Microsoft CoPilot

CoPilot is the name given to Microsoft’s AI tool. There are multiple flavours of CoPilot though so this article is designed to let you know what you have access to by default, what it can do and how to access it as well as to let you know what the paid for options are.

Microsoft CoPilot 

The plain old vanilla CoPilot that anyone can access and use whether in a personal capacity or through work is just called CoPilot. 

• It’s free!
• Microsoft CoPilot uses the ChatGPT-4 model – so it’s got the same brain as the paid for version of ChatGPT.
• When you use it on a Wise Group provided laptop then your data is protected. There is no risk of leaking private data to unwanted snoopers. We still don’t want you to use it with any sensitive health, strategic or finance data though.
  
  
  
  
• There are two ways to access CoPilot:
  • The first is via the Microsoft Edge browser (we STRONGLY recommend you use this for your web browsing). In Edge you will see a small CoPilot icon (see example above) in the top right – click that to access CoPilot.
  • The second is via the Windows 11 app. If you click the Windows icon that used to be called the Start Menu and type CoPilot you will be presented with the confusingly named M365 CoPilot App. Click that to open CoPilot.
• The WMS helpdesk can provide support for CoPilot – how to access it etc.

Microsoft CoPilot for 365

Microsoft CoPilot for 365 is a very similar name but it’s really quite different! Microsoft CoPilot for 365 is their more advanced version. You can get this version by buying a license and you can use this version inside Office apps like Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams and Word. This is the version that Microsoft are trying to sell to businesses. The main points are listed below:

• Microsoft CoPilot for 365 is built into all the Office apps. You can use this one directly in Word to create content or review content etc.
• We did a trial with a select group of people for a couple of months and found it to be useful but not life changing.
• The main feature that everyone liked and used the most was the smart meeting recap. CoPilot will take notes of any meeting you ask it to and provide a summary of the meeting with any action points etc at the end. It works very well!
• It’s expensive! It costs $53 per license per month and you have to commit to 12 months. This adds up pretty quickly! If we were to give access to every employee at Wise Group it would cost us just over $1,000,000 per year.

Microsoft Teams Premium

Microsoft Teams Premium is not part of CoPilot but it has a feature that is worth mentioning here. This is a licensed add-on to Microsoft Teams that gives you a heap of features that you will never use and one that is really useful. The ability to generate AI created meeting notes from any recorded meeting. As I said earlier (or did you skip that part) this was the most useful part of the CoPilot for 365 trial we did. The good news here is that this license is pretty cheap for not-for-profits. The main points are listed below:

• It’s pretty cheap! At $4.50 per month with a 12 month commit it’s significantly cheaper than CoPilot for 365.
• It’s simple to use – you just need to record your meetings and it will generate a meeting recap automatically. It will show you who talked and for how long during the meeting and it will provide a list of action points from the meeting.
• You can request this via the Software Request e-Form.
• Helpdesk can help you with this - how to use it etc.