A few years back, my friend Johnathan, who was working as a Principal Solution Architect for AWS, visited EIT to spend some time with our students. He told me about this new thing called Alexa for Business.
What he told me was futuristic … imagine a CEO in a board meeting orally asking Alexa for financial projections based on data stored in spreadsheets across several global folders. Alexa can not only find the information but also use voice recognition to check if the person is even authorised to ask that question. During my tenure as the Internship Coordinator for EIT, we had the opportunity to send three of our students to a prominent agricultural company in the area. The CEO had a vision to leverage PowerBI to analyse harvest yields by location over years of data tracking, with the aim of predicting future production based on past trends.
This ambitious project was a resounding success, albeit it required significant time and effort over several months to complete. Unfortunately, Alexa for Business isn’t available in New Zealand, and there aren’t enough interns to go around.
So, where in today’s data-driven world, businesses are amassing information at an unprecedented rate. SharePoint, Microsoft’s collaborative platform, has become a central repository for countless documents, files, and records. But with this abundance comes a challenge: efficiently extracting the insights buried within. This is where Microsoft Copilot steps in, acting as a digital spelunker for your SharePoint data. Copilot, an AI-powered assistant integrated within the platform, empowers businesses to streamline data discovery and harness the true potential of their SharePoint investment.
Here’s how Copilot transforms the data-digging experience in SharePoint:
■ Intuitive Search: Copilot leverages natural language processing to understand the intent behind your queries. Simply ask questions in plain English, and Copilot will scour your SharePoint data, surfacing relevant documents, files, and even specific data points within them.
■ Advanced Filtering: Refine your search with Copilot’s powerful filtering options. Filter by date, author, document type, or any metadata associated with your SharePoint content. This laser focus helps you unearth the precise data nuggets you need, saving valuable time and effort.
■ Automated Insights: Copilot goes beyond basic search. It analyses your data, identifying patterns, trends, and anomalies. Imagine Copilot highlighting sales reports across different regions, pinpointing areas exceeding or falling short of targets. This automated analysis empowers data-driven decision-making.
■ Seamless Integration: Copilot seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft applications you already use, like Excel and Power BI. Extracted data can be effortlessly transferred for further analysis and visualisation. This eliminates the need for manual data migration, streamlining your workflow.
Real-world Benefits for Businesses: Imagine your marketing team using Copilot to analyse customer feedback documents stored in SharePoint, uncovering sentiment trends and informing future campaigns. Or, a sales team leveraging Copilot to pinpoint historical sales data across different product lines, identifying opportunities for upselling and cross-selling. Copilot’s impact extends beyond specific departments.
By broadening data access and analysis to everyone in the company, Copilot fosters a data-driven culture within organisations. Employees across all levels can leverage SharePoint’s potential, gaining valuable insights to improve decision-making and boost overall productivity. The Future of Data Discovery in SharePoint Microsoft Copilot is revolutionising
the way businesses interact with data stored in SharePoint.
By empowering smarter data discovery and analysis, Copilot is helping organisations unearth the goldmine of insights hidden within their collaborative platform. As Copilot continues to evolve, one thing is certain: the future of data discovery in SharePoint is looking brighter than ever.
