The world of work integration of Microsoft 365 Copilot for productivity
Microsoft 365 Copilot is available to Enterprise customers and smaller organizations from January 16, 2024. It goes for the price set at $30 per user/month across all purchasing channels and customer types. Microsoft 365 Copilot gives users experiences allowing for the composition and replying of emails, chats, documents, contacts and meeting minutes.
Let’s look at thirteen (13) FAQs about Microsoft 365 Copilot and what you should know as you prepare to sign up or if you are already a user.
In het kort
1. How Microsoft 365 Copilot works
Microsoft 365 Copilot is a productivity tool that supports users’ work by exploring Large Language Models (LLMs) after which it integrates your own data with the Microsoft Graph and Microsoft 365 apps and services to deliver results. Copilot whiles you are working, can provide suggestions based on your work context after carrying out analyses.
2. What is Large Language Model (LLM)?
They are a type of Artificial Intelligence model, that works by understanding text and natural languages to produce identical human responses. The responses are based on real-time intelligence.
3. What are the sales channel Microsoft 365 Copilot is available on?
Microsoft 365 Copilot is available across all sales channels including Enterprise Agreement and Cloud Solution Provider (CSP). Also, for commercial customers with:
- Microsoft 365 E3
- Microsoft 365 E5
- Office 365 E3
- Office 365 E5
- Microsoft 365 Business Standard
- Microsoft 365 Business Premium
They will be able to purchase Copilot for Microsoft 365 add-on SKU across all Microsoft sales channels. See below the full list of the Microsoft sales channels for Copilot:
- Enterprise Agreement
- Enterprise Agreement Subscription
- Cloud Solution Provider (CSP)
- Microsoft Customer Agreement – Enterprise (MCA-E)
- Direct from Microsoft
- Education customers through Enrollment for Education Solutions
4. What tasks can M365 Copilot carry out?
You can give it natural language prompts to create summaries or answer open-ended questions. It can write text, make tables, code, answer follow-up questions, produce presentations for PowerPoint, suggest charts to visualize data and video production all depending on your needs.
5. How can my business use M365 Copilot?
Copilot is out for Enterprise Agreement customers and smaller organizations in CSP and is available as an add-on license. If you have the plans Microsoft 365 E3/E5, Microsoft 365 Business Premium/Business Standard, Office 365 E3/35, these are pre-requisite for licensing. A strong infrastructure, resources, security and compliance measures in place will safely guard internal data sharing, accessibility and use.
6. What does my organization benefit from using Copilot?
- Productivity of work is increased
- Accuracy is achieved
- Elimination of manual tasks
- Saves time
7. Are contents produced by Copilot exclusive?
The contents produced by M365 Copilot are originally from your internal data and not copied from any other external sources. Results produced will be based on prompts given and information available in your database.
8. Is my data secured on M365 Copilot?
Although Copilot integrates with your own data using Microsoft Graph and Microsoft 365 apps and services to deliver results, the data obtained is not used to train any of the AI models. Your data is solely used for your own purposes.
Microsoft has put in place measures to give users experience. These measures are;
- Encryption: Data is protected from unauthorized access.
- Access control: Role-based access and user authentication.
- Data residency: Users have the option of choosing where to store data or data location.
At every stage, Microsoft has put in place controls to protect data and ensure security. This you can take advantage of to make sure data is not unnecessarily exposed.
The administrator of Microsoft 365 Copilot in your organization, can have a look at your data access permissions and apply principles that can give users just enough information and others limited information.
Information sites in your organization that have been set to public, should have site owners do a verification, and who should become a member of the site with much access given, or who is a visitor been giving limited or no access, can also be reviewed.
Under Microsoft Purview, labels and classification applied in locations are configured and managed. There are also more advanced controls to protect your data using auto labeling and data loss prevention capabilities. The labels you apply in Microsoft Purview can automatically help you discover, limit the sharing radius, and apply encryption directly using policies.
9. Where is data processed and stored when using Microsoft 365 Copilot?
Data is processed and resides in Microsoft data centers where it hosts and operates large language model instances which do not use your data to train the large language models.
Data residency with Microsoft Copilot is consistent with Microsoft 365. The locations where your data is already stored and processed today, for example, if your organization is based in the European Union, Copilot data is also stored and processed within the EU data boundary which is not different from where all your data is stored.
There is also Microsoft Copilot copyright commitment in place which means content generated using Copilot also comes with legal protections from Microsoft.
10. What are the checks to look out for before purchasing Microsoft 365 Copilot?
Microsoft has removed the 300-seat minimum for purchase conditionality. This means as an organization, you can license a user to many users as will need it. Also, Microsoft has extended support so that Office 365 E3 and E5 customers can qualify to purchase Copilot. Plans are in place to extend Semantic Index for Copilot to Office 365 users with a paid Copilot license.
Supported on Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Business Premium Microsoft 365 Copilot is generally available for businesses of all sizes. This is a result of a successful early access program, focused on small and medium businesses.
11. How does my organization integrate Copilot?
Give access to Copilot to a critical mass of your information workers. By doing this as an organization, as what was discovered during the early access program initiated by Microsoft, you create a chain of excitement and interest. The adoption process can be faster, accelerating the time to value and your ability as an organization to measure impact in a meaningful way.
Note that the total number of eligible base licenses that a customer has, is what will be used to cap licenses for Copilot for Microsoft 365. The users in your organization must have a product license of one of the prerequisite base SKUs for each seat of Copilot for Microsoft 365 they purchase.
12. What capabilities is Microsoft 365 Copilot coming to Windows desktop with?
Copilot for Microsoft 365 will provide added capabilities such as integration in Windows desktop which will soon be experienced by organizations. This will be possible by bringing Graph-grounded chat capabilities to Copilot in Windows for users with a Copilot for Microsoft 365 license.
From February 4th, this update will be accessible to organizations with Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Copilot in Windows enabled. This will come as a simple way for users to access Copilot.
13. How can my organization get ready for Microsoft 365 Copilot?
- Organize data, check and cross check again to see that all important data security, privacy and compliance controls are in place and active. Make sure you have a thorough and well-established policy in place to protect important data.
Examine what the pre-requisites demands are before your organization will want to use Microsoft 365 Copilot to be in a position for a stress-free deployment. Make sure your Copilot users have either a Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 license or an Azure Active Directory account.
- Take time to invest in learning and understanding how AI technology will be of immerse help to your organization. Get to know and if it is possible, carry out simulation exercises to see how data is handled and protected.
- Do you have an adoption strategy? Make sure you have one in place or consult with an independent Microsoft licensing and cloud expert for assistance.
- Your administrator can also use the Microsoft 365 admin center to manage Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses.
Licensing, Purchasing and use of Copilot
Although Copilot will improve work productivity in organizations, there will be the need to consider which of your users need it since it is an add-on license so you can control cost. Bulk access to all users will come at an extra cost inflating your budget.
Yes, there is a buzz about this AI tool with projections of how great it will help organizations but is it a tool you need now or in the future? These are things to consider as pricing is the same irrespective of the role a user plays in your organization.
Talk to our team of licensing experts and let’s answer your questions while we guide you in making your purchase, license and use of Copilot.
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