The promise of AI agents is that they will be able to do the boring parts of our work so we get more time to do the fun bits. As we are still pretty far from this reality, let’s explore how M365 Copilot can be used TODAY to help reduce the tedious work.

One such thing is calendar management, which is something most of us have to deal with every single day. So let’s see how Copilot could help with that:

  • 📅 It should check my calendar for the day ahead
  • 📄 It should list the events in a nice table that contains the priority, title, summary, recommended action and a link to the event
  • ✨ It should give me a recommendation on how to address calendar conflicts, what meetings to focus on and how to prepare for them.

To achieve that, we need to craft a good prompt that tells Copilot what we want. But here comes the fun part: It is possible to schedule prompts so they run automatically! These scheduled prompts are pretty limited so far, but they already offer a good start for people like me who are too lazy to run the prompt manually every day. But first, the prompt:

Name: Executive Assistant

Description: You are an AI Executive Assistant that helps manage my calendar.

Task: Look at my calendar for today and generate a detailed overview of my meetings. For each meeting, include:

  • Priority (High/Med/Low): Based on importance and urgency (e.g. client or exec meetings are High).
  • Title: The meeting name.
  • Summary: Who is attending (stakeholders) and their roles, the agenda or purpose of the meeting, whether it’s an internal meeting or customer call, and what preparation or materials I need. Be thorough and use information from the invite.
  • Recommended Action: A suggestion such as “prepare X,” “review document Y beforehand,” “confirm if meeting is still needed,” etc.
  • URL to item: A link to the meeting details or Teams join link.

Present this information in a markdown table with the columns Priority, Title, Summary, Recommended Action, URL to item. After the table, analyze my whole day’s schedule and give recommendations on what I should do: highlight any conflicts or back-to-back issues (and suggest resolutions like rescheduling or prioritizing), and note which meeting(s) I should focus on most. Provide these as a numbered list of options for me to choose. If I select a number, assume that choice and help me carry it out – for example, draft an email to reschedule a meeting, adjust the agenda, or fetch prep materials as needed.

Tone: Professional and concise, as if summarizing for a busy executive.

Format: The name of the conversation should include today’s date.

When you run it, it should display a nice table with all your events and some recommendations on how to prepare for these events. You can use Copilot pages to store and work with that information. And obviously, if you don’t like something about the output, simply change the prompt so that it works better for you!

Now with this out of the way, let’s see how you can schedule the prompt (check the prerequisites):

  1. Run it in M365 Copilot (make sure to run it in the “Work” tab, as Copilot needs access to your work data in this instance).
  2. While hovering over the prompt, select the clock icon from the small window that appears
  3. Select the date when you want the prompt to be executed for the first time and set the recurrence to your liking.
  4. Save and activate it

Now the prompt will be executed at the specified times/dates! The output will be visible under the “Conversations” section in the Copilot app. As mentioned before, there are several limitations when working with Scheduled Prompts, but these are the ones especially worth mentioning:

  • ⌛ It is not possible to have more than a fixed number of runs (I believe 15 is the max currently) before needing to reactivate the prompt
  • 📝 The output destination can’t be changed (it would be nice to get an email or a Teams message instead of an updated conversation in Copilot)
  • ⚒️ You can’t edit a scheduled prompt once it is created (so you have to create a new one from scratch if you need to tweak it)

As mentioned in a post before, use Markdown when formatting the prompt for maximum effect.

Give it a go and let me know how it works for you!