Document Processing · Enterprise Knowledge Search
Telstra wanted to improve employee productivity in everyday knowledge work such as meeting follow-up, email drafting, research, and content creation, while also addressing data privacy, intellectual property, security, and access-control issues required for safe enterprise use of generative AI.
Reported impact
Telstra reported that employees found Copilot easy to use, increasingly trusted its outputs in daily work, saved time on low-value tasks, ran more efficient meetings, and found information faster; the company also gained operational learning needed to expand the rollout more safely and broadly.
Telstra used early access to Copilot for Microsoft 365 through its Microsoft alliance to run an internal Early Adopters Program and test generative AI in daily work. Copilot for Microsoft 365 was deployed as the central AI layer across Microsoft 365 workflows, operating alongside Microsoft Teams for meeting support, Outlook for email drafting, and Word for document creation. The implementation focused on summarizing meetings, capturing action items per person, finding and cross-referencing documentation, and combining multiple internal sources into drafts and customer profiles. Telstra also treated data readiness as part of the solution, reviewing information architecture, M365 licensing, security checks, risk, data protection, and governance. The rollout included testing which departments and regions could access certain databases and how semantic indexing of user documents should be handled before scaling from a 200+ user pilot to thousands.
Meeting discussions, emails, chats, internal documentation, user documents, and selected internal databases are accessed inside Microsoft 365 under department- and region-based permissions. Copilot for Microsoft 365 semantically indexes permitted content, then generates summaries, action items, customer profiles, and draft documents that are delivered back to employees in Teams, Outlook, and Word.
"81% of respondents in Telstra’s wider early adoption group stated that Copilot is easy to use. 75% of respondents are trusting Copilot to help with their work, accepting and using Copilot output on a daily basis"
"As we plan for a wider internal Telstra rollout, aiming to scale from 200+ users to thousands, we’re establishing further secure protocols and standards to mitigate risks and ensure compliance while using Copilot for M365"
"He’s using it in meetings to ensure all action items are captured per individual, for drafting emails faster, categorising ideas after a brainstorm, summarising lengthy tech guides, and updating his to-do list at the end of the day"
"Our strategic alliance with Microsoft has given us early access to Copilot for Microsoft 365 (M365) to launch an internal Telstra Early Adopters Program"
"Using generative AI to create documents by combining multiple internal sources, saving a lot of time in research and content drafting"
"testing which departments and regions could access certain databases to prevent privacy breaches and discuss how best to handle semantic indexing of user documents"
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Scoring methodology
Customer Reference Value measures usefulness as a customer reference. Evidence Confidence measures the quality and traceability of available evidence, not independent verification.
Traceability
Field coverage shows which facts each source supports. Dates are shown only when documented by the source.
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