When the Pressure Is On: Using Copilot and Microsoft 365 to Stay in Control During a Crisis

A crisis happens, is your organisation ready?
Are you ready?

Do your employees know what to do?
Do you?

Fire drills and crisis drills

⛑️When did you last run a cyber-attack or a drill for <something else went wrong>, like a power outage, a building incident, or a systems failure?⚠️

And a simple question:
☎️If something happens right now… what number do you call, and who do you call?

Fire drills vs crisis drills (the uncomfortable truth)

Fire drills works because they are:
– Simple
– Practiced
– Well-known
– Built into the culture
Digital crisis preparedness often isn’t.
And the worst part? In a crisis, it’s too late to start looking for the plan.

The digital preparedness emergency plan needs to be operative, not only documented.

• Is the plan known and understood by those who will use it?
• Is it tested through drills, simulations and scenario work?
• Do we have digital tools to support execution, and not only planning?

From paper based plan to operative digital preparedness

ASPECT	PAPER BASED PLAN	OPERATIVE DIGITAL PREPAREDNESS
Accessibility	Hard to find	Easy to access (where people already work)
Knowledge	Known by a few and often unknown for employees	Tested through drill exercises and training
Response	Manual and slow	Structured and fast to execute
Update	Updated rarely and disorganized	Updated continuously with version control
Supporting tools	Disconnected from daily work	Supported by dashboards, alerts, roles and clear ownership

What about key personell?

This is where many plans collapse.

Fire security usually accounts for absence (exits, signage, equipment).
Digital incidents often depend on people being available.
– What happens if the IT responsible is not available during a cyber-attack?
– Or, the person who can make critical decisions?
– Or, your communications lead?
Critical infrastructure becomes fragile without available resourses (aka: PEOPLE).
So let’s ask:
– Are roles and responsibilities aligned and tested, included for digital incidents.
– Do people know what to do if the “usual expert” is unavailable?
– Where do we go to find and share verified information – fast?

Where is the crisis emergency preparedness plan?

In many organizations, the plan (or parts of it) is scattered:
– in different folders
– in different systems
– in email threads
– in someone’s private notes
– or not shared at all because “others will only mess it up”

Sometimes it’s not even about secrecy, it’s about overload.
The plan drowns in everything else people need to handle, every day.

And we’re often too busy to structure preparedness properly… until we’re forced to.

On top of that there is a lot for people to take in and handle in their everyday work.

How bad can it get… really?

Bad…and… common…

None of this is rare. It’s what happens when plans are not operationalized.

Don’t fret, it is possible to be prepared for a crisis

Here’s a practical path.

1 Draw up flows for likely crisis or emergency scenarios

Start simple: Identify incident types that could realistically happen to you:
– Buildings or physical locations
– Technical servers or other technology
– Microsoft 365 or other software
– Network down
– Power outage
– Or other…

For each scenario, define:
– How do we detect it?
– Who do we contact first?
– Where do we coordinate?
– What do employees need to know, and when?
– How do we keep one source of truth?
– How do we decide when it’s over, and how do we learn?
Your plan should read like a flow, not a novel…

2 Build an ecosystem for crisis preparedness

To be prepared, someone needs to set this up, and everyone needs to practice using it.
The easiest way to operationalize preparedness is to use the tools people already work in, and place the crisis preparedness process in the middle of daily work.

I like to think about this Crisis or Emergency Ecosystem in three spaces:

