Some of the best conversations start with “Hey, I had an idea…”. Ideas turn into products or solutions, and those solutions take our customers one step closer to Work Happy. And we want to share our ideas, our experiments, our trials, and errors so you can help us shape the future of modern work.
In Future Wave, we’ll share insights into the things we’re working on behind the scenes – the tech we’re experimenting with, the tools we’re building and the art of the possible with Microsoft 365. And we want to know what you think. What do you like, what could we improve, what would you like to see us do next? Let’s create it together.
In this first edition, we’re looking at AI.
Microsoft have made a big commitment to AI, with Copilot being introduced across the Microsoft 365 landscape. In Microsoft’s own words,
“It combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with your data in the Microsoft Graph and the Microsoft 365 apps to turn your words into the most powerful productivity tool on the planet.”
With AI being introduced to core Microsoft tools like SharePoint, Teams and Viva, we wanted to understand how AI could be used across our own products. And so we started to experiment.
The results of that experiment? Bringing AI to Ripple, our campaign creation and management tool for internal comms. It’s still in development, but we’re sharing where we’re at so far so you can help us shape how it works in the future.
AI in Ripple – The Story So Far
Content creation is one of the most time-consuming jobs for internal communicators. Particularly for large organisations, the constant flow of news, updates and announcements can be difficult to keep on top of.
There has been some debate on AI’s role in writing content. Can you tell what’s been written by AI vs what’s been written by a human? Can AI write accurate content? Does it sound robotic? The more we all experiment and get to grips with this new way of working, there seems to be a growing consensus that AI is an assistant not a replacement.
And that’s exactly what AI in the Ripple content editor does. It won’t take away the role of content creation, but it’ll make it a whole lot easier.
By using OpenAI / ChatGPT in Azure, we’ve enabled all the benefits of an AI driven content assistant without any of the security risks. The Ripple editor doesn’t send your data outside of Azure, so you can be safe in the knowledge that your data is secure.
What can AI in Ripple do?
AI in Ripple can help internal communications team to save time, streamline the content creation process, and boost post engagement with optimised content.
Suggested Introduction & Summary
When your post is finished, AI in Ripple will be able to summarise your post into a few snappy sentences. Set your preferred length, style and tone and Ripple will generate your summary, and add it to the top of your post in just a few clicks.
Including a short summary is a great way for your audience to understand whether the post is relevant to them, encouraging engagement with the right people, and saving the time of those it’s not intended for.
Language & Tone
Set your preferred language and tone and watch the Ripple editor rewrite your post for you. Perhaps you’ve written a formal email that you want to turn into a more friendly intranet post. Or you want to make your post sound more professional, or more relaxed. (In testing, we asked it to write in a sarcastic tone. That works too!)
Or, you can give the editor a few draft notes and ask it to write the full post in your preferred style. A great time saver for turning bullets into brilliance.
Spellchecker
Spelling and grammar checking is something we’ve come to take for granted in document editors like Word. But, having it available in Ripple could help you spot mistakes when you’re writing content straight into the post editor.
It can even tell when you have unfinished sentences, making sure your posts always get to the…
Translations
This feature will automatically generate, check and update language translations so you can easily add them to the SharePoint page translation versions of your post. It uses more natural language models, so it won’t produce a clunky word for word translation like some other tools out there.
So far, we’ve only enabled German translations – but when we introduce AI to our live Ripple product, there’ll be a range of language options to choose from.
What’s next?
Before we start rolling out AI to our Ripple customers, we have a few loose ends to tie up and tweaks to make. So, whilst we do that, it’s also the perfect opportunity to gather early feedback. We’d love to know what you think. Can you see AI changing how you work? Or are you yet to be convinced? Let us know.
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