Understanding Microsoft Copilot

1. What is Microsoft Copilot?

Hi, and welcome to the course. Microsoft Copilot is Microsoft's AI assistant. Over four chapters you'll learn how to prompt it well, how to use it inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, and how to build your own agents. This first lesson covers what Copilot is, and which version you have.

2. Meet your instructor

This course was developed with Susanth Sutheesh, a Copilot Solution Engineer at Microsoft on the Copilot and Agentic AI team. He has over fifteen years in IT, and works with organizations rolling out Copilot and agents.

3. What you'll learn

Here's the plan. This first lesson covers what Copilot is and which version you have. Then you'll learn the GCSE framework, a checklist for writing prompts, and apply it inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. In the last chapter you'll build your own agents.

4. Same name, different products

The name Copilot covers more than one product, and the account you sign in with tells you which one you have. Sign in with a work account and you get Microsoft 365 Copilot. You can use it on the web, or inside Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and it can reach your own files and email. Sign in with a personal account and you get the consumer version, which works from the public web. This course uses the work version. Microsoft also licenses a few others separately, like Security Copilot and Copilot Studio.

5. What Copilot is made of

Two things sit underneath Copilot. A large language model handles the language. A grounding layer connects it to real information: the public web, and with the right license, your own work content. The part that reaches your work content is called Work IQ. It's what connects Copilot to your files, your email and your meetings. Copilot only ever sees what you could already open yourself.

6. Where Copilot shows up

There are two places to prompt Copilot. The first is the Copilot app, where you bring files into a chat. That's where the exercises in this course run. The second is inside the apps themselves, working on the document you already have open - that's Chapter 2. Word drafts and rewrites. Excel analyzes data and builds charts. PowerPoint builds decks. Outlook drafts replies and shortens long email threads. Teams recaps meetings you missed.

7. Copilot isn't included by default

A basic version of Copilot comes with eligible Microsoft 365 licenses. It works from the public web, so anything of your own has to be pasted or uploaded each time. The paid add-on reaches your files, email and meetings directly. So it's worth checking which license you have. It decides what Copilot can reach.

8. Your work data stays protected

So is it safe to point at real company data? Signed in with a work account, your prompts and responses are covered by Enterprise Data Protection. That's the same commitment Microsoft already makes for your email and your files. Your content isn't used to train public models. And your data is kept in your own region - Microsoft honors data residency by region, and the EU Data Boundary in Europe is one example of that.

9. You can choose the model

You can also choose the model. The selector lets you pick a model from a different provider, or ask for a quick response instead of a deeper reasoning pass. Switching model doesn't change your data protection - the same terms apply either way. Which models you see is set by your administrator, and it varies by organization.

10. Let's practice!

Next, a few quick questions to check what you've picked up about Copilot's versions, licenses and data protection.

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