Overview
Most people were handed a work laptop, pointed at their inbox, and told to get on with it. Nobody ever spent half an hour explaining how the pieces fit together — so files end up in seventeen places, email eats the day, and the tools that could carry half the load sit unused.
This course fixes that. It moves from the core Microsoft 365 apps most workplaces already have, into AI-assisted ways of working that save genuine time on the tasks you actually do: emails, meetings, reports, documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
Examples and scenarios are drawn from NT workplaces, regional program delivery, multi-site teams, and the realities of working where the internet is sometimes patchy. What we cover should look like the work on your desk next week.
Before we add AI on top, we make sure the foundation underneath it is solid.
Who It's For
People entering or already in the workforce who use — or are about to use — Microsoft 365 in their day-to-day role: government staff, community-controlled organisation workers, health and social-service staff, educators, program staff, rangers, and admin teams.
No deep IT background is assumed. If you log into a work computer and want your tools to do more of the heavy lifting, this course is built for you. The language is plain, and where a technical word is unavoidable it's explained in everyday terms the first time it appears.
How It Runs
The course is deliberately modular. The sessions aren't numbered, because no two groups need the same course: a trainer can run the whole thing over two days, spread it across weekly sessions, or pull out just the sessions a workplace needs. Each session stands on its own.
The sessions fall into two strands:
- Digital Foundations — the Microsoft 365 core: getting oriented, files and sharing, email and Teams, Word, and Excel. If a group is new to workplace computing, start here and stay here.
- Working with AI — what AI actually is, how to prompt it well, Copilot in the Office apps, practical AI workflows, and the responsible-use guardrails that matter for government and community-sector work.
Every page on this site is light enough to load on a patchy connection and readable on a phone. The Foundations sessions work fine with intermittent internet — files sync when you reconnect. The Copilot sessions are the exception: Copilot needs a live connection and a licence, so check both before planning that part of a delivery.
The Sessions
The Microsoft 365 core. Good habits for files, communication, and documents, before any AI is added on top.
Orientation & Your Digital Workspace
- How Microsoft 365 fits together: apps, accounts, and the cloud
- Working across devices, and on shared machines, safely
- What's inside your organisation's tenant vs what isn't
- Two-factor authentication and the settings worth five minutes
OneDrive, SharePoint & File Sense
- Where your files actually live, and why it matters
- Sharing, permissions, and version history
- Working offline and syncing when you're back in range
- Team sites vs personal storage, and habits that save hours
Teams, Outlook & Working Together
- Channels, chats, and meetings that don't waste time
- Taming the inbox, and calendar craft
- Planner, To Do, and OneNote for tracking real work
- Small etiquette that reduces noise for everyone
Word: Faster, Cleaner Documents
- Styles, headings, and tables of contents that actually work
- Templates for the documents you make again and again
- Track changes, comments, and review workflows
- Setting up for AI-assisted drafting later in the course
Excel: Structured Data & Useful Formulas
- Tables, named ranges, and clean data habits
- The everyday formulas, and XLOOKUP — the one to learn
- Conditional formatting, filters, and charts that communicate
- A sample dataset: a regional program register to work from
From "what actually is AI?" to practical, responsible AI-assisted work. Pairs with our AI Literacy course, which covers the community-safety side.
AI Foundations for the Workplace
- AI in plain English, and the four tools you'll meet at work
- Copilot vs ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini: what's actually different
- Where your data goes, and where AI is unreliable
- The human in the loop, and sensible defaults
Prompting Skills That Work
- The anatomy of a working prompt: role, task, context, format
- Feeding the AI your content, and iterating instead of restarting
- Honesty checks on what comes back
- Building a reusable prompt library for your team
Copilot in Word, Excel & PowerPoint
- What Copilot can see in each app, and a note on licensing
- Drafting in Word, analysing in Excel, building in PowerPoint
- Reviewing what Copilot produces before it goes anywhere
- When to reach for Copilot, and when not to
Copilot in Outlook & Teams
- Email triage, and drafting replies with tone control
- Catching up on long threads and meetings you missed
- Meeting recaps, action items, and briefing notes
- The review habit for anything AI writes in your name
AI Workflows You'll Actually Use
- Raw notes to report draft; policy to plain language
- Multi-document research synthesis, and data to story
- The meeting chain: agenda to follow-up
- Grant application support, and building your own workflow
Responsible Use, Privacy & Policy
- What you can and can't put into AI tools
- Personal, sensitive, culturally held and community information
- Australia's AI Ethics Principles, and organisational policy
- Shadow AI, attribution, and record-keeping
What You'll Take Away
A working mental map of Microsoft 365 — where files live, how sharing and permissions work, and how the apps fit together — so the tools stop fighting you.
Cleaner documents and spreadsheets: styles and templates in Word, tables and everyday formulas in Excel, and charts that communicate rather than decorate.
A calmer inbox and better meetings, with Teams and Outlook doing the coordinating instead of your memory.
The ability to use AI tools well: prompts that get useful answers, Copilot doing the first drafts, and the judgement to review everything before it goes out in your name.
A clear rule for what never goes into an AI tool, grounded in Australian privacy law, cultural protocols, and your own organisation's policies.
Resources
These companion pages from our AI Literacy course pair well with the Working with AI strand, and were written for the same regional and remote audience.
Resource · Just Ask It
The habit of asking an AI tool your "silly questions" first — with examples of what that looks like in real workplaces.
Resource · Using AI Remotely
Bandwidth, data use, and practical tips for using AI tools where the internet is slow, metered, or intermittent.
Resource · Prompt Gallery
A gallery of ready-to-adapt prompts for everyday work and community tasks.
Related course · Cyber Security Awareness
Four sessions on scams, phishing, deepfakes, and what to do when something goes wrong. The safety companion to this course.