5 Ways for PM's to Use AI Every Day (That You Probably Haven't Tried)

If your firm runs on Microsoft 365, you probably already have AI built into Outlook, Teams, Word, and Excel. Maybe your team has Claude too. And if you're like most people, you use it for exactly one thing: cleaning up an email before you hit send.

That's a start. But the tools sitting on your laptop right now can do a lot more for your day than polish wording. Here are five ways to use them that most people never think to try, organized around a normal workday.

1. Get the short version of the 40-email thread

Everyone knows the thread with the client, two consultants, and half the office cc'd that grew overnight. Open it in Outlook and use the Copilot summarize button to get the decisions made, the open questions, and who's waiting on you. You read three lines instead of forty messages.

2. Pull the requirements out of any long document

Upload a contract, RFP, or spec to Claude or Copilot and ask it to list every deadline, deliverable, and requirement with its section number. It turns an afternoon of highlighting into a checklist you can verify in an hour. You still review it, but you're checking a list instead of building one from scratch.

3. Prep for any meeting in two minutes

Walking into a client meeting? Ask Copilot Chat something like:

Prompt

Prepare me for my 2 PM meeting with this client. Summarize our recent emails, shared files, and anything still open.

You show up knowing what was last promised and what they're likely to ask about.

4. Turn a whiteboard photo into an action list

Snap a picture of the whiteboard after a planning meeting, or a page of handwritten notes, and upload it to Claude or Copilot. Ask it to turn what's written into a list of action items with owners. That photo used to sit in your camera roll forever. Now it becomes the meeting follow-up.

5. Check your tone before you send

Copilot in Outlook can coach you on a draft email, flagging when it reads as too harsh, too vague, or buries the main ask. It's especially useful for the email you wrote when you were frustrated.

Start with one, then build the habit

You don't need to try all five tomorrow. Pick the one that solves your most annoying daily task and use it every day for a week. Once it sticks, add another. Small wins every day add up to hours back every week.

If your team has AI tools but nobody's using them past the basics, that's exactly what Arvaya's Microsoft Copilot and Claude training is built for. We teach teams across the firm how to use the tools they already pay for on their real, day-to-day work, so the licenses actually earn their keep.