What is Microsoft 365 Copilot: benefits, requisites, and integrations

Microsoft 365 Copilot is a revolutionary solution capable of turning users' words into the most powerful productivity tool in the world. Accessible through the main Microsoft 365 apps and a dedicated chat, it ensures data security and offers features to interact, in a conversational mode, with work data and tools such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams.

Since January 15, 2024, Copilot has been available to individuals and businesses.

In this article, we will delve into what Microsoft 365 Copilot is, what benefits it offers to businesses, and why it's worth investing in adopting this new technology. We will then detail the cost of accessing Copilot and what functionalities of Microsoft's new AI allow companies to quickly recoup their investment while simultaneously enhancing the employee experience.

What is Microsoft 365 Copilot?

Microsoft 365 Copilot is the new ally of personal productivity, the result of the partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI, the company behind Chat GPT. This collaboration has enabled the integration of "Large Language Models" with Microsoft Graph, the foundation of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.

Available through various Microsoft applications and private Chat, Copilot offers a unique conversational experience for managing business data, with a keen eye on compliance. Interactions are kept within the Microsoft security perimeter, ensuring the privacy of personal and business data shared by users.

Copilot is an advanced processing engine designed to guide effective use of Microsoft applications through the natural language of generative AI models like GPT-4. This simplifies users' daily tasks in the suite and lightens workloads in the company, increasing collective productivity. In fact, it only takes a few seconds to:

• Create new documents in Word
• Analyze table data in Excel
• Create complete presentations in PowerPoint
• Manage communication through Outlook mail
• Collaborate effectively with colleagues in Teams groups

In addition to using Copilot directly in Microsoft applications, there is a private chat (formerly Business Chat, now Microsoft 365 Chat) that combines OpenAI's GPT-4 capabilities with Microsoft 365 data to meet users' needs in a personal communication space.

It is therefore the ideal place within the corporate digital workplace to generate useful content and materials for one's work or to seek information. Compared to traditional Microsoft 365 Chat, such as that in Word or Outlook, Copilot Chat offers a significant advantage: the ability to centralize generated content or perform centralized searches through accessible business data.

For example, users can use the Chat to:

• Request updates on colleagues' activities
• Summarize important news and meetings
• Prepare materials for upcoming meetings
• Quickly retrieve company information and documents

Microsoft 365 Copilot can therefore be used privately via Chat to meet individual user requests and allow access to a dedicated history, where past conversations can be retrieved, and AI outputs organized according to request type.

Microsoft 365 Copilot: How much does it cost and who can use it?

The debut of Microsoft 365 Copilot on November 23, 2023, marked a significant moment, preceded by a testing phase limited to some companies worldwide.

However, only from January 15, 2024, has the service become available to everyone: individuals, small and medium enterprises, as well as large organizations that until this date were the only ones able to exploit the features of Microsoft's new AI.

The version of Copilot now accessible to all, is based on the powerful GPT-4 Turbo model, representing the pinnacle of artificial intelligence capabilities offered by Microsoft. But the news doesn't end there.

Below is a summary of the licensing news for Microsoft 365 Copilot:

• For individuals and families, it is now possible to purchase the new Copilot Pro license for €22/user/month, provided they have a Microsoft 365 Personal or Microsoft 365 Family license. This allows the use of Copilot in applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote.
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• Companies with a Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Office 365 E3/E5, or Microsoft 365 E3/E5 license can now also purchase just one Copilot license. Microsoft has indeed removed the requirement that stipulated a minimum purchase of 300 licenses to access Copilot features. This limit prevented small and medium-sized enterprises from adopting the new AI.
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• Copilot is now also available for teaching and administrative staff in the education sector, through Education plans.

For companies, the cost of a Microsoft 365 Copilot license is currently €28.10/user/month.

This may seem like a considerable price, but a quick calculation of the costs related to business productivity reveals a different picture. In fact, a modest time saving, estimated between 74 and 30 minutes per month for each Copilot user, is sufficient to justify the investment by companies. Is this an achievable goal?

