Use Microsoft Copilot in M365 for IT Documentation and Emails

What This Does

Microsoft Copilot is embedded directly in Outlook, Teams, and Word, letting you draft incident report emails, summarize meeting recordings from incident calls, and write IT documentation without leaving your Microsoft environment. If your organization has M365 Copilot licenses deployed, you already have access to this.

Before You Start

• Your organization has Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses deployed (a paid add-on to Microsoft 365 business and enterprise plans; pricing differs by plan tier)
• You're signed into Microsoft 365 with your work account
• Check with your IT manager if Copilot is enabled, not all orgs have deployed it

Steps

1. Use Copilot in Outlook to draft professional emails

1. Open Outlook (web or desktop)
2. Click New Mail to start a new email
3. Look for the Copilot button in the compose toolbar above the message body, then choose Draft (in classic Outlook it reads Draft with Copilot)
4. A text box appears asking what you want to write
5. Type: "Write a professional email to [user] explaining that their VPN issue has been identified as a DNS configuration problem on the server side. The IT infrastructure team is working on it. Expected resolution is end of business tomorrow."
6. Select the Generate arrow. Copilot drafts the email; review and send

What you should see: A drafted email in the compose window with professional language. After the draft appears, use the dropdown to make it shorter or change the tone (classic Outlook puts this behind an Adjust button).

Troubleshooting: If you don't see the Copilot button, your organization may not have Copilot deployed. Try the web version (outlook.com with your work account) first.

2. Summarize a Teams meeting or incident call recording

1. After a recorded or transcribed meeting, open the meeting details in your Teams Calendar
2. Go to the Recap tab (Copilot's post-meeting summary lives here)
3. Copilot automatically generates: a meeting summary, key discussion points, and action items with owner names
4. Click Copy to paste into your incident ticket or share via email

What you should see: A structured summary with action items tagged to specific people in the meeting.

Alternative (if Teams Copilot isn't available): Export the transcript (in Teams, click the recording → More options → Open in browser → Transcript → download). Paste the transcript into ChatGPT or Claude and ask for a structured summary.

3. Draft IT documentation in Word with Copilot

1. Open Microsoft Word (new blank document)
2. Click the Copilot icon in the lower-right corner of the document window (Microsoft moved it off the Home ribbon in 2026; press F6 to jump to it, or right-click it and choose Move to ribbon if you prefer the old placement)
3. In the Copilot pane, type: "Write an IT runbook for resetting a user's Microsoft 365 password as an admin via the M365 Admin Center. Include step-by-step instructions, what the user needs to do after, and a troubleshooting section for common issues."
4. Copilot drafts the document; review, adjust, and save to SharePoint or Confluence

What you should see: A multi-page Word document with structured headings, numbered steps, and a troubleshooting section.

Real Example

Scenario: You just finished a 90-minute incident call about an Exchange Online outage that affected 200 users. You need to send a post-incident summary to your IT manager within the hour.

What you do:

1. Open the meeting's Recap tab in your Teams Calendar → copy the action items and timeline from the Copilot summary
2. Open a new Outlook email → Draft with Copilot → "Write a post-incident summary email about the Exchange Online outage from today's incident call. Here's the meeting summary: [paste Copilot's meeting summary]. Format: Executive summary, Timeline, Root cause, Resolution, Next steps."
3. Review, adjust any incorrect details, and send

Time saved: Writing this from scratch: 30-45 minutes. With Copilot chain: 10-15 minutes.

Tips

• Outlook's Coaching by Copilot feature is excellent for sensitive emails: while composing, click the Copilot icon and choose it to get suggestions on tone, clarity, and reader sentiment.
• In Teams, you can ask Copilot during a live meeting: "Catch me up on what I missed" if you join late to an incident call.
• Copilot in SharePoint (if deployed) can search across your entire SharePoint knowledge base to answer questions, useful for finding specific IT policies or procedures.

Tool interfaces change. Microsoft frequently updates Copilot placement in the M365 apps. In Word, Excel, and PowerPoint look for the icon in the lower-right corner; in Outlook it stays in the compose toolbar.