Share your best prompts
As you become more familiar with the capabilities of Microsoft Copilot, and more skilled at creating prompts that delight, intrigue, or amaze, don't keep them to yourself. When you share the prompts you've tried and refined, particularly those you used to great effect, you not only gain the reputation for leading change but contribute to Copilot adoption and resulting task efficiencies across your organization. There are lots of ways to share prompts, and some best practices to go along with them. This article explains it all.
Best practice: tell your prompt story
Sharing the actual prompt is easy. But before you copy and paste a prompt into your favorite app, think about this: the real learning and inspiration come from hearing your “prompt story.” Consider these elements in your story:
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What you were trying to accomplish
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The actual prompt (text)
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Description of the prompt output (e.g., “the prompt created a PowerPoint presentation complete with images and speaker notes”)
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How Copilot specifically helped you: maybe it saved you time, or produced something you thought was beyond your reach
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What you learned, reflections on your experience, or what you will try next
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Encouragement for others to give it a try
EXAMPLE 1: Copilot drafted my monthly status presentation
Every month, I need to present the status of our research project to the exec team. Normally, this takes me a few days. Instead, I tried this prompt in Copilot:
“Draft a PowerPoint presentation for the Monthly Status Update of no more than 10 slides using the information in these files.”
Copilot created a new presentation in less than a minute that had sections for Project Summary, Current Status, Recent Accomplishments, What’s Next, and Risks. Wow! Saved me hours of work, and it’s actually a more professional looking presentation than I could have created myself. This is the new way.
EXAMPLE 2: Catch up on the missed meeting
My schedule got totally taken over last Thursday with an urgent customer request and I was not able to go the cross-team planning meeting for Q4. Normally, I’d try to block an hour and read all the presentations from all the speakers and the notes and maybe listen to some of the recording, but this time I tried using Copilot to catch up…
“Summarize the meeting into the Top Five Takeaways including Action Items”
After just a minute, Copilot cranked out five pretty helpful highlights from the meeting along with a link to key points in the transcript. It also tracked three important action items from the discussion. Almost better than attending the meeting! I totally recommend this for when you can’t attend a meeting. It's easy to catch up and worth it.
Suggested methods for sharing your prompt story
Fortunately, sharing both your prompt and story is easy, and there are lots of ways to do so. Here are some suggestions.
Share using a Viva Engage community
Many organizations set up Viva Engage communities where people with similar interests or who work in similar disciplines can exchange information and ideas. This is a perfect place to share prompts as well. For example, imagine a community dedicated to the product management (PM) discipline. There, PMs can share prompts that will help others write specs or planning documents using specific templates.
Recommendation: Post into the community using a new Discussion or Article
Learn more about Viva Engage Communities: Communities in Viva Engage - Microsoft Support
Share using Microsoft Teams
Create a prompt channel in your Microsoft Teams space and encourage team members to contribute their best prompts. These contributions could be tagged with likes and get replies. Encourage testimonials as well. Trying a prompt recommended by someone else and then sharing insights about how it worked for you is a great way to kick off a conversation and inspire others to give it a try.
Channels aren’t the only way to share prompts in Microsoft Teams. Meeting chat is a quick and easy place to share prompts that are relevant to the current conversation or meeting topic. Imagine a conversation in the meeting where someone says, “I need to put together a blog post for a product announcement happening next week and I haven’t had time to start it yet.” Another person says, “I had a similar assignment and used a prompt to get me started. It really saved me some time. Here, try this.”
Write a blog post announcing a new line of eyeglasses targeted at people who suffer from chronic dry eye. The eyeglasses lock moisture in while protecting eyes from wind and debris. The glasses are lightweight, fashionable, and priced to appeal to all ages and income levels. The glasses go on sale just in time for summer and will be available everywhere you buy eyeglasses. Cite research and use an upbeat tone.
Learn more about Microsoft Teams and channels: Create a standard, private, or shared channel in Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Support
Share using SharePoint news
The news feature in SharePoint makes it easy to bring your organization’s news stories to life with rich formatting, images, dynamic content, and prompts. A SharePoint communication site or team site are both good options.
Learn more about SharePoint news: Create and share news on your SharePoint sites - Microsoft Support
See also
Get better results with Copilot prompting
Craft effective prompts for Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365