Here is everything you need to know about Microsoft 365 Copilot. This blog is based on FAQs, but we also cover how to use this tool in the different Microsoft 365 applications.

Introduction to Copilot

What is Microsoft 365 Copilot?

According to the Microsoft definition,

“Copilot combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with your data in the Microsoft Graph—your calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and more—and the Microsoft 365 apps to turn your words into the most powerful productivity tool on the planet. And it does so within our existing commitments to data security and privacy in the enterprise“.

A bit of a mouthful, don’t you think?

In simple terms, Microsoft 365 Copilot is an AI-powered assistant that integrates with M365 apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, and Outlook.

It combines generative AI and the Microsoft Graph (where all your interactions and documents are stored) to give tailored insights based on your documents, emails, and meetings, essentially working as an additional productivity layer for all your applications.

Here are a few examples of what you can do with Microsoft Copilot:

• Generate a PowerPoint presentation from a Word document
• Obtain an instant and insightful analysis of your Excel data
• Request a summary of recent emails about a specific customer
• Create a first draft document in Word based on a prompt
• Quickly answer routine emails in Outlook
• Build an application to automate a manual process with Power Apps

You can find more specific examples in the ‘How to use Copilot’ sections below.

How does Microsoft Copilot work and what does it do?

The Microsoft 365 Copilot system combines three technologies:

1. Microsoft 365 applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, etc.)
2. Microsoft Graph and all your organisation’s content and context in it
3. The GPT-4 Large Language Model (LLM) that parses, understands, and creates human-readable text

Similar to other AI chatbots like Bing and ChatGPT, after you enter a prompt Copilot will automatically generate a response or document, depending on your instruction.

When will Microsoft Copilot become available? When will it launch?

Microsoft 365 Copilot is generally available for enterprise customers with Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 licenses. This includes integration into Microsoft 365 apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams.

For educational staff, it has been available since January 1, 2024.

What is the minimum requirement for Copilot licences?

On January 15th, 2024 Microsoft announced that Copilot for Microsoft 365 is now available for organisations of all sizes for the $30 per user per month pricing.

This means that the previously introduced 300-seat minimum purchase for Copilot for Microsoft 365 commercial plans has been removed, making Copilot accessible to Office 365 E3 and E5 customers.

Small organisations can now access Copilot for Microsoft 365 through Microsoft 365 Business Premium and Business Standard.

How to use Microsoft365 Copilot

How to use Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word?

Copilot in Word helps users to draft, generate, summarise, and revise content. Check out the demo video below to see how it works — watch what happens when you prompt it to draft a document based on your own meeting notes or another existing document. How cool is that?

Without a doubt, this will become the most frequently used feature of this tool.

Here are some example commands and prompts you can try:

• Draft a project proposal based on the data from [a document] and [a spreadsheet].
• Make the first paragraph more concise. Change the tone of the document to be more casual.
• Create a one-page summary based on this rough outline.

Here’s a short Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word demo:

How to use Microsoft 365 Copilot in Excel?

You can use Copilot in Excel to analyse data, gain insights, and create data visualisations all through simple prompts. For example, you can ask Copilot to summarise a datasheet or highlight trends.

If a user has more specific questions, Copilot can create an entirely new sheet to give a more detailed explanation.

Here are some example commands and prompts you can try:

• Give a breakdown of the revenue by type and channel. Insert a table and pie chart to visualise.
• Project the impact of [a variable change] and generate a chart.
• Model how a change to the growth rate for [variable] would impact my gross margin over the next two quarters.

Here’s a short Microsoft 365 Copilot in Excel demo:

How to use Microsoft 365 Copilot in PowerPoint?

Copilot for PowerPoint helps you to transform anything into a beautiful presentation. You can use your own ideas, or provide existing documents to create a prompt.

If you find the generated presentations to be too long, short, static, or wordy, Copilot can make corrections with user feedback, and even add animations.

Come on, ‘turn this proposal into a client-facing presentation’? Doesn’t that sound like a dream?

Here are some example commands and prompts you can try:

• Create a seven-slide presentation based on [document] and include relevant images.
• Consolidate this presentation into a three-slide summary.
• Reformat the third slide to be less wordy and more visual.

Here’s a short Microsoft 365 Copilot in PowerPoint demo:

How to use Microsoft 365 Copilot in OneNote?

Yes, there will also be a Copilot injection for OneNote and it’s doing everything we could have hoped for.

Copilot within OneNote has a host of powerful features, including:

• Text organistaion and note summaries
• Information retrieval
• Notes creation based on existing documents
• Text reformatting
• Key information highlighting

How to use Microsoft 365 Copilot in Microsoft Teams?

Copilot for Microsoft Teams will be able to take meeting notes for you and create summaries for absentees. You will also be able to request a list of the key decisions that were made during the call.

During a Microsoft Teams call, you can ask Copilot how attendees are feeling about a subject matter and if everything on the agenda was covered.

Here are example commands and prompts you can try:

• Summarise what I missed in the meeting. What points have been made so far?
• Create a table of pros and cons for [topic being discussed].
• What decisions were made?

Here’s a short Microsoft 365 Copilot in Microsoft Teams demo:

How to use Microsoft 365 Copilot in Outlook?

You just came back from a long break, you open your inbox and BOOM! Countless unread emails are awaiting a reply. Copilot for Outlook can help you cut through the noise, catchup quickly, and prioritise.