The answer is yes. Microsoft has conducted an analysis of Copilot's impact on organizations, focusing on changes in productivity, work quality, and time savings.

Results show that 70% of users have seen an increase in productivity, while 68% have reported an improvement in work quality. 57% of respondents have noticed an increase in creativity, while 29% have noted faster execution in activities such as information retrieval, writing new content, and summarizing materials shared within the company.

Regarding time savings:

• 64% of users reported spending less time managing emails
• 75% optimized information search activities in the corporate digital workplace
• 86% can recover lost documents more quickly without asking colleagues

Although it is difficult to quantify the time saved by individual Copilot users accurately, we can assume a realistic saving of about 15 minutes per day. This is thanks to functionalities that facilitate the management of processes such as internal communication and training.

Microsoft 365 Copilot: What are the benefits for businesses?

Microsoft 365 Copilot is rich in advanced features, accessible through natural language, aimed at increasing productivity and improving collaboration in the company.

Microsoft has demonstrated that saving from 74 to 30 minutes per month for each user with access to Copilot is enough to recoup the company's investment. Let's look at some of the features that contribute to saving the time needed to turn the investment in Copilot into sustainable profit, improving workers' experience and increasing productivity.

Copilot's benefits for corporate training

Microsoft 365 Copilot is a valuable tool for improving corporate training experience. Thanks to its drafting functionality, users can create personalized educational materials tailored to the specific needs of the corporate context and functional to fill internal skill gaps without having to purchase pre-packaged training courses.

Copilot is also able to support users in understanding educational materials by answering their questions about the content and reworking the most complex information. This saves time not only for creating training content but also for understanding and assimilating it, without having to rely on more experienced colleagues.

Furthermore, many companies are leveraging Copilot's AI to develop innovative platforms for digital corporate training. An example is the Microlearning solution from intranet.ai, where Copilot provides support for:

• Generating microlearning training courses, with short and simple lessons to assimilate thanks to the variety of supported formats (videos, quizzes, flashcards, and more).
• Quickly finding useful information within learning paths and individual micro-lessons, to avoid asking colleagues or wasting time searching.
• Translating training content into 40+ languages in seconds.

The time saved by companies is incalculable since Microsoft 365 Copilot allows creating a guided and personalized training experience based on the needs of each user.

Copilot's benefits for internal communication

Microsoft 365 Copilot introduces new opportunities for collaboration and communication among colleagues, simplifying information exchange, activity coordination, and content creation.

For example, within Microsoft Teams, it offers a quick recap of meetings, summarizing key points, decisions made, and agreed activities, both in past and real-time meetings. This means a saving of about 15 minutes per day per user.

In the Outlook mailbox, Copilot can summarize the information contained in exchanged emails, highlighting the requests made by the senders and suggesting to the user how to respond with particular attention to the tone and clarity of the message. In this case, we could estimate a time saving ranging from 15 to 30 minutes per day for a user who uses Outlook intensively.

Perhaps the greatest time saving is made possible by the drafting feature.

With a single prompt, Copilot can rework the data stored in the corporate Microsoft 365 environment to create drafts of:

• Documents in Word
• Presentations in PowerPoint
• Emails to be sent via Outlook
• Posts to be published in Viva Engage
• News and communications for the SharePoint intranet

Each of these contents is then accompanied by attachments, tables, charts, and illustrations that Copilot deems relevant based on the target audience, communication medium, and the user's goal.

Time saved thanks to this feature? At least 30 minutes per user per day.

To help you understand the extent of the impact Copilot can have on your company's productivity, we will delve into the next chapters the integration with the main applications of the Microsoft ecosystem. Some features have been anticipated, but we will see better how Copilot facilitates meeting management in Teams, organizing mail in Outlook, and creating documents, presentations, emails, and more, providing personalized suggestions and assistance.

