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Microsoft Copilot: A Beginner’s Guide

Microsoft Copilot is an AI companion that can help you with various tasks, such as information retrieval, content creation, conversation, and more. You can chat with Copilot in your preferred language and tone, and Copilot will try to understand your needs and provide relevant and useful responses.

Prompts

A prompt is a message that you send to Copilot to initiate a conversation or request a task. A prompt can be a question, a command, a statement, or anything else that you want to say to Copilot. For example, you can ask Copilot:

  • “What is the capital of France?”
  • “Generate a poem about love.”
  • “Tell me a joke.”
  • “How are you today?”

The prompt should be clear, concise, and specific. The more information you provide in the prompt, the better Copilot can understand your intent and generate a suitable response.

Priming

Priming is a technique that you can use to improve the quality and relevance of Copilot’s responses. Priming means providing some additional information or context before or after the prompt to guide Copilot’s generation. For example, you can use priming to:

  • Specify the format, length, or style of the response.
  • Provide some keywords, examples, or references for the content.
  • Indicate the purpose, goal, or audience of the task.
  • Give feedback or suggestions to Copilot.

You can use priming in different ways, such as:

  • Using quotation marks, parentheses, brackets, or other symbols to separate the priming from the prompt.
  • Using words like “please”, “for example”, “in the style of”, “for a blog post”, etc. to introduce the priming.
  • Using a new line or a bullet point to list the priming items.

Here are some examples of prompts with priming:

  • “Generate a short story about a dragon and a princess. (The story should be less than 300 words and have a happy ending.)”
  • “Write a summary of this article: [Please use bullet points and include the main points and the conclusion.]”
  • “Create a catchy slogan for a new brand of coffee. [Some keywords: smooth, rich, energizing. Some examples: Wake up and smell the coffee. The best part of your day. Coffee that makes you smile.]”

Personas

A persona is a set of characteristics that define how Copilot interacts with you. You can choose from different personas to customize your chat experience with Copilot. Each persona has a different name, tone, and personality. For example, you can choose from:

  • Alice: Friendly, cheerful, and optimistic. Alice likes to chat about various topics and share her opinions and feelings. She also likes to use emojis and exclamation marks.
  • Bob: Professional, informative, and helpful. Bob likes to provide factual and accurate information and answer your questions. He also likes to use headings, tables, and lists to organize his responses.
  • Charlie: Creative, witty, and humorous. Charlie likes to generate original and interesting content and entertain you with jokes, stories, and poems. He also likes to use metaphors, puns, and rhymes.

You can switch between different personas by using the Copilot interface or by sending a command like “Switch to Alice” or “Change persona to Bob”. You can also ask Copilot to describe each persona or suggest a persona for you based on your preferences.