Not just for developers: How product and security teams can use GitHub Copilot

[Akash1134]

In today’s fast-paced world where collaboration between technical and non-technical teams is vital, tools like GitHub Copilot are proving to be indispensable. These AI-powered tools are no longer just the secret weapons of developers—they’re becoming essential productivity boosters for product managers, program managers, security professionals, scrum masters, community managers, and quality analysts alike.

While Copilot is widely praised for its role as a pair programmer, its potential stretches far beyond writing code. From automating tedious tasks to making complex processes more accessible, this tool is transforming how non-technical professionals tackle their daily challenges.

Let’s take a look at how GitHub Copilot makes it easier for teams to work smarter, solve problems faster, and accomplish more together. 💪

Generating and reformatting Markdown

When working in GitHub, writing Markdown is a necessity. Whether you’re adding documentation, creating a report, opening an issue, or starting a discussion on GitHub, it’s all done in Markdown. This can be overwhelming when getting started, as Markdown requires familiarity with its syntax to add elements like headers, tables, lists, hyperlinks, and images, to name a few.

Copilot can significantly ease this process by generating a template to work from, allowing you to focus on the content rather than the formatting. For example, let’s say you’re tasked with creating a fresh new README for your team’s repository. You can quickly generate a template using a prompt like this:

Create a README file for my team's GitHub repo.
The file should include sections for our team's objective, a link to our project's roadmap, and a team roster.
The team roster should include small versions of our GitHub profile pictures, using ashtom as a placeholder, as well as the person's name and role.

1.Generating.and.reformatting.markdown.1.of.3.1.mov

Alt Text: Video showing how to prompt Copilot within Visual Studio Code to create a template of Markdown content intended for a README file.

While this is a great start, you can further optimize Copilot by adding some of GitHub’s Markdown syntax documentation to your Copilot custom instructions file. With this change you’ll find that Copilot is more likely to include GitHub-specific Markdown styling like alerts, emojis, and color models that make your content pop.

Alt Text: Screenshot of a GitHub README file with arrows highlighting GitHub-specific Markdown formatting used by Copilot after getting custom instructions.

Copilot can also take raw, unstructured data and format it into Markdown. For example, maybe you have some notes captured in a separate application and you’re looking to move those notes into GitHub. Skip the intricate reformatting step by asking Copilot to do it for you:

Reformat the following content into Markdown code:

<paste in raw unstructured notes>

And within seconds you’ll have a new version of your notes that are ready to make their way into a Markdown file, issue, or discussion:

Alt Text: Screenshot of Copilot in VS Code, showing how Copilot can format raw unstructured notes into formatted markdown.

---

Reviewing content with Copilot

On top of helping you write and format content, Copilot can review content for typos, style, and clarity. And let’s face it, after working on the same document for hours a second set of eyes can go a long way. To start a Copilot review, highlight all of the text that you want Copilot to analyze, right click and select the Copilot sub-menu and click Review and Comment.

Alt Text: VS Code window showing a README.md file with selected text. The Copilot context menu is open, highlighting the ‘Review and Comment’ option. The right panel displays the ‘Ask Copilot’ chat interface.

You can further customize Copilot’s review instructions by configuring the Copilot Chat settings in VS Code. This is great when you want Copilot to critique your work in specific ways like having Copilot assume a certain role, or encouraging Copilot to think about a specific target audience.

---

Automating reporting and spreadsheet manipulation

Working with spreadsheets is a crucial yet time-consuming task for many professionals, especially project managers and security analysts. Whether it’s tracking project progress, generating compliance reports, or analyzing security logs, manually processing data can be a tedious and error-prone process.

With GitHub Copilot, you can automate these repetitive tasks, streamline data manipulation, and generate reports faster—all with AI-assisted code suggestions. With just a beginner level understanding of Python, Copilot can teach you how to code as it helps you write a script to process and manipulate your files. Let’s take a look at how to do that in action, starting with a prompt that clarifies your experience and intent:

Create a Python script that parses this CSV file and creates new CSV files for each unique Assignee with their tasks.
Let's think step by step. Explain the steps as if I have no prior experience with python. I'm using MacOS.

Copilot explains how to perform the data manipulation with Python, as well as how to create and run a Python script. And if you run into an error, Copilot can help explain why it occurred and what you should do about it.

5.Automating.reporting.and.spreadsheet.manipulation.1.of.1.mov

Alt Text: Video demonstrating how to use Copilot to create a python script that parses a CSV file and creates multiple reports

---

Understanding code in natural language

Non-technical team members often encounter snippets of code that seem like a foreign language. If you’re a community manager, for example, you might need help interpreting code while moderating discussions, assisting users, or collaborating with developers. Copilot Chat can translate that code into clear, simple language, helping you to understand its purpose without a computer science degree:

• Before: if (user.isAdmin) { grantAccess(); }
• After Copilot Chat: “This code checks if a user is an admin and grants them access if they are.”

