3 Copilot productivity hacks for SharePoint admins – at no extra cost

However, in most news stories and marketing materials, we only hear how students, information workers, or managers use those solutions, but no one talks about the best people – SharePoint Administrators! (Ok, I might be a bit biased here).    

At Ignite 2023, Microsoft announced they will release a Copilot in the SharePoint Online admin center, but that has not been released yet, so in this blog post, we will talk about three ways that SharePoint admins can use Microsoft Copilot on the web (previously Bing Chat Enterprise) to administer your SharePoint environment more efficiently! And more good news – you can access Microsoft Copilot at https://copilot.microsoft.com/ with no license required.

Use Copilot to help you with your PowerShell scripts

Let’s start talking about our best friend as SharePoint admins: PowerShell! Did you know that Microsoft Copilot and GitHub Copilot use the same Large Language Model (LLM): GPT-4? Now, of course, GitHub Copilot is a paid Copilot that is purpose-built to help with code and has incredible integrations with multiple IDEs. But did you know the free Microsoft Copilot can also help you with your PowerShell scripts?
First, let’s say you find an old script your company uses but have trouble understanding what it does. Why not ask Copilot for help?

Copilot can understand the PowerShell script and give you a very detailed explanation of everything the script does.

You can also ask Copilot to create a brand-new script for you! In the example below, I prompted Copilot to generate a script for me, and it delivered what I asked for, even with multiple ways to do it.

So, whether you need help understanding existing scripts, or creating new ones, Copilot can help, but be careful. Copilot is not perfect, so always try everything in a pre-production environment. Never copy-paste scripts from anyone (including GenAI) without testing them first.

PS: If you love PowerShell, check out my blog post on 5 useful PowerShell scripts every SharePoint Admin needs.

Use Copilot to help you share Message Center Updates with users

Part of our job as SharePoint administrators is to help our users adapt to the ever-changing features that Microsoft makes available for us. As administrators, we receive all the updates in the Message Center, but our users do not have access to it. Many SharePoint administrators create blog posts (or SharePoint news) to inform users of upcoming changes. In those posts, they usually rewrite the Message Center text aimed at admins in an easier-to-understand way for their users. Could we save time with Copilot? Let’s say we must inform our users of the following Message Center post.

We can go to Microsoft Copilot and use the new Notebook functionality with one unique super-power. It enables you to have up to 18,000 characters in your prompt instead of the usual 4,000. This allows me to post my instructions along the full message center post inside the prompt. I got the result on the right side – and I think Copilot did a great job!

Another cool feature of the Notebook functionality is that you can adjust only part of the prompt on the left and re-generate the answer. This makes it easier to work on your prompt incrementally and see the results side by side without having to copy-paste everything again every time. Talking about super-powers, did you know Copilot has some additional super powers when used in Microsoft Edge?

Use Copilot for any SharePoint questions you have

Lastly, Microsoft Copilot can be your sidekick for any SharePoint question. Microsoft Copilot has all the knowledge from the internet at your fingertips. For example, if you ask how to enable the app catalog for a single Site Collection, it will be able to find the answer for you and explain the steps.

You can ask Copilot anything from how-tos like the example above or generic questions like my question about the SharePoint Online recycle bin below. Copilot is there to answer any questions you have.

Conclusion

Microsoft Copilot is your AI Assistant on the web. While most use cases and examples we see online are aimed at business users, there are multiple ways that SharePoint administrators can use Microsoft Copilot in their daily lives! In this blog post, we have seen how Microsoft Copilot can help admins work with PowerShell Scripts, help with Change Management, and be your know-it-all intern, always by your side for any questions you have! Best of all, Copilot is now available at https://copilot.microsoft.com/, so why not try it?

Do not forget that Copilot (and any Generative AI tool) is impressive but imperfect, so you must validate everything before making any changes in production.