I Have Been Copiloted – What Happened? Microsoft launched Copilot Pro this week, bringing AI-powered features to our known Office applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, and Outlook. I have got my license assigned through CloudWay. Do you want to know my onboarding experience?
Table Of Contents
The Copilot Family Tree
I will not spend time describing what Copilot is, as this information is available everywhere today. The new Copilot family tree, as shared by Jeff Teper on X, 15th of January, looks like this:
Initially, this service had a minimum requirement of 300 seats for larger enterprise users, but Microsoft is now eliminating that restriction. Microsoft is now expanding access to its Copilot for Microsoft 365 service to a broader range of businesses. Most business customers can now subscribe to the service at a monthly price per user.
The family tree holds three members today, each with a separate price tag.
Copilot
This is the regular Copilot available free of charge for consumers and businesses. This is a chatbot like ChatGPT but with commercial data protection capabilities, and its freely available.
Copilot Pro
Copilot Pro was launched for consumers, offering AI-powered Copilot features inside Office apps and elsewhere. This will also give access to Copilot GPT Builder. The price tag for this service is $20 per user per month.
Copilot for Microsoft 365
The third family member is Copilot for Microsoft 365, holding even more features like Copilot in Teams, Microsoft Graph Grounding, and Enterprise-Grade Data Protection. The cost of this is $30 per user per month.
My Experience Being Copiloted
The first messages of the copilot launch started on the 15th of January 2024, and the service and licenses were available for purchase through CSP the following day. My devices were already Copilot Ready through Intune management, as described in my earlier blog post, Simon does Boost Your Copilot: Prepare Your Devices Now With Intune Mastery.
As a true enthusiast of all the latest Microsoft cloud technology and a proud member of Team CloudWay, I’m excited to be on this journey. We swiftly embraced the onboarding process, and our adept team eagerly jumped into the technology and shared knowledge internally and externally.
Some of the sharing with the community that day:
Let’s look into my personal experience being Copiloted.
My License
We did assign the Copilot for Microsoft 365 license to our team. If you wonder what license you have been assigned, you can find information on this in the My Account session of Microsoft 365.
As seen in the picture above, you have a detailed overview of the licenses assigned to your account.
The Cloud Minutes
Following the license assignment, the availability of the Copilot service was not instantaneous across all platforms. The process did take some time—hours in certain services and days in others.
Notably, integrations within installed applications on my device took the longest to implement. On the other hand, cloud-based applications exhibited a quicker turnaround in making the Copilot service accessible.
This variance in implementation times underscores the need for patience, especially when dealing with integrations within locally installed applications. Given the delays, some of us, fueled by impatience, attempted to expedite the process by resorting to actions such as signing out and back into applications, rebooting devices, and other troubleshooting measures.
Despite these efforts, the variability in implementation times highlighted the importance of seamlessly allowing the system to integrate the Copilot service. Dealing with tasks like signing out/in of the applications is not recommended for end users.
Copilot On The Web
Copilot Chat Engine
Navigating to https://copilot.microsoft.com, I have access to a protected AI-powered Copilt chat engine.
Here, I can ask for everything while ensuring my personal and company data are protected in the chat.
I will also find access to this tool from the left menu at https://portal.office.com for easy access.
There are some example prompts available when starting this tool. Clicking the “View Prompts” button in the lower right corner gives access to even more prompts and a shortcut to Copilot Lab.
Copilot Lab
Copilot Lab has a rich selection of prompts available to create, edit, and get things done with the help of Copilot.
These tips will address how to utilize Copilot in all Apps inside Microsoft 365. You can sort these tips based on Apps and Categories using the drop-down lists at the top. You can even save your favorite prompts and get access to your saved prompts here.
At the end of this page, you will find quick tips for better prompts that are worth a look to get yourself up to speed in prompt engineering.
Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint Online and more
Starting a new document in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint online, Copilot will offer its service to get you started.
These are variants of Copilot specialized in the app you are using. Copilot will be available with its specialized service in most Office applications. We have already seen it in OneNote and Loop.
Copilot On My Windows PC
Copilot in Teams
In Teams, I can find the Copilot app and PIN it to the left menu, giving quick access to the Copilot chat engine. This is the same for the Online version and the version installed on Windows and macOS.
Doing IM chats, I have a Copilot function that helps me rewrite and adjust my text before sending.
There are several options for adjusting the text, making it easy to adopt the style you like.
Copilot in Teams can even recap meetings and calls where you have transcriptions throughout the meeting.
Transcription even worked excellently in meetings run in Norwegian. During a meeting we can get assistance from Copilot using prompts like the following:
- Recap meeting so far
- Suggest follow-up questions
- List action items
- What questions are unresolved?
- List different perspectives by topic
- List main ideas we discussed
- Generate meeting notes
You can also do your personal questions like
- Who is not paying attention in the meeting?
- Who answered most questions?
- Who has the longest talk time?
- Who has been most silent in the meeting?
- What is the mood in this call?
- Rate the value of this call based on the engagement of the participants.
It’s pretty fun and revealing if used in this way.
Copilot in Outlook
New Outlook is a prerequisite for Copilot, as mentioned in my previous blog post on getting Copilot ready with your device. Using the New Outlook on Windows, the Copilot functionality appeared when composing an e-mail.
By replying to an email, I can select the style and give a short instruction to let Copilot create a formalized answer.
This can be a time saver, ensuring good answers are given.
Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint
Starting Word, Excel, or PowerPoint after the service has been activated on the device gives access to the specialized Copilot version within each app.
Word Copilot can help me create a new document.
Word Copilot can assist me with existing documents.
The same “endless” possibilities open with Copilot, now available in Excel and PowerPoint.
Windows Copilot
Windows Copilot can give you a Copilot icon on the taskbar, giving you access to Windows Copilot as a bar sticking to the right of your screen.
This can be turned on/off in Taskbar settings, given it hasn’t been disabled through Intune as described in several posts online.
If you miss the icon, you can start Windows Copilot manually by running the following command.
“microsoft-edge://?ux=copilot&tcp=1&source=taskbar”
Copilot On My iPhone
Outlook on iPhone
Staring Outlook on my Intune-managed iPhone, I found the following information the day after the license was assigned.
This gave me the same AI power from Copilot in Outlook on my iPhone – just as in the new Outlook on my Windows device.
This will empower the mobile workforce with Copilot, even from the iPhone.
Copilot On My Macbook
My Macbook had the Copilot experience available in Teams simultaneously when I discovered it on my Windows device. The functions seems to be the same as well.
The other applications on my Macbook, like Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, did not get the Copilot integrations on the first day of the license, but on the next day, I found Copilot enabled in Outlook, Word etc on my MacBook.
The little Copilot icon is nicely integrated into the user interface, making it a natural evolution of the products.
Starting Word and Excel on my Macbook gave me the same Copilot experience as in Windows.
I don’t think the Macbook support took much longer to roll out. It could instead be me not being that active on my MacBook.
The Copilot Onboarding Conclusion
We are still early in the journey with Copilot. The licenses have recently been assigned to me, and I’m eagerly anticipating how this will integrate into my apps and daily life.
It’s somewhat akin to the introduction of HD Ready TVs when laserdiscs were poised to take over from VHS. Not everything may evolve as it seems today.
Nevertheless, we are on our way, and we are on board. This post briefly explained the first experience in the Copilot onboarding process for someone with an Intune-managed Copilot-ready PC. Perhaps this can serve as a bit of a balm of patience for those of you in the process of acquiring the ticket—or license, as it’s called.
Safe travels!
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