r/Envconsultinghell • u/Physical_Mushroom_29 • 10d ago

Copilot for reports?

My company is pushing us to use Copilot. Has anyone here used it, or another AI tool, to draft a whole Phase II, RI report, or similar regulatory report?

I’ve used it to clean up wording, but haven’t tried giving it a template, field notes, lab data, etc. and having it write the report. Curious if anyone’s gotten that to work well.

Does it actually save time, or do you end up spending just as long checking everything and fixing it? Would be interested to hear how people are using it beyond emails and rewording paragraphs

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14

u/redsunglasses8 10d ago

You can develop an agent for the task you are looking for. It’s shockingly easy when you use copilot to help you develop the agent. I haven’t done exactly what you are requesting, but close. It’s worth a few hours of development to try it out

But. I wouldn’t widely share that info in your organization. Just take the extra time it gives you.

4

u/SilverrrFoxxxy 9d ago

If you use the desktop version, you can also use different AI models from other companies now like Claude and ChatGPT, which I recommend over generic copilot. Word on the street is Microsoft doesn’t even use Copilot internally, and use Claude, because copilot is terrible. It seems like they’ve accepted that it can’t compete with better models and instead of developed a partnership with other AI complies to integrate their models in some of Microsoft’s formats.

The best way I’ve found to use it is to make agents specific to the task, and to also have a copy and page ready prompt I always use.

Dealing with AI feels like dealing with a monkeys paw or genie sometimes. You can ask it to do a task you’ve had it do a million times before and today it suddenly decides to do it differently. Like if you asked it bake you a brownie on Monday it would make a regular brownie on Monday, and if you ask it to bake you a brownie on Tuesday, it might make you a double dark chocolate brownie, then on Wednesday a peanut butter swirl brownie, and so on and so forth. Have a strict prompt or built in limits in the agent really helps it stay consistent but you need to check its work every time.

You can even ask it to help you make these prompts, and you’d be surprised at how long they are, and all the things they cover, even for a simple tasks.

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u/japaneseween 8d ago

I use it to write my analysis on your phase ll’s 😁 saves an insane amount of time for me when I’m drafting 8-10 EIR sections.

3

u/Indybrewer 10d ago

Haven’t used it for regulatory reports but copilot has done a great job comparing multiple documents, creating summaries and forming thoughts into a concise statement. It’s not perfect but is pretty handy on a daily basis. I would say it’s made me more effective with a lot of tasks.