Microsoft 365 Copilot: features, use cases and what it does
Microsoft 365 Copilot is Microsoft’s AI productivity service for organisations using Microsoft 365. It connects generative AI with applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, while also drawing on work information that an individual user already has permission to access.
That makes it different from a standalone AI chatbot. A licensed Microsoft 365 Copilot user can ask questions about emails, documents, meetings and other organisational information, create content from that context, analyse data and increasingly delegate multi-step work to AI agents.
Microsoft has expanded the platform significantly since its initial launch. By 2026, Microsoft 365 Copilot includes capabilities such as Work IQ, Researcher, Analyst, Copilot Notebooks and Copilot Cowork alongside the familiar application-level AI tools.
Microsoft has also renamed the former Microsoft 365 Copilot app to the Microsoft Copilot app. That name change applies to the application rather than replacing the Microsoft 365 Copilot workplace product and licence.
What is Microsoft 365 Copilot?
At its core, Microsoft 365 Copilot lets a user enter a natural-language instruction and receive an AI-generated response based on the information available to that user.
For a licensed workplace user, Copilot can combine large language models with Microsoft Graph information such as emails, chats, documents, calendar entries, meetings and contacts. It can also use web information where the relevant experience allows it.
Permissions remain important. Copilot does not automatically receive unrestricted access to everything stored inside a company’s Microsoft 365 environment. It can surface organisational information that the individual user already has permission to access.
This also means existing permission problems can become more visible after Copilot deployment. If employees have unnecessarily broad access to SharePoint sites, files or other information, Copilot may make that authorised-but-inappropriate information easier to discover.
For businesses, preparing permissions and information governance can therefore matter as much as deploying the AI itself.
Microsoft 365 Copilot versus Copilot Chat
Microsoft now distinguishes between Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat.
Copilot Chat is available to users with eligible Microsoft 365 subscriptions without requiring the full Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on licence. Its web-grounded chat can answer questions, generate content and help users find information.
The licensed Microsoft 365 Copilot service adds deeper access to work-grounded information and embedded Copilot capabilities across Microsoft 365 applications.
The distinction matters when a business evaluates Copilot. Having access to a Copilot chat window does not necessarily mean the employee has the complete Microsoft 365 Copilot feature set.
Work IQ gives Copilot workplace context
One of the more important concepts in the current Microsoft 365 Copilot platform is Work IQ.
Microsoft describes Work IQ as an intelligence layer that helps Copilot and agents understand a person’s work context. It can connect signals from emails, files, meetings, conversations, people, projects and supported business systems.
Instead of considering each document or email in isolation, the system can use those relationships to provide more relevant context around a task.
For example, a manager could ask Copilot to explain the current status of a project. Work IQ can help connect relevant documents, messages, meetings and collaborators that the user has permission to access.
That does not mean Copilot has perfect knowledge of a company. Its answers still depend on available data, permissions, the quality of that information and the AI system’s interpretation of it.
Copilot in Word
Microsoft 365 Copilot can assist with creating and working with documents in Word.
Typical uses include drafting a document from instructions, summarising an existing document, rewriting sections, extracting information and asking questions about the document’s contents.
A user could, for example, ask Copilot to turn project notes into a first draft of a customer proposal. It could then help shorten the document or change its structure.
The output still requires human review. AI-generated text can contain incorrect assumptions, missing context or factual errors.
Copilot in Excel
Excel gives Copilot a different role.
Users can ask questions about data using natural language rather than relying entirely on formulas and manual analysis. Copilot can help identify patterns, investigate information and support the creation of analysis from spreadsheet data.
Microsoft also provides a dedicated Analyst agent. Analyst can work with data from sources such as Excel spreadsheets and CSV files, calculate statistics, identify trends and outliers, and produce reports that may contain charts and tables.
This can lower the barrier to basic data exploration for employees who are not advanced Excel users.
It should not remove verification from financial, operational or other important analysis. Organisations still need to confirm formulas, assumptions, source data and conclusions before using AI-generated analysis for decisions.
Copilot in PowerPoint
PowerPoint users can use Copilot to help create and refine presentations.
That may include generating a presentation from instructions or existing content, restructuring slides, rewriting text and producing a starting point for a presentation.
This can be particularly useful when information already exists in another Microsoft 365 document and needs to be converted into a presentation.
The result should still receive an editorial and design review. An automatically generated presentation can misrepresent source information or place too much emphasis on the wrong details.
Copilot in Outlook
In Outlook, Microsoft 365 Copilot can help users deal with large volumes of email and calendar information.
Possible uses include summarising conversations, helping draft replies, extracting relevant information and preparing for upcoming work.
Because the licensed service can use mailbox context, Microsoft requires a supported Exchange Online mailbox for full Microsoft 365 Copilot mailbox grounding. On-premises and hybrid mailboxes do not provide the same grounding capability.
That is an important infrastructure consideration for organisations still running parts of their email environment on-premises.
Copilot in Teams
Teams is another area where access to organisational context becomes useful.
Copilot can identify highlights, action items and discussion points from supported meetings and chats. Users can ask questions about a meeting during or after it, helping someone catch up without manually working through a long transcript or conversation.
A practical example would be asking Copilot to summarise decisions from a meeting and identify the tasks assigned to different participants.
As with other AI summaries, employees should check important decisions against the original meeting record before treating the summary as definitive.
Researcher handles deeper research tasks
Microsoft’s Researcher agent targets work that requires more than a quick chatbot response.
It can conduct multi-step research and create a structured report using information from the web and, where licensing and permissions allow, workplace sources such as files, emails, meetings and chats.
That makes Researcher relevant for tasks such as preparing an industry briefing, comparing options or gathering background information before a business decision.