Microsoft 365 Copilot in Teams, to streamline collaboration

Microsoft 365 Copilot showcases some of its most innovative features for business productivity within Microsoft Teams. Integration with Teams not only enables leveraging shared information from colleagues to generate new content but also simplifies meeting management to promptly obtain useful information for daily tasks and to effectively organize the work of business teams.

Below are the main features of Microsoft 365 Copilot in the Microsoft Teams app.

Intelligent Meeting Recap

Now it's possible to access a meeting summary generated by Microsoft 365 Copilot based on what was said during a meeting. At the conclusion of the meeting, users can request a recap from Copilot that includes:

• Meeting recording
• A timeline with participants' contributions highlighted
• A summary of voice and text conversations in chat
• Shared notes and scheduled tasks

Users can also ask questions and make requests regarding the content in all languages supported by Copilot and receive direct conversational responses, identifying the exact point in the transcript from which the AI drew the information to generate its response.

It should be noted that the recap feature is also available for meetings not organized via the calendar, provided they are recorded, or the transcript function is activated.

However, Teams' intelligent recap is visible only if the meeting is created by the user or one of their colleagues with an account in the same Microsoft 365 tenant. If the user is invited by someone external to the organization, the recap will not be available.

Video call support

Microsoft 365 Copilot offers comprehensive support even during calls.

Through dedicated chat, it's possible to:

• Generate real-time shared content
• Create task lists
• Simultaneously translate contributions

For users joining the meeting late, using Copilot's chat to request a summary of already discussed topics can be particularly useful. This optimizes time and avoids unnecessary repetitions.

Chat and private group information search

Users with access to Copilot can retrieve information and useful materials shared within 1:1 private chats or private chats among multiple users.

For those using Teams to collaborate with colleagues, investing in Copilot proves essential to eliminate wasted time in manual information searching.

Microsoft 365 Copilot in Outlook, to manage the mailbox

Microsoft 365 Copilot offers features to simplify communication management in Outlook, allowing professionals and businesses to optimize their time and energies. In addition to speeding up email composition, Copilot can be used to get a summary of all incoming messages and provide precise guidance on improving responses for greater clarity.

Here's what Microsoft 365 Copilot allows us to do in Outlook.

Mail drafts with Copilot

Microsoft 365 Copilot offers the ability to create a new email from textual requests with the command "Draft with Copilot."

Microsoft's AI relies on the prompt and the information available in its knowledge base to generate a draft of the requested message within seconds, which can be modified through:

• Manual intervention
• "Regenerate" command
• New prompt in chat

To optimize writing time, Copilot always tries to generate content according to the user's preferences in terms of text length and tone of voice. It allows specifying whether a short, medium, or long draft is desired, characterized by a direct, neutral, informal, formal, or even "poetic" tone. These options can be chosen before sending the prompt to Copilot and will remain valid for all future drafts or responses to user queries.

However, it should be noted that this feature does not yet integrate with the Outlook calendar or with content such as documents and corporate presentations.

This means that it's not possible to generate an email containing information about the user's availability, commitments, and scheduled meetings, nor emails containing information taken from personal work files. However, we believe that Microsoft will address this limitation soon.

Copilot Coaching

Through the "Coaching" feature, Copilot provides targeted advice to improve the quality of our emails. We can request an AI-based text analysis on various parameters, including:

• Tone
• Reader sentiment
• Clarity

And receive suggestions on how to make the message less aggressive or on what details to add to avoid misunderstandings and clarify expectations to the recipient.

Conversation summaries

The mailbox recap stands out as one of Copilot's most valuable features in Outlook.

This feature provides an accurate summary of conversations that have taken place via email, highlighting key points, unanswered questions, and actions to fulfill senders' requests.

Copilot can synthesize not only the content of individual emails but also conversation threads or separate messages sharing the same recipient and topic.

Quick replies

Microsoft 365 Copilot simplifies email responses by suggesting personalized prompts.

Simply click "Reply" to view AI-based proposals based on the content of the received email, allowing you to respond to colleagues with just two clicks and thus saving a considerable amount of time in daily work routines.