1. A Teams chat for urgent incidents and accidents:
   Name of Teams-chat:
   English: “🔥URGENT!” – Norwegian: “🔥AKUTT!”
   This Teams chat is managed by the Emergency Response team and all employees notifies if something happen. It’s like calling 911. You can just write Help! Building C, entrance, somebody trying to break in. And the rescue team shows up, whether it is locally somewhere or digitally.
2. A work room in Teams for the The Emergency Response team. Always on.
   Name of Teams-room:
   English: “🧭Control room!” – Norwegian: “🧭Kontrollrommet!”
   This is where they plan the Crisis Emergency process and exercises, create and update policies and guidelines, and collect experiences, reports and update material accordingly.
   This team operates in 2. and is managing 1. 3. and 4.
3. A digital crisis room in Teams for all employees.
   Name of Teams-room:
   English: “🧩Issues and Friction!” – Norwegian: “🧩Strev og møye”
   This is where
   – the Emergency Response team and employees are working together, and follow-up on issues and incidents. E.g. if an incident has been dealt with via the “🔥URGENT!” chat and a report is ready or activities to follow-up on, this is where the dialogue around it happens.
   – Employees and the Emergency Response team are in dialogue about specific incidents and accident.
   Many times incidents or accidents occurs and are dealt with, however the following-up afterwards can be very fragmented and only a few people might be involved in the after-work. When involving your employees in this part of the process, they are also learning and they will feel more engaged and included, hence it builds a robust team across the organization. It basically builds trust.
   
   Both Teams-rooms consist of
   – Channels for instant messaging
   – Material and crisis packages
   – Tags for relevant roles to contact
4. An Engage community “Always Prepared” for all employees with all relevant information and guides. Always on.
   Name of Engage community:
   English: “ℹ️When something happens” – Norwegian: “ℹ️Når noe skjer!”
   This is where
   The Emergency Response team publish information about the Crisis Emergency process and exercises, create and update policies and guidelines, and collect experiences, reports and update material accordingly.

Set up the Name of Teams-chat:

English: “🔥URGENT!” – Norwegian: “🔥AKUTT!”
Create a Teams-chat with the name and inform about it in different communication channels and even create a QR-Code to stick to walls at strategic places and on presentations (PS! You can create QR-codes in Word – Thank you to Luise Freese for sharing that knowledge!)

How to furnish the Emergency Response Team Teams-room:

English: “🧭Control room!” – Norwegian: “🧭Kontrollrommet!”

– Create Teams-channels that helps organize the work of the Emergency Response team.
– Use Loop for planning agendas and collaborative processes.
– Use and Planner for tasks, ownership and follow-up.

Examples of useful channels (all standard channels):

🗓️Meetings
📢Communication and media
📋Plans and procedures
💬Discussions and experience sharing
🧪Exercises and learning
🛠️Tools and technical preparedness
🚦Risks and analysis
👥Roles and responsibilities

Use planner to organize the work

Both the regular work on process, policies and guideline, exercises as well as actual crises and incidents.

Top tip! Use the color codes and tags (categories) in Planner to e.g. sort and prioritize tasks, e.g. red = urgent.

In the Emergency Preparedness room, use Copilot to…

Purpose:
Smooth collaboration in the emergency response team before, during and after incidents, crises and drills.

Copilot can help with:
– Summarizing conversations and meetings in channels and chat
– Generating action points and follow-up lists from discussions
– Suggesting structure for contingency plans and checklists
– Quickly retrieving relevant documentation and procedures
– Drafting reports after exercises or incidents

How to furnish the Crisis Info team in Teams-room:

English: “🧩Issues and Friction!” – Norwegian: “🧩Strev og møye”
This is the “public crisis room” for employees.

The idea here is that if the Teams-room is available all the time, people stop seeing it. If it appears only during exercise or real incidents or crisis, it triggers attention: “something is happening now!”

The Team has a red logo “Crisis info” and ready channels with content prepared by the Emergency Preparedness Team. Typical Teams channels (all standard channels) in the Crisis Info-Team are:

👥Roles and responsibilities
💡Evaluations and learning
📚Resources and documents (including forms)
📢Internal communication
🔔Alerts and status
🙋‍♀️Support and questions
🛠️Technical support and help

Make information flow easier with tags
In order for information to flow effectively a few sets of tags are prepared, e.g. If I am a leader responsible for a building on a company location, and I have questions about how to answer a journalist that keep calling me, I can tag @InternalCommunication and whoever of the communications team that sees my message first can advise me.

Prepare a few tag groups like:
@internalcommunication (Questions about media, messaging, what to say)
@LocalSiteHeads (Building/location responsibility)
@ITResponse (Technical triage)
@ManagementOnCall (Decisions/Escalations)
This makes it easy for employees to ask the right people – fast.

Examples of tags-group within the Crisis Info Team in Teams:

Use the Planner for transparency and trust.

