Use Microsoft Copilot to Draft Your Steering Committee Presentation

Tool:Microsoft PowerPoint

AI Feature:Copilot

Time:10-15 minutes

Difficulty:Beginner

What This Does

Copilot in PowerPoint drafts a complete slide deck from your bullet points or a text summary, including slide titles, content, and speaker notes, so you spend time refining instead of building from scratch.

Before You Start

You have Microsoft 365 with Copilot enabled (Business or Enterprise plan)
You have PowerPoint open (desktop or web version)
You have your project data ready: key accomplishments, risks, decisions needed

Steps

1. Find the AI feature

Open PowerPoint. Look for the Copilot button in the Home ribbon (it looks like a small sparkle icon with "Copilot" label). If you're in PowerPoint for the web, it appears in the top ribbon. Click it to open the Copilot side panel.

What you should see: A chat panel slides open on the right side. You'll see a prompt box at the bottom saying "Ask Copilot something..." Troubleshooting: If you don't see Copilot, your organization may not have the Copilot license enabled. Check with IT.

2. Create a presentation from scratch

In the Copilot chat panel, type:

Prompt

"Create a 10-slide steering committee update for [Project Name]. Include: project status overview, accomplishments this sprint, upcoming milestones, open risks with owners, decisions needed from this group, and next steps. Use a professional, confident tone."

What you should see: Copilot generates a complete deck with slide titles, bullet content, and speaker notes for each slide.

3. Review the generated slides

Scroll through the generated deck. Copilot creates placeholder structure. You'll need to replace that placeholder text with your actual data: sprint metrics from Jira, specific risk owners, real dates.

4. Refine individual slides

Click on a slide you want to change, then in Copilot chat type:

Prompt

"Rewrite slide 3 to be more concise. Max 3 bullets per slide" or "Add a risk matrix table to slide 6 with columns: Risk, Likelihood, Impact, Owner, Mitigation"

5. Add speaker notes

Select any slide and prompt:

Prompt

"Write speaker notes for slide 4 that explain why this risk is significant and what the mitigation plan is."

Real Example

Scenario: Your quarterly review is tomorrow. You have Jira sprint data but the deck isn't built yet.

What you type:

Prompt

"Create a 12-slide Q1 project status presentation for the VP of Operations and CFO. Project: Customer Portal Redesign. Status: 68% complete. This quarter: completed UX design, completed API integration. Risks: vendor delivery delay (medium), resource gap in testing (high). Decisions needed: approve 2-week timeline extension. Go-live: June 15."

What you get: A complete deck with an executive summary, status meter visual, accomplishments slide, risk slide with impact/likelihood framing, and a clear ask slide with three decision options.

Tips

Feed Copilot real numbers and names. Generic input produces generic output. The more specific your prompt, the less editing you'll do.
Use Copilot to rewrite slides for different audiences: "Rewrite this slide for a technical audience" vs. "Rewrite for non-technical executives."
After building the deck, ask: "What key points might my executive audience push back on?" Copilot often surfaces objections worth pre-addressing.

Tool interfaces change. If a button has moved, look for similar AI/magic/smart options in the same menu area.