In the ever-evolving digital landscape of Microsoft 365, we are faced with a myriad of tools and applications that continuously update. Word, OneNote, Loop – and now Pages? It’s natural to question whether we truly need another app for writing and sharing information. If you're a frequent user of Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, you'll undoubtedly appreciate the introduction of Pages. If you are not a frequent user, you might go on with your work as usual and not embrace this new tool, but in any case, it’s still beneficial to know what Pages are in case a colleague shares a page with you. In this blog, we will guide you through getting started with Copilot Pages and highlight some key things you need to know.
What are Copilot Pages?
Copilot Pages are web-based pages, tightly integrated with Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, that you can use to easily save, edit, and share information you have gathered from your Microsoft 365 Copilot Chats. The underlying technology of Pages is Microsoft Loop, so if you are already a Microsoft Loop user, you will be familiar with the user experience. If you are new to Microsoft Loop, you can learn more in the blog post, Exploring the Benefits of Microsoft Loop.
Step 1 – Get started with a page in Copilot Pages
The easiest way to get started with Pages is via a Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat conversation. Let’s illustrate with an example! Say, for instance, that you need to buy a new headset, and you want to do some research before you decide on which headset to purchase. You open Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat (that is available to all users with a Microsoft 365 license) and type in a prompt to start your research.
Copilot responds with a lot of information. This is a great start – but, now what do you do with this information? Copy and paste it somewhere? The answer is you click “Edit in Pages.” This way, the information from the chat gets copied into a page in Pages where you can continue to work on refining the information.
Step 2 - Rename and refine your page
By default, your page is named with the first words of your prompt, in our case, “I need to buy a new headset”. This is typically not a very suitable title. You can easily rename your page by just typing in a new title.
Now you can continue to refine your page. You can add more information by continuing to prompt Copilot chat. In our example above, you might want to ask for a table with pros and cons. When you get the response, you can click “Add to page” to add the table. Instead of a read-only table, you get a flexible table that you can edit as needed by adding or removing columns and rows.
Use the Heading styles and delete, move, and re-arrange contents as you see fit to refine your page. Click the “plus” sign, or do a forward slash (“/”) to activate the menu with options for what to insert into your page. Here, you have a rich list of content holders – a table, checklist, callout, math equation, image, and much more.
Step 3 - Share your page
One of the biggest benefits of Pages (and Loop components) is its excellent support for real-time collaboration. Updates reflect instantly, which encourages collaboration and co-authoring. You have two options for sharing: either sharing a link to the page itself or copying the contents (the component) and sharing it in another application—be it an email in Outlook, a Whiteboard canvas, or a Teams chat. Another way to share the page (other than creating a sharing link) is by doing an @mention of a colleague in the page itself and then approving for them to have permissions to the page. Once you grant access, an email will be sent to your colleague with an invitation to join the page. It’s important to note that sharing and co-authoring pages is designed for people within your own organization.
Step 4 - Find your page
What happens when you close down your page - how do you find it again? The easiest way is to just search for it in the Microsoft 365 Start page search bar (given you remember what you named it). If you want to navigate to the page, you can go to the Microsoft 365 start page and click “Pages” in the left-hand navigation. Here, you will find a list of your recent Pages.
Since Pages are in fact Loop pages, you can always open the Loop app to find your recent Pages.
You can also go to your Copilot Chat history, locate the Copilot conversation where you created the page and click the “Open Page” icon.
Unfortunately, you can’t search your Recent chats in the Copilot panel, so this is not a good alternative if you created the page a long time ago since then, you have to scroll through all your past chat conversations.
Step 5 –Convert or delete your page
What do you do when you are done with your research, writing, sharing of your page? Of course this depends on the situation. But in most circumstances, you will probably repurpose the content – use it for a presentation, a report, a meeting, a proposal, or a purchase. In those cases, you can just delete the page when you no longer need the content. Deleting a page is easily done by going to the Microsoft 365 Start page, clicking “Pages,” “More Page Options,” and then “Delete.”
Conclusion
In conclusion, Pages provide a user-friendly way to quickly and easily gather information from your Copilot chats. However, its purpose and relation to other Microsoft 365 apps might initially be confusing for end users who are unsure how it all links together and why they should adopt a new app for storing and sharing information. Since pages follow the same rules for information management as “normal” Loop files (sensitivity labels, sharing permissions, etc.) there really is no big concern for IT organizations about users starting to embrace Pages. Learn more about it in this article here, Copilot pages for IT Admins - Sep 2024 update | Microsoft Community Hub.
As always, when it comes to end-user adoption and change management, it is a question of awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement (ADKAR). The effort you put in needs to be in relation to the benefit that your organization gets from increasing the usage. When it comes to Pages, providing users with the information in this blog article might be enough! The big benefit for the organization is when users start embracing Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat - this is where you should double down on your investments in driving end-user adoption.