If you follow the latest news and releases in the Microsoft world, you’ll know that Copilot has been a hot topic since the end of 2023. It’s front and center of every keynote and it’s now included in almost every tool in the Microsoft 365 suite.

There’s a Copilot for Teams (probably the biggest use case), a Copilot for Word, and even a Copilot for things like Dynamics and PowerBI. If there’s a tool where you could benefit from what Microsoft is billing as “Your everyday AI companion”, you can bet Microsoft has made one available.

In fact, at last count (which was April 2024 as of the time of writing), there are 19 different Copilots in the Microsoft ecosystem.

In this blog post, we aim to provide you with all the details you need about the various Microsoft 365 Copilots without flooding you with too much information.

The guide is laid out as follows:

• What does Copilot do?
• Benefits and disadvantages of Copilot
• How much does Copilot cost?
• Is Copilot better than ChatGPT?
• How safe is Copilot?
• How do I get Copilot in Microsoft 365?

Microsoft 365 Copilot is an in-app assistance tool that lets you use generative AI with all sorts of tasks.

From catching up on meeting content when you arrive late to creating a beautifully formatted PowerPoint presentation from the meeting notes of the meeting you were just late to, there’s a wealth of functionality at your disposal.

Using “prompts”, which are input commands, you can request that Copilot do almost anything.

For example, you can ask Copilot to “draft a proposal from yesterday’s meeting notes” and attach the OneNote file you used to create those notes.

You ask for something to be created and Copilot will use its artificial intelligence (AI) to make it happen.

In return, Copilot will create a proposal using the content you provided. And you can apply this to almost any information worker scenario. Specifically in the case of those tasked with content creation (of any sort, not just marketing), the process of going from blank canvas to first draft can be expedited with a high-quality prompt.

What you must be aware of here is that while Copilot is clever and quick, it lacks context. The quality of the output relies heavily on your input. So, when you ask for *something* to be created, be as prescriptive as possible.

Copilot in Microsoft Teams

1. You can use Copilot to lessen your time in meetings: No need to take notes as Copilot does this automatically. You can also ask for a recap, action items, and key points at any time during or after the meeting. You could even skip the meeting and get all the key points and moments your name was mentioned.
   
   
2. You can use Copilot to speed up follow up activities: When you get assigned tasks during meetings, use the meeting content to kick off your next step. It could be drafting a PowerPoint, analyzing data in Excel, or scheduling the next meeting.

Outside of meetings, you can use Copilot in chat and channel messages and phone calls too. 

During any chat, either one-to-one, group, or a channel chat, you can use Copilot for similar things to meetings. In your desired chat, open Copilot in the top right-hand corner and enter your prompt to request information or an output from the content within the chat or channel.

You might ask Copilot to catch you up on the most urgent matters if you’ve been away on vacation. Using the dates and timestamps in the chat, Copilot can rank these without you having to scroll through hundreds of messages.

Likewise, you can ask for specific information recall, like who suggested the project completion date or what were the key items from Wednesday’s chat. The prompts you input are entirely up to you, of course. 

Copilot in Teams Phone

Teams Phone must get a special call out when thinking about Copilot. 

It’s easy to think that the same logic and technology applies to calls as to meetings. You’d be right for the most part. But there’s a slight catch too.

For on-net calls, i.e. VoIP calls between internal Teams users, everything that applies to the Copilot meeting functionality remains.

However, for external PSTN calls in Teams, there’s a break in the technology. Literally, PSTN breakout. 

That’s not to say that you can’t use Copilot for Teams Phone. Far from it.

Announced a little later than Copilot for Teams meetings, you can also have an AI assistant live (and historically) in your PSTN calls.

You get call summarization and curate unresolved questions, just like you could a normal meeting. 

So, what’s the fuss about Copilot in Teams Phone?

Think about when you’re speaking to a customer and need help from a colleague. More than that, you need to escalate the call to them.

You transfer the call and pass your customer on to someone with the relevant expertise.

What happens to the call summary? That gets transferred too. Copilot uses the entire call including any transfers to create a full information loop with no breaks and no data leakage.

During your calls, you can ask any prompt of your choosing. 

Here are some recommended prompts from Microsoft:

• Recap the call so far
• List action items
• Suggest follow-up questions
• What questions are unresolved?
• List different perspectives by topic
• List the main items we discussed
• Generate call notes

Copilot in other Microsoft apps

By now, you have a feel for what Microsoft 365 Copilot can do for Teams. It’s arguably the biggest use case.

But with plenty of other apps in (and adjacent to) the 365 ecosystem, it’s important to highlight the apps you can use Copilot in and what you do use it for.

As of April 2024, you can use Copilot in these Microsoft 365 apps:

• Word
• Loop
• Excel
• Forms
• Outlook
• OneNote
• Whiteboard
• PowerPoint

In Word, for example, you can generate a custom banner to go with the document you just created. For those who lack a creative spark, this can be a time-consuming task that AI can complete in seconds.

In PowerPoint, you might have a Word proposal that now needs to be presented at short notice.

Instead of presenting pages of a Word document, you can ask Copilot to turn your proposal into a formatted presentation.

A key thing to note here is that you don’t have to accept the first version of what Copilot returns.

After most outputs, you’ll have suggested follow up prompts like:

• Add animations to this slide
• Apply a modern style to the presentation

In Outlook, you can use Copilot to draft responses to emails. Again, you don’t have to accept the first version.

In fact, Copilot for Outlook comes with a tool to make adjustments based on email length and writing style. You can ask Copilot to make your email shorter and more informal if that’s how you normally respond, for example.

Is ChatGPT owned by Microsoft?

No. ChatGPT isn’t owned by Microsoft. However, it may sound like Copilot is borrowing lots of functionality from there.

That’s because it’s using the same base technology. In 2023, Microsoft confirmed a $10bn investment in ChatGPT.

Microsoft explains how it uses ChatGPT in this statement:

Microsoft has run simulation exercises that suggest a 717% return on investment and a $254 per user per month productivity gain when adopting Copilot. This used a combination of general executives, managers, and individual contributors to form a fair test.