Join me exploring Microsoft Copilot through each letter of the alphabet. (Well, we’ve got to start somewhere!)

This time, G is for Grounding.

Hands up if you’ve heard the term ‘grounding’ in relation to AI and nodded and smiled as if you knew all about it. 🙋‍♀️

Me too. Let’s nod and smile because we do know next time…

So what actually is grounding?

On its own, AI doesn’t know anything about you, your organisation, your projects, or what you had for lunch. It just has the vast general knowledge it was trained on. Interacting with it is like talking to a very well-read stranger, who has zero context about your life and work.

Grounding is what makes everything more specific and you-related, especially within Microsoft Copilot. 

Grounding is how Copilot gets hold of relevant context before it generates a response. Instead of working from general knowledge alone, it works from your information within your M365 work environment; your documents, your chats, your emails, your meetings, your SharePoint, your data.

I love a metaphor, me, but it’s been hard to come up with a very visual one for this. Instead, let’s try to illustrate this through the medium of fairytale. (Bear with me…) 

Once upon a time, a rabbit was walking through the forest. It had been working on a complex warren project with a group of other rabbits, but just returned from a vacation. 

The rabbit wanted to know what progress had been made on the warren project, so it asked a passing spider. The spider didn’t know the answer, but didn’t want to let the rabbit down, so it made up what sounded like a plausible update on the warren project. The rabbit smelled a rat… (the rat said “hey I don’t smell!” – kidding…) 

The rabbit spotted a different spider and asked this one for an update on the warren project. This spider was sitting on a web of information that included all of the warren project’s documents, status meeting transcripts and group chats. This spider was able to give the rabbit a true update on the warren project, because it was grounded in the project’s data. 

The group of rabbits went on to complete their complex warren project, outsmarted the foxes, made friends with the smelly rat and all lived happily ever after. 

What does this look like IRL?

When Copilot in Microsoft 365 responds to you, it’s not just ‘winging it’ based on what it learned during training. It’s pulling from the files, emails, meetings and data it has been given access to — your Microsoft 365 environment — and using that to inform what it says.

That’s grounding. It’s what makes the difference between a generic answer and one that’s actually relevant to your organisation, your project, your situation.

Happily, the spider-web of information in our fairytale is provided by another G; Microsoft Graph. This is what is pulling together all of that relevant information from across your M365 apps.  

Grounding is also about the quality of your prompts too. The more context you give Copilot — the more you ground it in your specific situation — the better the output. “Summarise this document” is fine. “Summarise this document and highlight anything that conflicts with the approach we agreed in last Tuesday’s meeting” is grounded.

The Work / Web toggle — and why it matters here

If you’ve ever had Copilot open in the chat window, you’ve probably noticed the little toggle at the top that says Work or Web. I touched on this a little in my B is for Be Careful blog. 

This toggle is all to do with grounding — specifically, where you are letting Copilot go looking for its context.

Work – having the ‘work’ toggle on means Copilot is grounded in your Microsoft 365 data. Your emails, your files, your Teams conversations, your SharePoint. It’s focused on your world. 

Being grounded in ‘work’ is really good for these types of questions:

•  “What were my actions from last week’s team meeting again?” 
• “I’m looking for the latest product deck, where is it?” 
• “What are the most urgent emails in my inbox right now?” 

It’s not so good for exploring concepts using up to date information from across the internet. 

Web – when you have the ‘web’ toggle on, this means Copilot is reaching out to the internet for information. It won’t look at your work files. There is an ‘unless’ here – which is, if you use ‘web’ mode, you can attach specific files. In this case, Copilot will look at those files, but only those files, not the wider context of anything else in M365 in your organisation that you have access to which might be relevant: Think of them as different tools for different jobs. 

Asking Copilot to summarise a project proposal? Work.

Asking it what the current thinking is on a particular industry trend? Web.

The key is knowing which one you’re using, because wherever Copilot is grounded changes where Copilot is looking — and therefore what it’s basing its answer on.

TLDR – Grounding gives the context

Grounding is the difference between Copilot being a very clever stranger and being a genuinely useful colleague. The more context you give it — through your prompt, your files, or simply making sure you’re using the right toggle — the better it performs.

Next time, let’s see what H is for…