The presence of citations can make its output easier to inspect, but citations do not eliminate the need to verify the underlying source and check whether Copilot interpreted it correctly.
Copilot Notebooks creates a focused AI workspace
Copilot Notebooks lets users collect relevant material for a project into a more focused workspace.
A notebook can bring together Copilot conversations, Microsoft 365 files, meeting notes, pages and other references. Users can then ask questions, identify themes and create drafts based on that selected collection of information.
The approach can be useful when a broad organisation-wide search would introduce too much irrelevant context.
A team working on a product launch, for example, could create a notebook containing the launch documents, meeting notes and supporting research. Copilot could then answer questions against that more specific body of information.
Copilot Pages turns AI responses into collaborative content
Copilot Pages provides a persistent workspace for AI-generated material.
Instead of leaving useful output inside a chat conversation, users can move it into a page that can be edited, reused, shared and developed collaboratively.
Microsoft positions Pages as a way for people and Copilot to continue working on material after the original prompt-and-response interaction has ended.
That is useful for project plans, research summaries, meeting preparation and other content that needs to evolve over time.
Cowork takes Copilot from answers to actions
One of the biggest changes to Microsoft 365 Copilot in 2026 is Copilot Cowork.
Traditional Copilot experiences mainly help users produce an answer, summary or draft. Cowork is designed to carry out multi-step work across Microsoft 365.
Microsoft made Cowork generally available to Microsoft 365 Copilot tenants in June 2026.
Depending on configuration and permissions, Cowork can work with email, calendars, documents, Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint. Microsoft lists capabilities including creating Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and presentations, sending email, scheduling meetings, researching topics and preparing briefings.
It can also run scheduled prompts. Microsoft added event-driven tasks that can respond to events such as receiving a matching email or Teams message.
This moves Copilot closer to an AI agent that performs work rather than merely advising someone how to perform it.
That additional capability also raises the importance of oversight. Microsoft warns that Copilot can make mistakes or misinterpret instructions, and sensitive actions can require user approval.
Common Microsoft 365 Copilot business use cases
The most useful Copilot applications will vary between organisations, but several practical patterns stand out.
| Business task | Possible Copilot use |
|---|---|
| Email management | Summarise threads and draft replies |
| Meetings | Identify decisions, action items and discussion points |
| Document creation | Draft and revise Word documents |
| Presentations | Turn source material into an initial slide deck |
| Spreadsheet analysis | Explore data, trends and anomalies |
| Research | Produce structured reports using Researcher |
| Project work | Gather related material in Copilot Notebooks |
| Knowledge discovery | Find relevant files, conversations and information |
| Data analysis | Use Analyst for deeper investigation of datasets |
| Workflow execution | Use Cowork for multi-step tasks |
| Recurring work | Schedule supported Copilot or Cowork tasks |
These are capabilities rather than guarantees of accuracy or productivity. The value depends on the organisation’s data quality, Microsoft 365 usage, employee workflow and governance.
What Microsoft 365 Copilot requires
Microsoft 365 Copilot is not simply an AI application that a business installs on an employee’s computer.
Microsoft lists licensing, an Exchange Online mailbox, a Microsoft Entra ID account, supported browsers or operating systems and appropriate network access among its deployment requirements. Microsoft also strongly recommends attention to SharePoint governance and information protection.
Eligible organisations can add Microsoft 365 Copilot to various Microsoft 365 business, enterprise and education subscriptions. Microsoft 365 E7, introduced in 2026, includes Microsoft 365 Copilot rather than treating it as a separate add-on.
Feature availability can differ by licence, tenant configuration, administrator settings and rollout status.
What happens to company data?
Data handling is one of the biggest issues businesses should investigate before deploying generative AI.
Microsoft states that prompts, responses and organisational information accessed through Microsoft Graph by Microsoft 365 Copilot are not used to train the foundation large language models used by the service.
Copilot also follows the access rights of the signed-in user. It does not grant a person new permission to a document simply because they asked Copilot about it.
However, this makes existing access governance critical. A company with overly broad SharePoint permissions could discover that Copilot makes information easier for already-authorised employees to find.
Microsoft stores interaction information such as prompts and responses within the Microsoft 365 environment, where applicable compliance, auditing, retention and eDiscovery controls can apply.
Organisations should therefore review their own regulatory, privacy, retention and information-security obligations before deployment.
For South African organisations, that assessment may include POPIA obligations when Copilot processes personal information. Using Microsoft 365 Copilot does not by itself make an organisation POPIA compliant.
Copilot can still get things wrong
Microsoft 365 Copilot’s integration with company information does not eliminate one of generative AI’s fundamental limitations: generated output can be wrong.
Copilot may misunderstand a request, miss relevant context, make an incorrect inference or produce inaccurate information. Microsoft itself warns users to review important results, particularly when actions involve sensitive information, communications, accounts or files.
Employees therefore need to understand where Copilot is useful and where human verification remains essential.
A draft email can save time. A generated financial conclusion, legal interpretation or customer commitment requires much greater scrutiny.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is becoming a workplace AI platform
Microsoft 365 Copilot began primarily as generative AI embedded in familiar productivity applications. Its 2026 feature set is substantially broader.
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams remain important parts of the proposition, but Work IQ, Researcher, Analyst, Notebooks, Pages and especially Cowork push the platform towards contextual AI agents that can understand and increasingly act across workplace information.
For businesses evaluating Microsoft 365 Copilot, the key question is therefore no longer only whether employees need an AI writing assistant. Organisations also need to consider data permissions, governance, licensing, employee training, workflow design and how much authority they are prepared to give AI-driven agents.
Copilot can reduce some repetitive information work, but its usefulness depends heavily on the environment around it. Clean permissions, well-managed data and human review remain essential parts of a responsible deployment.
