Integrating External Tools with Microsoft 365 Copilot

Technology has leaped in the past few years and AI/ML is one such technology that is predicted to be the voice of the future. Every application/organization is integrating AI in their strategy to be abreast with upcoming trends and emerge as a market leader or influencer.

A tool that is gaining rapid traction is Microsoft 365 Copilot which was announced recently by Microsoft. It is your digital copilot to achieve generative AI content that helps organizations and individuals act fast and unlock their fullest potential. It is an AI tool that comes with integration (if a license is purchased) with the Microsoft suite of products like Word, PowerPoint, Teams, Outlook and Whiteboard. Microsoft 365 Copilot comprises general skills like understanding, summarizing, predicting, recalling, translating, and many other functionalities.

As the research on this tool widened, Microsoft identified that Microsoft 365 Copilot can be further extended to integrate with other external tools by maintaining data integrity and governance.

Medium and large enterprises are looking to adopt reliable and authentic AI tools into their organizational structure that are secure and don’t breach their privacy. Given the eminence of the Microsoft suite of tools, an AI extension in the form of Microsoft 365 Copilot is one of the best-suited choices.

Integrating Microsoft 365 Copilot into organizations can allow them to communicate with their data, get quick insights, integrate project management tools like Jira and communication tools like Outlook for quotation automation. By automating repetitive tasks employee’s productivity increases top-notch and they can focus on tasks that need manual intervention.

Sunflower Lab has put in dedicated effort in learning and perfecting this technology and can leverage its capability to integrate your organizational tools (or 3rd-party tools) with Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Microsoft has enabled us to do this in two ways. We can bring your external data to Microsoft 365 Copilot to ground Generative AI results using plugins and Microsoft Graph connectors.

With Microsoft Graph connectors we integrate your data sources with Semantic Indexing for your Copilot. The data is pre-indexed read-only data that is retrieved promptly using the most relevant AI responses. What this implies is that since the data is pre-indexed, the fetching of data doesn’t have a significant time lag. Microsoft Graph connector gathers knowledge by indexing content via emails, chats, and the documents your users use. By this technique, we work with its unified programmability model to access the huge amount of data in Microsoft 365, Windows, and Enterprise Mobility + Security.

Using plugins, on the other hand, we fetch real-time data via APIs that can write back to the data source. We use trusted plugins, such as OpenAI plugins, Microsoft Teams message extensions, and Power Platform connectors, which can be used to integrate external data with Microsoft 365 Copilot. Instead of pre-indexing data, the prompt dynamically interacts with the data source to fetch results, and even write back data. To source your external data for Microsoft 365 Copilot, we help you transform your application into a plugin. This helps in enriching the organizational data accessible to Copilot by ingesting your enterprise data and knowledge.

We use this data retrieval complying with Microsoft’s security and privacy approach.

Also, there are instances where these two approaches work in tandem to deliver results.

When you extend Microsoft 365 Copilot for external tools, you optimize the power of your apps and data with AI, by:

• Streamlining the data of your enterprise with the top echelon of AI tool i.e. Microsoft 365 Copilot.
• Work in synchronicity without stepping into external tools end to end.
• Maintain data privacy governance compliance, and security policies.

As Microsoft vouches to keep your data confidential, you can rest assured that while we work with the tool, we are keeping your data protected too.

As your business grows, so does your data. It is imperative that the organizational data that you are managing is managed in the most efficient manner possible. With the integration of Microsoft 365 Copilot into your business tools you can enjoy the best of both worlds – first, get insights into your organizational data via extended tool integrations, and second, keep your data secure. Here are a couple of more benefits of this extended approach.

Combine the power of LLM with your data in Microsoft Graph to fetch quick responses without dabbling into resources outside your organization.

You want to focus 80% of your time on significant things and 20% on mundane. However, without leveraging AI into your strategy, your time is spent on not-so-relevant things which can be minimized by integrating Microsoft 365 Copilot with your business tools.

With Microsoft 365 Copilot, we help take your business a notch higher by automating processes and workflows. A simple prompt in natural language can fetch efficient and quick results that ease complex workflows.

Integrating external sources via Microsoft Graph connectors can provide contextual information from various applications and services. One more way to get data-driven cognizance is by integrating analytics tools like Power BI and Tableau to gain quick and accurate insights and make better decisions. You can also integrate CRM tools with Microsoft 365 Copilot to drive your sales processing quickly.

Integrating your tools with Microsoft 365 Copilot encourages innovation and collaboration. Our developers build custom plugins and extensions for Copilot that foster a dynamic ecosystem around the platform, leading to the development of new features and capabilities that benefit all your business stakeholders.

While Microsoft 365 Copilot is quite significant on its own, integrating it with your external tools can help your business thrive at its utmost capacity. At Sunflower Lab, we have expertise in integrating your business tools to extend Copilot’s capabilities beyond its native features. This broadens the overall scope of Copilot further on by its usefulness and productivity. Integrating it with your business tools can automate repetitive tasks and processes, freeing users to focus on more strategic activities. By integrating these tools with Copilot, users can trigger automated actions based on specific triggers or events, further enhancing efficiency and productivity.

Let’s focus on this integration for you while you work on other pivotal tasks.

Contact Sunflower Lab now and explore how this integration can take your business to the next level.