It can help you summarise long emails or long email threads while highlighting action points, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise at this point that it can also help you draft emails based on existing documents. Just provide Copilot with the necessary context, and it will take care of the rest.

Here are some example commands and prompts you can try:

• I was out last week. Flag any important items.
• Draft a response thanking them, and asking for more details about their second and third points; shorten this draft and make the tone professional.
• Invite everyone to a “lunch and learn” about new product launches next Wednesday at noon. Mention that lunch is provided and that we will host everyone at our headquarters.

Here’s a short Microsoft 365 Copilot in Outlook demo:

How to use Microsoft 365 Copilot in Power Platform?

Copilot can help developers quickly prototype and iterate on their low-code applications, and can assist with a wide variety of tasks regardless of their skill level, including:

• Automating of repetitive tasks
• Chatbot building
• Rapidly turning app concepts into viable products

GitHub data shows that Copilot significantly improves productivity, with 88% of developers reporting an increase in productivity, 74% reporting an increase in focus on enjoyable work, and 77% reporting a reduction in time spent searching for knowledge or examples. Find out more.

How to use Microsoft Security Copilot?

Security Copilot can help organisations uncover, investigate, and respond to cyber security threats in minutes. You can use the prompt bar to ask for a summary of all your vulnerabilities for example.

This audit trail does not change; all prompts and responses generated by Copilot are saved, so you can always return to any investigation to refresh yourself on the details of the exchange.

You can also pin responses to the dashboard to make it easier to share important findings.

Here’s a short Microsoft 365 Copilot Security demo:

Microsoft 365 Copilot for SharePoint and Syntex

Microsoft Copilot for SharePoint

Copilot for SharePoint and Syntex provides a range of tools for content creation, document management, and automation. Features include:

Automated Page & Site Creation: Quickly create custom layouts by automating page and site generation based on prompts.

Branding Customisation: Apply themes, color schemes, and layouts, for professional and cohesive visuals.

Enhanced Document Management with Syntex: Syntex integration automates tagging, classification, and data extraction in SharePoint, which reduces manual work.

Streamlined Workflows: Syntex helps organise and keep records compliant, improving efficiency in document-heavy workflows.

How to use Microsoft Copilot in SharePoint?

Users will be able to call on Copilot directly within SharePoint by requesting a site for a specific purpose, based on existing content.

You can make edits to the colour theme just through a prompt, including your own branding guidelines and available visuals.

Take a look at the short demo video below to see how it all works

Microsoft Syntex plugins for Microsoft 365 Copilot – How does it work?

At Microsoft Build 2023, Microsoft announced Syntex plugins for Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Syntex enhances Copilot by bringing AI-powered document processing like classification, content assembly. In essence, this makes your content ready for use with Copilot.

With these plugins, you can ask Copilot specific questions about your content, such as whether it contains sensitive data. You can also request new documents based on templates and data sources, like proposals.

Copilot can also filter documents using extracted metadata—for example, by PO number or documents with quotes over £10K. Microsoft have also announced that you’ll be able to request electronic signatures directly through Copilot using the Syntex plugins.

Miscellaneous questions

Is Microsoft Copilot free? (Pricing & Licensing)

No, Microsoft Copilot is not free for organisations. On July 18th 2023, Microsoft announced that Copilot will be available to customers for $30 per user per month for Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard and Business Premium customers. There is, however, no more seat minimum requirement.

Looking to change your Microsoft 365 subscription? We are an Official Microsoft Licensing provider, so don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Can I pay yearly or monthly?

Starting December 1, 2024, you can choose to pay monthly for your annual Microsoft Copilot subscriptions.

By paying monthly, a 5% price increase will apply compared to the yearly plan.

Can Copilot create images?

Yes, Copilot can generate images from text prompts. Simply type in the chat bar a detailed description and it will generate the visual with the built-in Designer agent.

Images can be tailored to any visual style you can think of and can handle highly detailed descriptions.

Will Copilot for Power Apps replace developers?

A message that Microsoft has been keen to express when announcing Microsoft Copilot, and which the use of the phrase “Copilot” intends to portray, is that the introduction of new, AI-augmented functionality is to empower developers working in the Power Platform.

The true strength of this tooling will be to automate the creation and configuration of assets that can be clearly detailed and explained, such as Tables in Microsoft Dataverse.

Developers will still be required to oversee and verify these outputs, as well as express their requirements in clear, descriptive prompts, but may redistribute the time saved on not needing to build out more basic assets towards more complex or specific implementations.

Copilot for Power Apps should also reduce the barrier for entry for newer developers, or those who may have an understanding of data and design concepts more generally but are unfamiliar with the specific ways to realise these concepts in a Power Apps context.

If anything, this tool will potentially make the developer’s job more productive as they become more able to delegate elementary tasks.

Microsoft Copilot alternatives?

Microsoft Copilot works natively with Microsoft 365 applications, so there aren’t any alternatives to this tool.

However, that’s not to say there aren’t any other AI assistants that you can use to achieve productivity gains. There exist other AI generative tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini, which are generally available.

What sets Microsoft 365 Copilot apart, however, is its ability to combine AI’s power with the full range of Microsoft 365 apps and your organisation’s data, offering a much deeper, more tailored productivity experience than a simple chatbot.

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