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The What and Why of Microsoft Copilot?

This article explains what Microsoft Copilot and the general Copilot ecosystem is all about. 

What is Microsoft Copilot?

Imagine you had a personal assistant that knew everything on the Internet, and you could chat to them to get to that knowledge.

Well, that is what Microsoft Copilot is aiming to be.

Microsoft Copilot is a suite of tools which uses AI to help you do more. The Microsoft Copilot tools provide a chat interface which allows you to interact with Copilot requesting help, and guidance and instructing it to do things for you.

Microsoft Copilot uses Open AI’s GPT models, such as ChatGPT to allow you to easily ask things using natural language ‘prompts’ to describe what you want.

The Microsoft Copilot suite adds Copilots to various products across the Microsoft suite of tools and services including:

  • Microsoft 365
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Dynamics 365

A good example is Copilot in Microsoft Outlook, which provides Copilot AI features in Microsoft Outlook.

Copilot allows users to ask it to help them organize and work with their Email. For example, you can catchup with Copilot and ask Copilot to summarise all the emails that I am mentioned in. Off Copilot goes looking at the people you have received emails from where you are mentioned and brings back a set of bullet points with those email details.

Summary of emails image

The purpose of Microsoft Copilot is to be your always-available assistant. To help you get things done more quickly without having to invest time into searching and finding out how. The result is to make you, your teams, and your business more productive and more efficient.

The important thing to note is that they are there to support and not replace you as their outputs need to be reviewed and confirmed.

Understanding the different Microsoft Copilots

Firstly, this article will not explain all the different Microsoft Copilots as there are over 150 and they are growing!
However, let’s discuss the main ones that we are most interested in and also include the ones which everyone has access to.

Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft Copilot is available now and is available from within Microsoft Windows 11, Microsoft Edge. You can also visit https://copilot.microsoft.com.

Microsoft Copilot is the new name for Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise.

With Microsoft Copilot you can login to your personal or work account. Please note that if you login with your work account then all your chats are secured and not shared outside of your Microsoft 365 tenant.

Microsoft Copilot allows you to get help and makes it easier for you and the users to ask as they can use sentences. This helps you get across more information so that Copilot understands what you are really looking for.

Microsoft 365 Copilot or Copilot for Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 Copilot or Copilot for Microsoft 365 is an evolution of Microsoft Copilot where now you can use Copilot with everything on the Internet and also it understands your data. That is, it can access your documents, spreadsheets, emails and conversations and use that information to help you get your work done.

This is where Copilot gets really interesting and frankly exciting as suddenly, we have an assistant that can really help us get our work done as it has access to our information.

Of course, the system is secure and your organisations’ data and more importantly your data is not shared outside of your Microsoft 365 environment.

With this Copilot you will be able to ask for information in your organisations. So, for example ask for information about a particular client or customer or proposal. The Copilot will go ahead and find that information and summarise it for you.
Additionally, because Copilot’s search engine is smarter and more refined the results are going to be better than search was with Microsoft 365.

Frankly, this capability is exciting, and we are looking forward to what people will do with Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365.

Microsoft Copilot In Teams, Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Viva

Here is where we start to see lots of Copilots in each product. Each Copilot is going to help you get what you need to do faster and easier. It is like having an expert in Word and Excel by your side. Also, it will do the work for you!

The example that we have seen that we love is Microsoft Copilot in PowerPoint. Microsoft Copilot in PowerPoint will allow you to create a slide deck based on a proposal you did in Microsoft Word. Bang now you have a presentation but the styling is not right so you can ask Copilot to give it the same look and feel as another presentation that you did last week. Quickly you have got the bones of a presentation which you can go ahead and tweak and modify and before you know if you’ll have the presentation done.

Frankly, this capability is exciting, and we are looking forward to what people will do with Microsoft Copilot in the suite of tools.

Availability

The final thing that we need to address is the availability of the different Microsoft Copilots.

Firstly, Microsoft Copilot is available now and finally, it is available to any organisation since 16th January 2024 through your provider.

If you are looking to take advantage of Copilot for Microsoft 365, take a look at our Copilot for Microsoft 365 Delivery Accelerator.
Additionally, you will need to be licensed with Microsoft 365 E3, Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Microsoft 365 Business Premium.

The cost for a license for Copilot for Microsoft 365 is going to be £25 per user per month.

We hope you found the article useful, and that it helped your understanding of Microsoft Copilot. In the next article, we will be talking more about Microsoft 365 Copilot and how businesses will be able to leverage its capabilities more to become a real tool to give you and your business a competitive advantage!

Join us then!