Organisation using AI

You can use Copilot to help you organise your work week, break down tasks, and focus meeting direction. Remember! The more context you can provide when first asking AI to complete a task, the better quality your output will be. For tips on crafting prompts effectively, visit the AI Fundamentals online course.

Tips for using AI tools to help you get organised

Plan your week

By adding your list of tasks and events into Copilot chat, you can create a schedule to help plan out your week. You can ask Copilot to identify key tasks and prioritise your schedule. An example prompt for this could be:

Here are my meetings and tasks for the week. Create a plan for the week that balances my time and highlights any priorities.

Break down work

You can ask Copilot to help break down large tasks into smaller, more manageable tasks. This would be by describing the piece of work you're trying to complete, any key deadlines or milestones and requesting how you would like it to be broken down.

An example prompt for this could be:

I need to complete a report on our department's research funding. I have 4 weeks to produce the initial findings. Create a plan that includes sections for legislation, ethics, and data management, and areas of focus over the next 4 weeks. Break this into weekly milestones and tasks.

Prepare for upcoming meetings

Tell Copilot the purpose of an upcoming meeting, and ask it to create an agenda and discussion points.

An example prompt for this could be:

I have an hour long meeting coming up to discuss our software licencing for Adobe. Suggest an agenda and key discussion points.

Create meeting outcomes

Once you've completed your meeting, you can provide Copilot with a list of notes from the meeting, and ask it to produce a set of minutes that can be distributed to others, and help identify assigned tasks and deadlines clearly.

It's important to always be aware of the content you're adding to Copilot, so don’t copy any information that could be sensitive or personal into Copilot. For tips on anonymising data, see the AI Fundamentals online course, or the AI security Help pages.

An example prompt for this might be:

From the attached meeting notes, identify any key outcomes, actions that have been assigned, and deadlines. Provide these as a summary I can easily share via email with the meeting attendees.

Collate information from public reports

If you have several reports to read, Copilot can help you to create a high level summary, to give you some top level insights before you read through. You can copy content from publicly available reports (for example, National Student Survey data, JISC reports, new Department for Education guidance), and ask Copilot to provide a quick summary.

An example prompt could be:

Here are three recently published reports around student use of AI. Identify key themes, actions, risks, and recommendations.

It's always important to remember that AI isn't perfect, and may miss certain things that are relevant to your department or role, so be sure to check the outputs and don't rely on AI to complete all the reading for you. Treat it more like a bicycle; it can help you get to places more quickly and easily, but you still need to put in the work to reach the final destination.