AI in Outlook: what Copilot does, and what it doesn't

If your company runs on Microsoft 365, you may have already seen Copilot appear in Outlook. It promises to sort, summarise and write. Here's what it actually does, according to Microsoft's documentation, and how to get the most out of it.

What Copilot does in Outlook

Prioritise the inbox. Copilot can rank your emails as high, normal or low priority, with the reason for each ranking. This is the "Prioritize my inbox" feature described in Microsoft's help pages.

Summarise. On a long thread, Copilot writes a summary of the exchange at the top. Handy for picking a file back up after a holiday or joining a discussion midway.

Draft and follow up. Copilot drafts emails from a few words, suggests tone and length, and Microsoft is adding more autonomous features that can prepare follow-ups or create sorting rules. Availability depends on your plan and your company's settings.

Its limits

A priority is more than a label. Ranking a hundred emails as high, normal or low helps, but you often still have twenty "high priority" ones. The real question remains: which one first? That's the trap described in when everything is urgent.

It stays inside Microsoft. Copilot works on your Microsoft 365 data. If you also have a Gmail or IMAP address, or clients write to you across several inboxes, it only sees part of your activity.

Access depends on the licence. Copilot features depend on your Microsoft 365 plan and on what your IT team has turned on. Check what's available to you before building your method on it.

Virtus Lever, alongside Outlook

Virtus Lever connects to Outlook read-only, via OAuth, and can also follow a Gmail or IMAP address. You keep reading and replying in Outlook; Lever replaces nothing.

Every morning its Domino algorithm picks a single email: the highest-leverage one, which unblocks the rest. Lever also tracks your follow-ups and measures your backlog. Your personal assistant answers your questions from your emails, your documents and your contact graph.

Data is hosted in the EU and a data processing agreement (DPA) is available, which makes approval by your DPO or IT team easier.

A simple method with Outlook and AI

In the morning, start with the priority of the day before opening the rest of the inbox. Then work in batches at set times, as in email batching, using Copilot's summaries for long threads.

For follow-ups, keep a clear list of what you're waiting for and from whom. Our guide to email follow-ups gives a simple rhythm.

You can try Lever for free: one priority a day, for two weeks, on your current Outlook inbox.