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What is Microsoft 365 Copilot?

Microsoft 365 Copilot is the AI assistant in Word, Outlook and Teams. See what Copilot can do in practice, what it requires, and whether it is worth the money.

In short

Microsoft 365 Copilot is Microsoft's AI assistant, built directly into Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams.

Copilot can write drafts, summarise long email threads, take minutes of Teams meetings and analyse data in Excel, and it works with your own documents and emails, not just general knowledge from the internet. That makes it relevant for Danish businesses that want to save time on routine tasks such as meeting minutes, proposal drafts and email handling.

Three key points: Copilot requires a supported Microsoft 365 subscription plus a Copilot licence per user; your data stays in your own tenant and is not used to train Microsoft's models; and the value depends on having permissions and data classification in order before you roll out, otherwise Copilot can surface data that employees should not see.

As a certified Microsoft partner, MI Support IT helps you assess, prepare and implement Copilot securely and with measurable impact.

Back to the glossary

What is Microsoft 365 Copilot?

Microsoft 365 Copilot (often just called Microsoft Copilot, M365 Copilot or Copilot 365) is the AI assistant built directly into the Office applications you already use. If you ask "what is Copilot" in an SMB context, the short answer is: an assistant based on artificial intelligence that knows your own emails, documents and meetings, and can therefore help with concrete work, not just general answers. Microsoft describes the product in depth on Microsoft Learn.

The difference between Copilot and a free chatbot is precisely the context: Copilot works inside your Microsoft 365 environment with your data and your permissions.

What can Copilot do in Word, Outlook and Teams?

  • Outlook: Summarises a 30-message email thread into five lines and drafts a reply in your tone. Great for busy inboxes and for catching up after a holiday.
  • Word: Produces the first draft of a proposal, a policy or a set of minutes based on existing documents, so you edit instead of starting from a blank page.
  • Teams: Takes meeting minutes with decisions and agreed tasks, even if you joined late. Ask, for example, "what has been decided so far?".
  • Excel: Analyses figures, suggests formulas and creates visualisations from plain-language questions.

The gains lie in everyday small tasks: minutes, drafts, summaries. It sounds trivial, but that is where the hours disappear.

What does Microsoft 365 Copilot cost?

Copilot is billed as an add-on licence per user per month, on top of your existing Microsoft 365 subscription. It does not replace your current licences. Whether it is worth the money depends on how many hours it saves per employee: for staff who live in emails, meetings and documents, it does not take many saved hours per month before the maths works out. Our recommendation is typically to start with a pilot group of the most obvious users and measure the effect before rolling out broadly.

Is Copilot safe with company data?

Short answer: yes, by design. Copilot works within your own tenant, respects existing permissions and does not use your data to train Microsoft's models. But there is an important practical point: Copilot can surface everything the individual employee has access to, including the folders that have mistakenly been open to the whole organisation for years. That is why a clean-up of permissions and data classification with Microsoft Purview belongs in any serious rollout. Read more about our approach under IT security.

Copilot requirements: licences and setup

Copilot requires a supported base subscription (for example Microsoft 365 Business Standard, Business Premium, E3 or E5) plus the Copilot add-on licence for the users who need it. Beyond that, before rollout you should have the following in order: up-to-date Office apps, permissions and sharing in SharePoint/OneDrive, data classification and a short internal guideline for what AI may be used for. The technology is the easy part; the preparation determines whether Copilot becomes a gain or a risk.

How MI Support IT helps

As a certified Microsoft partner, we help with the whole journey: readiness assessment, clean-up of data and permissions, licence selection, pilot programmes and employee training. Read more about AI consulting and Microsoft 365, or contact us for a no-obligation chat about Copilot in your business.

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