What is Microsoft Copilot?

If you’re using one or more Microsoft products, such as Windows PC, Windows Operating System, Office 365, Azure, Visual Studio, or Edge, you will see Copilot almost everywhere. Copilot is Microsoft's generative AI assistant that is here to help you assist with day-to-day tasks.

Here is Copilot at Windows Taskbar.

Here is Copilot in Edge.

Here are some of the key things Copilot can do:

1. Code Assistance

• Autocomplete code in real time across multiple programming languages.
• Generate entire code snippets, functions, or even boilerplate code.
• Suggest best practices and improve existing code.
• Debug and optimize code by offering alternative implementations.
• Integrate with IDEs like Visual Studio, VS Code, and JetBrains.

2. Writing and Content Generation

• Draft blog posts, articles, and documentation.
• Summarize lengthy texts and generate concise explanations.
• Suggest edits and improve grammar, clarity, and tone.
• Create structured reports and presentations.

3. Business and Productivity Support

• Automate repetitive tasks in Microsoft 365 apps (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Teams).
• Generate insights and charts based on Excel data.
• Summarize emails and draft responses in Outlook.
• Assist in meeting notes and follow-ups in Teams.

4. Creative and Design Work

• Generate ideas for marketing campaigns.
• Assist with UI/UX design by suggesting improvements.
• Create AI-powered images (Copilot in Designer).
• Help with storytelling and creative writing.

5. Data Analysis and Automation

• Process and analyze large datasets in Excel.
• Generate SQL queries for databases.
• Automate workflows and streamline operations.

6. AI-Powered Search and Assistance

• Answer technical and business-related questions.
• Find information quickly across emails, documents, and online resources.
• Assist in research and provide citations.

There are two Copilots: Microsoft Copilot and Github Copilot. Microsoft Copilot is a general Copilot available through various Microsoft products, including Windows, Bing, Edge, Office 365, Teams, Power Platform, and Azure.

Github Copilot is designed for programmers and developers who write and maintain software code. This book focuses on Github Copilot. 

Microsoft Copilot and GitHub Copilot are different, though they share similarities in their purpose and technology base. 
While both GitHub Copilot and Microsoft Copilot are AI-powered tools designed to assist users, GitHub Copilot is explicitly tailored for coding and development. In contrast, Microsoft Copilot encompasses a broader range of productivity enhancements across various Microsoft applications.

What is Github Copilot?

GitHub Copilot is an AI coding assistant that helps you write code faster without typing too much, improving productivity. With a faster coding assistant, you can focus more on your business logic and problem-solving. Github Copilot was developed by Github and OpenAI to help software teams’ productivity. It leverages a generative AI model developed collaboratively by GitHub, OpenAI, and Microsoft.

Copilot offers coding suggestions as you type: sometimes the completion of the current line, sometimes a whole new block of code. You can accept all or part of a suggestion, or you can ignore the suggestion and keep typing. Using the chat feature, you can ask Copilot how to solve a problem best. Or you can ask Copilot to explain someone else's code. If your code has a bug, you can ask Copilot how to fix it.

GitHub Copilot has been proven to increase developer productivity and accelerate the pace of software development. In a survey, 88% were more productive when they used Github Copilot.

Job satisfaction is a key to developers’ well-being and happiness. While using Copilot, developers focused more on problem-solving than typing code and fixing bugs. 

Download Copilot eBook: Copilot Handbook for Students and Developers