Copilot is also great at explaining what a GitHub Actions workflow does. While Actions is a great automation tool, there is certainly a learning curve associated with creating workflows. Copilot can act as a mentor, explaining what each part of the workflow does for those who are new and eager to learn.

Take for example, this simple prompt to learn about an Actions workflow that has something to do with stale issues and pull requests:

What does this workflow file do? Explain it as if I had no prior GitHub Actions experience.

3.Understanding.code.in.natural.language.1.of.1.mov

Alt Text: Video display an explanation from Copilot about a GitHub Actions workflow file

---

Creating GitHub Issue templates

Issue templates are a great way to streamline the collection of information in a consistent fashion by providing a template in Markdown. Issue forms provide a more user-friendly method for gathering that information, but require knowledge of YAML and specific keywords. Copilot can help elevate your issue template game by providing the YAML boilerplate code needed for issue forms.

Start by prompting Copilot with an outline of what you want to achieve, being as specific as possible about default labels, assignees, and the form fields you want to include. Test out the look and feel of the template by adding it as a .yml file under the .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE directory in a GitHub repository.

Create the yml for a GitHub issue template using issue forms. Include a default title of "[REQUEST SHORT DESCRIPTION]".
Assign the issue to CallMeGreg with the default label "New Request".
Include a section for the request description, and a drop down for which product it rolls up to: Web, Mobile, or Desktop. Add a field for priority: High, Medium, Low.

Remember to ask follow up questions to fix errors, adjust styling, add ghost text, change the order of the fields… you’re the pilot! In a matter of seconds you can wind up with an issue template like this:

4.Creating.GitHub.Issue.templates.1.of.1.mov

Alt Text: Video demonstrating what an example GitHub issue template looks like after creating one with Copilot

---

Learn how to contribute in GitHub

Proper collaboration in GitHub requires an understanding of a few concepts, like branching and pull requests. Creating a branch in a Git repository allows you to create a separate copy of the codebase to work on new changes. Once the work on a branch is complete, a pull request is created to propose merging the changes back into the main codebase.

Whether you’re making updates to the repository’s documentation, or suggesting your very first code change in a shared space, following these practices facilitates peer review and allows team members to discuss and review the changes before they are made official.

The good news is that Copilot can teach you these concepts by providing a step-by-step guide for your first contribution. For example, navigate to https://github.com/copilot and try this prompt:

I want to make my first contriibution to a GitHub repository. I want to do all of my work in the GitHub UI.
Help me get started with branching and pull requests. Explain step by step.

6.Learn.how.to.contribute.in.GitHub.1.of.1.mov

Alt Text: Video showing Copilot explain how to contribute in GitHub using the github.com user interface

---

Use Copilot to help with CLI commands

For those folks in developer-adjacent roles (looking at you data analysts and security engineers 👀) remembering the right commands, subcommands, and flags in the Command Line Interface (CLI) can be hard. You might have found yourself asking questions like:

• “What are the right chmod values again?”
• “How did I recursively search for a file that one time?”
• “What does that alphabet soup after a tar command do anyway?”

And with Copilot, answers to all of these questions and more are at your fingertips. With Copilot in the CLI, you can ask for explanations, or even have Copilot generate a new command, without the context switching associated with a web search.

Here’s an example of that simplicity in action:

gh copilot explain "tar –xvzf filename.tar.gz"

7.Use.Copilot.to.help.with.CLI.commands.1.of.2.mov

Alt Text: Video showing how to use Copilot in the CLI to explain what a given command does

Or perhaps you can’t remember the exact syntax for a command you’ve run before. Copilot can help get you there by describing what you want to achieve in natural language, like this:

gh copilot suggest "recursively find all csv files in this directory"

7.Use.Copilot.to.help.with.CLI.commands.2.of.2.mov

Alt Text: Video showing how to use Copilot in the CLI to suggest a command based on a natural language prompt

A new era of collaboration has begun. GitHub Copilot isn’t just for developers—it’s a productivity powerhouse for everyone. By automating tedious tasks, simplifying complex processes, and bridging the gap between technical and non-technical teams, Copilot acts as a mentor and force multiplier.

So, why not let Copilot help you work smarter, not harder? Whether you’re a product manager, security professional, or community manager, there’s a use case waiting to transform your workflow.

Got a use case to share or feedback on how Copilot has helped your team? Join the conversation in the comments below 👇 and let us know how you’re using Copilot to boost productivity!

Let’s embrace the future of collaboration together. 💪

[jdivis]

There have been a lot of great GH blog posts lately, but this one seems disconnected from its title.