If the user desires a response created from a personalized prompt, it's possible to select the "Custom" option and input the desired text. These customized responses also adhere to the tone and length settings configured via the "Copilot Draft" feature.

Microsoft 365 Copilot in PowerPoint, to boost creativity

Microsoft 365 Copilot is also available in PowerPoint to optimize the presentation creation process, providing comprehensive support from ideation to final delivery.

In addition to generating presentations complete with text and graphics, Copilot serves as valuable support for:

• obtaining advice on presenting topics
• creating new content from existing presentations
• facilitating the search for information in shared presentations

This enables businesses to save up to 30 minutes per day for each regular PowerPoint user, leading to a rapid return on investment and greater employee well-being.

Let's delve into the key features of Microsoft 365 Copilot in PowerPoint.

Presentation drafting

Microsoft 365 Copilot can create a presentation from scratch, utilizing available information on the required topic. It also offers the option to customize slide design and refine textual content to align with presentation objectives.

Users can manually edit slides, which are already complete with text and graphics, or use new prompts. For example, Copilot can suggest more relevant images for slide topics or modify the font used throughout the presentation.

In addition to slide creation, Copilot provides support for enhancing presentations through:

• Useful notes for effective topic presentation
• Public speaking tips to increase audience engagement

Whether it's new PowerPoint decks or existing presentations, users can ask Copilot to organize slides by automatically creating sections for each major topic and grouping various slides within them.

Content creation from document

Users can instruct Copilot to use a Word document to generate a presentation, saving time otherwise spent creating it from scratch.

To do so, Microsoft's AI analyzes the shared document, breaks it down into major topics, and creates a slide for each. Slides may contain text only, text and images, or text and tables. Furthermore, Copilot can create the presentation from a predefined template, which could be chosen from corporate templates through appropriate configurations by IT administrators.

However, there are some points of consideration regarding this functionality:

• The longer the document, the longer it will take Copilot to create the presentation.
• The presentation language will correspond to that of the original document. To translate slide content, PowerPoint's translation feature can be used.
• Images in a shared Word document are not inserted into slides, as Copilot currently operates only on text.

Information retrieval

Another feature of Microsoft 365 Copilot in PowerPoint is its ability to search for information within presentations. Users can utilize Copilot to examine the content of their presentations, get a quick summary of the contents, or find answers to their questions on the topic.

It's important to note that the search function applies only to textual content and does not extend to images or other graphical elements.

Microsoft 365 Copilot in Excel, to optimize data analysis

Microsoft 365 Copilot integrates with Excel to simplify data analysis. Simply communicate to the AI what you want to achieve in your own words to receive:

• Suggestions on which formulas to use
• New charts and in-depth visualizations
• Insights on current trends and possible future scenarios

One of the most widely used and complex tools in Microsoft 365 becomes accessible to everyone, eliminating the need for technical skills to work productively with your data tables.

For this reason, the integration of Copilot in Excel has been one of the most anticipated since Microsoft's new AI was announced, and there are high expectations for how the interaction between these two tools will evolve in the future. For now, here are some of the features of Copilot coming to Excel.

Intelligent data analysis

Users can ask Copilot to examine the tables in an Excel file to identify and analyze the most important information. To begin, simply click on the Copilot icon and select "Analyze." At this point, helpful suggestions are presented for analyzing tabular data, and a chat is opened to ask questions and make requests.

During the analysis, Copilot highlights relevant information based on suggestions and the type of data collected. It also generates a range of content that users can use to deepen their analysis, including charts, pivot tables, summaries, trends, and outliers.

Rapid data modeling

Microsoft 365 Copilot assists users in manipulating Excel tables, helping them organize data optimally and identify the most relevant information. Among the available actions, Copilot can:

• Remove unnecessary spaces
• Merge values from different columns
• Identify and remove duplicates
• Sort data using predefined filters

But it also helps to explore potential future scenarios and trends. To do this, simply ask Copilot to model the data in the table based on a specific variable, and you will get a simulation useful for identifying areas of improvement and preventing future issues.