Keep the Planner board visible to everyone, organized like a sprint:
– “New”
– “In process”
– “On hold”
– “Closed”

Why it matters:
– Employees can see what’s already reported
– They can add context and comments
– They feel included (and trusted)
– The organization gets more eyes on the situation
– Someone might spot a solution nobody else saw

PS! Undersharing can be just as dangerous as oversharing: Under-sharing – MeretheStave

In the Crisis Info Teams-room, use Copilot to…

Purpose:
Inform, coordinate and reduce uncertainty.

Copilot can help with:
– Drafting clear status updates from management to employees
– Answering common questions (based on the organization’s official documents and guidelines)
– Drafting messages and announcements
– Summarizing questions and sentiments in the discussions (What are the employees highest concerns or how are they doing these days?)
– Automating and extracting statistics on activities and engagement, e.g. 100% likes on the first post.

How to furnish the Emergency Preparedness Community for all:

English: “ℹ️When something happens” – Norwegian: “ℹ️Når noe skjer!”

During the year we need somewhere to share the guidelines and policies, and more related to the Emergency Preparedness in the organization. Using Engage, and the associated SharePoint site, you have a platform available for all 24/7/365 across the organization. Here employees can find
🗓️Calendar for
– Exercises and training events (those informed about)
– Obligatory training
📄Documents, forms and templates (Reports and learnings after exercises)
🧭Policies and guidelines
👥Contact persons
⁉️Q&As continuously updated
📼Training material, videos, guides and other relevant resources
📰News and updates related to crisis preparedness
🏅Praise and recognitions
💡Regular tips & tricks and awareness campaigns

Use the Engage Community “Always prepared” to build habits and familiarity, so the organization already knows where to look when something happens.

The Emergency Preparedness Team can use the Engage community to notify about (some) exercises, new rules and regulations, guides and policies, and they are listed on the community as “Experts”.

In the Engage Emergency Preparedness Community, use Copilot to…

Purpose:
Information sharing and dialogue before, during and after exercises, or real incident or crisis.

Copilot can help with:
– Generating posts based on status updates from the Emergency Response Team
– Summarizing comments and questions from employees
– Suggesting responses and follow-up communication
– Creating management summaries from what is happening in the forum

3 Copilot beyond writing: Automatization and learning

Preparedness isn’t only “write faster”. It’s “respond better”.

Purpose:
Streamline and ensure quality in crisis management

Copilot can support operational quality by helping you with:
– Automating alerts and updating contingency plans
– Help set up Power Automate flows for follow-up, reporting, and documentation
– Create templates for crisis management (Teams structure, documents, checklists, role cards)
– Support information flow and archiving with Viva and SharePoint integrations
– Suggest next steps based on previous incidents and crisis
– Analyze reports from exercises to identify patterns and mitigation actions

And yes; use Copilot Researcher and Analyst to go through reports and findings from exercises and previous incidents and crisis to learn and prepare.

4 Governance, management and competency (because nothing runs itself)

AI Council

An AI Council can be a cross-functional body with a defined scope and mandate, functioning as an escalation point for decisions. Ideally, the leader is part of the management team. See Microsoft Copilot Adoption Playbook here for more guidance: Microsoft 365 Copilot Adoption Playbook | Microsoft Copilot

Build competency – for all employees

Competency framework

Summary – what I want you to remember

– Digital preparedness is about how fast you get back up when things go wrong.
– Make sure that everyone on your team know where find verified information.
– Operationalize the plan: Structure it, place it where people work and practice it.
– Use the tools you already have to be robust before a crisis, focused during crisis, and smarter after a crisis.
– Get safely through to the other side of the crisis, learn and improve afterwards.
…More crisis and incidents are likely to happen.
Be prepared! 🫡

☝️💡And by the way; If you only do one thing this month: run one 30-minute crisis drill and measure how long it takes employees to find the right information and contact the right people. Then fix the bottlenecks. Good luck! 😉

PS! If you haven’t guessed it already, most of the illustrations in this blog is created with the help of Copilot Chat or Copilot Create (and the rest mostly in PowerPoint, Visio and print screens of Teams end Engage). 🎨🖌️👩‍🎨