COPILOT WEEKLY
Fri, October 30, 2026
6-minute read
3 QUICK WINS · 2 THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW · 1 GUIDE
👋 Hello, Hello
Here's something we didn't expect: we gave three AI models in Copilot the same spreadsheet and the same prompt, and got different answers. One said sales were up 8%. Another said 85%. So this week is about using Copilot and still being sure of the number you send.
IN 5 MINUTES, BE THE ONE IN THE OFFICE WHO KNOWS COPILOT:
Catch the errors Excel won't warn you about.
Get your meetings prepped before you sit down.
Build your team a budget app with one sentence.
Switch the model Copilot uses.
See what happened when Claude, GPT and Grok analyzed the same sheet.
Get Copilot to act when a certain email or Teams message comes in.
3 Quick wins
1. 📊 Check your data before you trust the total
Excel adds up whatever's in the cells. If a number is stored as text, or a row is in there twice, SUM still gives you a total and doesn't warn you. Copilot can check for that before the total goes to your boss.
Open the workbook and click Copilot.
Paste the prompt below.
Copilot lists each problem, which cells it's in, how it throws off your total, and how to fix it.
The prompt: "Before I use this data, check it for anything that could make my totals wrong. Don't change any cells. Tell me what each problem is, which cells it's in, and how you'd fix it."
Why "don't change any cells": you see every problem before anything gets touched, and you decide what to fix.
Copilot inside Excel Sheets - PracticalyAI
Now you're the one who double-checked.
2. ☀️ Get your meetings prepped before you sit down
Cowork has ready-made automations, and Daily briefing is the easiest one to start with. Every weekday morning it reads your Outlook calendar and posts a short brief for each meeting to your own Teams chat. Each brief covers who's in it, what it's about, and your latest email or Teams thread with those people.
Open Copilot → Cowork → Automations.
Select Add → Discover more → Automate → Daily briefing.
To see it work right away, choose Activate and run now if you're asked. Otherwise the first brief arrives the next morning.
It's read-only. It won't accept, decline or message anyone. It also flags meetings with no agenda and back-to-back stretches, and it tells you which meeting to prep for first. You can change the time or pause it anytime from Automations.
Microsoft Copilot Cowork Automations - PracticalyAI
No more "sorry, can you remind me what this one's about?"
3. 💸 Build your team a budget app with one sentence
A viewer asked whether Copilot could build them a budget app for their team. So we tested it. You describe the app in plain English, and Copilot builds it. You don't write any code.
Open Copilot → Cowork.
Paste the prompt below.
Your team adds their own spend, you get one overview of where the money's going and how much budget is left, and it flags anything that pushes you over.
If something's missing, just ask: eg. "Add a category filter." Or ask it to change or remove a feature. The app updates, and you don't start over.
The prompt: "Let's build an app where I can manage budget, where all my team just adds their individual transactions/spend and I get an overview and also monitor so that we manage spend within budget."
The catch: app building is a Frontier preview, so it may not be on your account yet. When it's ready, Share gives you a link, but anyone with that link can open the app and all its data. Only send it to your team.
Create apps with Copilot Code - PracticalyAI
No more spreadsheet with five versions of the truth.
2 Things you didn't know you could do
1. 🔀 We raced 4 models on the same deck
Copilot doesn't run on one AI. In PowerPoint and Excel, you can choose between Auto, Claude, GPT and Grok. We gave all four the same PowerPoint prompt: "Build a four-slide status update from my notes, and don't invent anything."
All four asked which style we wanted. Grok also asked what direction we wanted for the slides. GPT took the longest to finish.
The catch: Grok is still rolling out, so you might not see it yet. Your choice only lasts until you close the app, so check the picker before each task.
2. ⚖️ Claude vs GPT vs Grok: same sheet, different answers
You asked for an Excel version of the test, so we ran one. Claude, GPT and Grok got the same sales sheet and the same prompt:
The prompt: "Analyze this sales data like you're preparing it for my manager. Build a summary table, one chart, and a short list of what's going well, what's not, and what I should do next. Put it all in a new tab."
GPT was the fastest, but it gave the most basic summary.
Grok took the longest by far, but it built the nicest-looking report.
Claude went further than we asked. It pulled costs from another tab and found a product that was losing money.
Then the surprise. GPT said sales were up 8%, and Grok said 85%. Neither one got the math wrong. They just compared different months.
Ask this before you send it: "Which data, which tabs and which months did you use for each number?"
Choose different AI models inside Copilot in Excel - PracticalyAI
The fastest answer and the right answer aren't always the same one.
1 Guide
Cowork can also run a task when something happens, like an email from your manager or a @mention in a Teams channel. You stop watching your inbox, and Cowork watches it for you. Here's what's in the guide.
THE GUIDE IN 6 POINTS:
Describe the trigger in plain English. Tell Cowork what to watch for and what to do. Microsoft's examples: "Whenever my manager emails me about the Contoso renewal, summarize it and draft a reply for my review" and "When I'm @mentioned in the Incident channel, email me a one-line summary."
Three kinds of triggers. An email you receive, a Teams channel message, or a Teams chat message. For Teams, you can limit it to messages that mention you.
You check it before it starts. Cowork shows a Set up trigger? card with When (the event), Run in (a new conversation or the current one) and What it does (the instructions). It also lists the permissions it needs. Select Set up to turn it on.
It drafts, you approve. If a task would send an email, post a message or change something shared, Cowork prepares it and waits for your OK.
It can't see more than you can. Every task runs with your permissions, results only go to you unless you approve otherwise, and rate limits stop it from firing too often.
One place to manage it all. Event-driven tasks sit next to your scheduled ones on the Automations page, marked Active, Draft or Paused, with when each one last ran. Open one to see its history, edit it, pause it or delete it.
Microsoft Copilot Cowork Event-Triggered Automations - PracticalyAI
Try this first: pick the one email you always rush to answer, and have Cowork summarize it and draft the reply the moment it lands.
Set it up once, then stop checking your inbox for it.
🎤 Ask us anything. Show us what you built.
A Copilot question you can't crack, a prompt that won't land, a feature you keep seeing but don't quite get: reply to this email. Two of this week's items came straight from your comments: the budget app and the Excel showdown.
Built something with Copilot? A workflow, a prompt, an app your team actually uses? Reply and tell us. The whole point of this list is people sharing what they're shipping so everyone learns together.
Don't forget to rate today's post
That's your Copilot 3-2-1 for the week. Reply with the email you'd hand to an event-driven task first.
Kushank and team
Copilot Samaritan · Copilot Weekly is a PracticalyAI newsletter · practicaly.ai/copilot