Adding new column formulas

Copilot can provide suggestions for creating new columns in an Excel table, suggesting formulas based on context and the type of data present.

These suggestions are aimed at combining column values in the table to highlight crucial information. For example, it might suggest formulas for calculating the profit of a marketing campaign or the total cost for product development, depending on the user's needs.

Microsoft 365 Copilot in Viva, to enhance employee experience

Microsoft has integrated Copilot into the Viva suite to leverage its new generative AI technology for the employee experience. Copilot enriches Microsoft Viva tools with advanced features to manage internal communication, improve colleague training, expand the corporate knowledge base, and monitor global and personal strategies.

This provides companies and professionals with unique support for their productivity, well-being, and continuous innovation in daily activities.

Copilot in Viva Engage

Copilot in Viva Engage offers important features (now in preview) to simplify communication and collaboration in the company.

Starting from "Drafting posts," users can share prompts to generate drafts of content to be published in Viva Engage communities. Each draft can be customized in terms of text length, tone, and content. Additionally, you can ask Copilot for suggestions on topics to address in posts based on trending themes among various company communities.

Moving on to feedback management, Copilot provides a summary of comments and sentiment towards content published by users to help them evaluate the effectiveness of their communication. It also assists in creating questions and answers for the Answers section. When a user drafts a question, Copilot immediately provides helpful tips to improve text clarity and suggests answers to share, along with attached resources to delve into the topic.

Copilot in Viva Learning

Copilot in Viva Learning expands functionality for managing training through:

• Building learning paths
• Summarizing content in a course
• Searching for relevant educational resources for the user

These features are currently in preview. It is important to note that currently Microsoft 365 Copilot does not support the generation of personalized training content, already integrated and accessible in Viva Learning. Companies can therefore use Microsoft's AI only to rework existing content in the system.

Copilot in Viva Insights

Viva Insights provides a dedicated dashboard for users' Copilot usage to help companies measure its impact on productivity and to:

• Identify colleagues who could benefit from using Copilot, based on their daily use of Microsoft 365 applications.
• Understand how Copilot is being used and identify any areas for improvement.
• Evaluate the overall sentiment towards the adoption of Copilot.

The integration between Viva Insights and Microsoft 365 Copilot is therefore aimed at supporting the adoption process, providing useful analysis and statistics to maximize the investment made in adopting the new AI without compromising workers' experience.

Copilot in Viva Goals

Microsoft 365 Copilot integrates with Viva Goals to help business leaders define OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) by:

• Creating new goals, from scratch or based on existing company strategies
• Defining the results needed to achieve the established goals
• Summarizing the progress status for teams and individual users
• Providing advice for planning and achieving goals

Simply provide information such as the industry sector, the involved departments, members of the company teams, and expectations regarding activities in the prompt to obtain precise objectives, accompanied by the Key Results needed to achieve them within the desired timeframe.

FAQ on Microsoft 365 Copilot

What is Microsoft 365 Copilot?

‍Microsoft 365 Copilot is an AI-powered productivity tool integrated with Microsoft 365 apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. It helps users create, analyze, and manage content through natural language interactions.

What are the key benefits of Microsoft 365 Copilot?

‍Copilot enhances productivity by automating tasks, improving communication, aiding in data analysis, and offering advanced collaboration tools. It also supports personalized training and enhances employee experience.

How much does Microsoft 365 Copilot cost?

‍For businesses, the license costs €28.10/user/month. For individuals, it’s available at €22/user/month with specific Microsoft 365 licenses.

What are the system requirements for using Microsoft 365 Copilot?

‍Users need a Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, Business Premium, Business Standard, Office 365 E3/E5, or Microsoft 365 E3/E5 license.

How does Copilot integrate with Microsoft Teams?

‍In Teams, Copilot offers intelligent meeting recaps, real-time support during video calls, and efficient information retrieval within chats.