spectrum

• Descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analytics.
• Data quality, decision support and human judgement.

04. The AI security boundary

• Identity, permissions, data classification and oversharing.
• Prompt injection, consumer vs enterprise use and data safeguards.

05. Responsible AI and accountability

• Bias, acceptable use, governance and approval.
• Assess an AI failure and propose practical controls.

06. Explainable AI

• Interpretability, transparency and defensible decisions.
• Feature importance; SHAP, LIME; counterfactuals.

DAY 2
Microsoft 365 Copilot in practice

07. The ecosystem and prompting

• Choose between chat, in-app tools and agents.
• Set goals, context, sources and expectations; evaluate outputs.

08. Copilot in Word

• Draft, rewrite, summarise and query documents.
• Maintain corporate style and check the result against sources.

09. Copilot in Excel

• Prepare structured data; generate and explain formulas.
• Explore trends, outliers, charts, PivotTables and scenarios.

10. Copilot in PowerPoint

• Create and refine presentations from prompts and documents.
• Use templates; improve the story, notes and visual quality.

11. Reusable skills and agents

• Instructions, knowledge, actions and reusable expertise.
• Explore Agent Builder and Copilot Studio; test and govern access.

12. Delegation and adoption

• Explore multi-step workflows and Cowork, where available.
• Set checkpoints, build data readiness and measure value.

Both scheduled cohorts are offered Face-to-Face and Virtual Live Online