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Audience: Students, Faculty, Staff, Affiliates
Responsible Group: IT Training and Outreach
Overview
Students, faculty, and staff can reduce manual effort and focus on higher-value work by using Microsoft Copilot Chat, an AI-powered assistant available with the Microsoft educational license. It integrates directly into Microsoft apps on web/desktop/mobile (Teams, Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote) and has four access points, providing support for writing, researching, summarizing, and enhancing productivity. Unlike Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Chat is and AI chat that features, "web-grounded answers with the advanced security protections you expect from Microsoft." (Source: Copilot Chat comes to the Microsoft 365 apps)
Who can use it: Anyone with a valid @uark.edu account under the Microsoft 365 educational license.
What it is used for: Copilot Chat assists with generating content, improving clarity, brainstorming ideas, answering research questions within the browser. You can also upload documents for AI assistance, and reference them in M365 apps using "/".
Why use it: Compared to other AI tools, Copilot Chat is rooted in web-search answers and able to provide assistance within context.
IMPORTANT:
Users must follow all federal and state laws, as well as UA System and University of Arkansas policies, when handling university data on any AI tool.
Key Features
- Available across Microsoft 365 apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote.
- Provides real-time grammar and style suggestions.
- Ask Copilot to summarize content, generate drafts, or reformat text.
- Generates summaries of webpages, documents, or long text passages.
- Use Copilot in Excel to analyze data, identify trends, and create charts.
- Quickly draft professional emails in Outlook or create slides in PowerPoint.
- Context-aware suggestions tailored to the document or email you’re working on.
Tip: Did you know you can use Copilot to summarize an article or webpage instantly? Simply open Edge, click the Copilot icon in the sidebar, and ask for a summary.
Access
You can access Microsoft Copilot Chat from any of the four access points below. Be sure to log in using your @uark.edu email address to unlock the educational license features.
- Within Microsoft 365 apps web/desktop/mobile. (Click on the Copilot Chat icon in the ribbon or sidebar.)
- Online at m365.cloud.microsoft/
- Within Microsoft Edge Browser (directions below).
- Windows OS
Mobile App
Download Microsoft 365 apps from your mobile app store. After signing in with your @uark.edu account, look for the Copilot option inside the app.
Microsoft Edge Browser
- Open Microsoft Edge on your computer.
- Select the Copilot icon on the sidebar (top-right corner).
- Sign in with your @uark.edu credentials if prompted.
- Start using Copilot by typing your request in the chat panel.
Training
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