Bilingual Tenant Notices in Minutes with Copilot in Word

A planned elevator shutdown in a medical building is not a small thing. Patients use walkers and wheelchairs, clinics book appointments weeks ahead, and in much of Canada the notice on the lobby board needs to be in English and French. Writing it well takes time: pulling the facts from the contractor's report, getting the accessibility details right, then getting it translated and checked.

In this guide Copilot in Word writes a tenant notice for a planned elevator shutdown straight from the elevator condition report, adds the French version, and turns both into a one-page bilingual notice for the lobby board.

Here it is running, sped up:

What you'll need

• A Microsoft 365 Copilot licence.

• The source document in SharePoint or OneDrive. Ours is the elevator condition assessment for Lakeview Medical Plaza, the same report our SharePoint agent reads.

• The facts only you know: dates, the contact details, and what accessibility support you'll provide.

Step 1: Brief Copilot with the facts

Open a blank Word document. In the Copilot box, write the brief and attach the report with Add content:

Write a tenant notice for Lakeview Medical Plaza about the planned shutdown of passenger elevator Car 2 for modernization (Phase 2) in Q1 2027. Base it on the elevator condition assessment. The notice is for clinic tenants and their patients. Include: what is happening and why, the expected dates (use 'Week of January 11, 2027' for the start and about six weeks of work), which elevator stays in service, accessibility support for patients with mobility needs (staff assistance, priority use of Car 1, the loading entrance ramp), who to contact (Property Management Office, 416-555-0142, lakeview@example.com), and an apology for the inconvenience. Keep it to one page, friendly and clear. Then add the same notice in Canadian French below it, under the heading 'Version française'.

Notice what we gave Copilot ourselves: the start date, the contact details and the accessibility plan. The report says the work is planned for Q1 2027. It doesn't say which week, and it certainly doesn't know your phone number. Give Copilot the facts, let it write the words.

Step 2: Read the English

About a minute later we had a clear, warm notice: why the work is needed (obsolete controls, parts that are hard to find, more downtime), the dates, Car 1 staying in service, the accessibility support and who to call.

The reason for the work came straight from the condition report, in plain language a patient would understand.

Step 3: Check the French

The French version followed: "Calendrier prévu", "Soutien à l'accessibilité", the same dates, the same phone number, "cabine 1" for Car 1. It reads like Canadian French, not a word-for-word translation.

Have a French speaker read it before it goes on the wall. Copilot's French was good, but a notice that represents your building deserves a human check, especially for terms like "rampe de l'entrée de livraison".

Step 4: Make it fit the lobby board

Two pages is too long for a notice board, so we asked:

Make this fit on a single page for the lobby notice board: put the English and French versions side by side in two columns, with one shared bilingual title at the top, and tighten the wording so both fit.

It did, but the body text came out all bold. One more prompt fixed it:

The body text came out all bold. Make the body text regular weight and keep only the short labels (Timing, During the work, Accessibility support, Questions) bold, in both languages. Remove the table borders, and set the proofing language of the French column to French (Canada).

The result, ready to print:

What worked, and what to watch

The accessibility paragraph is the one we'd have spent the most time on, and Copilot wrote it well in both languages: staff help, priority use of Car 1, the loading entrance ramp, and a phone number to call. It also kept every fact identical across the two columns, which is where hand-translated notices usually drift.

Two things to watch. The first layout pass made everything bold, which took one follow-up prompt to fix. And proofing language matters: we also set the French column to French (Canada) by hand (select the text, click the language in the status bar, pick French (Canada)) so Word's spell check helps the French instead of underlining every word.

From a blank page to a reviewed, bilingual, one-page notice took about ten minutes, most of it reading.

A quick game: what's missing?

Before you post a shutdown notice, check it has these five things. Which one do most notices forget?

• What is happening and why

• When it starts and how long it lasts

• What still works

• Help for people who need it

• Who to call

Ours: the help. Most notices say "we apologize for the inconvenience" and stop. For a medical building, the accessibility paragraph is the most important one on the page.

Lessons from the build

• Give Copilot the facts it can't know. Dates, phone numbers and your accessibility plan come from you, not the report.

• Ask for both languages in the same prompt. The French matched the English line for line because Copilot wrote them together.

• Fix layout with a follow-up prompt. It's faster to say "the body came out bold" than to fix twenty paragraphs by hand.

• Always have a person check the French. Copilot gets you 95% of the way. The last 5% is your reputation.

Ideas to take it further

• Make it a template: save the prompt and reuse it for water shutdowns, fire alarm testing and parking lot repaving.

• Send it by email too: ask Copilot in Outlook to turn the notice into a short bilingual email to tenant contacts.

• Add a reminder: a Power Automate flow can send the notice again one week and one day before the work starts.

• Track it: add "notice sent" to your month-end checklist, as we do in our Copilot Pages post.

Why this matters

The facts for a tenant notice already exist: the contractor's report, the project schedule, your building's accessibility plan. Bring your data from different systems into one place and put AI in front of it, and a careful bilingual notice takes minutes instead of days, so tenants hear about the work early instead of the week before.

Need help?

Smart Solutions sets up Microsoft 365 Copilot and tenant communication workflows for Canadian property and facilities teams. If you'd rather have purchase orders, invoices and vendor documents in one product, take a look at ProcuraCloud, our procurement platform for small and mid-sized businesses. Contact us to talk about your tenant communications.