Switched On: The Bowdark Blog

Copilots Everywhere! Understanding Microsoft’s Copilot Strategy

James Wood  
Published in Switched On: The Bowdark Blog - 3/6/2024
Microsoft Technologies
Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft Copilot Studio
Microsoft 365
AI

These days, there’s a ton of buzz surrounding Microsoft Copilot and all the other copilot-related features that keep popping up within the Microsoft ecosystem. While customers seem to be genuinely excited about the capabilities, there’s a lot of confusion out there. Some common questions we receive from customers include:

  • Just how many copilots are there?

  • How do I know which copilot(s) are right for my business?

  • Do I already have licensing for Microsoft Copilot, or do I have to buy more licenses?

There’s a lot to unpack here and unfortunately ecosystem diagrams like the one shown in Figure 1 below tend to generate more questions than answers. They also have a tendency to scare the heck out of customers, but don’t worry, this is a safe space, and we’ll work through it together.

Figure 1: The Microsoft Copilot Ecosystem

Using the copilot ecosystem diagram in Figure 1 as a guide, we’ll use the upcoming sections to break the copilot offerings down by going around the horn with the various copilot groups. Moving clockwise around the diagram, we’ll start our copilot exploration with developer copilots. Realistically, we won’t be able to cover every type of copilot that’s available. Nevertheless, our goal is to help you understand how to navigate Microsoft’s copilot ecosystem and find the right copilot(s) for your business.

Developer Copilots

Developer copilots are intended to help developers be more productive with their day-to-day development tasks. These days, developers have two main copilots to work with: GitHub Copilot and Power Platform Copilots. In this section, we’ll take a look at both of them.

GitHub Copilot

GitHub Copilot is a pro-code development tool that was developed by GitHub and OpenAI. Although branded separately, it’s part of the overall copilot portfolio as Microsoft acquired GitHub back in 2018 (press release).

GitHub Copilot works with a variety of programming languages and frameworks including Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, C#, Java, Ruby, Go, and C/C++. It also works with popular IDEs such as Visual Studio, VS Code, and JetBrains.

Figure 2: GitHub Copilot in Action in Visual Studio

For pro-code developers, GitHub Copilot can provide a huge productivity boost in a number of areas. Besides writing source code, it can also write unit tests, help you troubleshoot errors, write documentation, and even get up to speed with what’s going on in a new code base.

GitHub Copilot is licensed separately. You can see a breakdown of the pricing at https://github.com/features/copilot#pricing.

Power Platform Copilots

These copilots are baked directly into products like Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power Pages. From a developer/maker perspective, Power Platform Copilots are there with you every step of the way — from the point you create a new solution all the way through deployment.

For example, when you open up the Power Apps Studio, you can see right from the home page an option to build a new app using a natural language prompt (see Figure 3). This prompt kicks off a wizard which guides you through the build process and gives you options to adjust/refine the build along the way (see Figure 4). Here, copilot drives not only the creation of the app tables in Dataverse, but also the app screens, etc.

Figure 3: Using Copilot to Create a Power App - Part 1

Figure 4: Using Copilot to Create a Power App - Part 2

Power Automate and Power Pages offer similar experiences to streamline the creation of cloud flows and portal sites, respectively (see Figure 5).

Figure 5: Using Copilot to Create a Cloud Flow in Power Automate

Besides creational wizards, the Power Platform copilot panel is always there to assist makers through day-to-day development tasks including:

  • Help with writing PowerFx expressions.

  • Adjusting properties on tables, screens, etc.

  • Developing themes for portal sites.

  • Generating ideas for improvement.

Currently, there’s no additional license required to use the copilots backed into the Power Platform. There are also no special steps required to turn them on; just log into the tools and copilot is there ready to assist you with whatever you’re building.

Business Application Copilots

The next group of copilots we’ll look at are business application copilots. These copilots are mostly baked directly into the various modules of Dynamics 365, with one notable exception.

Dynamics 365 Copilot(s)

Zooming in on the business applications section of the copilot ecosystem diagram shown in Figure 1, you can see that Microsoft has created copilots for the entire suite of Dynamics 365 solutions including:

  • Sales

  • Customer Insights

  • Customer Service

  • Field Service

  • Finance + Supply Chain (Large Enterprise ERP)

  • Business Central (SMB ERP)

Collectively, these copilot experiences are designed to really level up the user experience within their respective apps. To see how this works, check out the video below demonstrating the capabilities of copilot in Dynamics 365 Business Central. You can find similar demonstrations for other modules on Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 YouTube channel.

At the time of this writing, almost all of these new copilot experiences are being made available to licensed Dynamics 365 users at no additional charge. The lone exception is Dynamics 365 Sales which has its own unique copilot offering that’s sold separately — more on that the next section.

Microsoft Copilot for Sales

Before Microsoft began weaving copilot experiences into the rest of Dynamics 365, they first defined a standalone copilot called Microsoft Copilot for Sales. Although Microsoft Copilot for Sales plays very nicely with Dynamics 365 Sales, it’s actually product-agnostic in the sense that it can also be used to work with other sales force automation products such as Salesforce Sales Cloud.

Microsoft Copilot for Sales is tightly integrated with Microsoft Graph and Microsoft 365, so it boasts a broader set of capabilities than the other Dynamics 365 copilot solutions.

As noted earlier, Microsoft Copilot for Sales is a standalone product and requires an additional license even if your target CRM is Dynamics 365 Sales. At the time of this writing, it is available for $50 per user/month, but is bundled with/includes Copilot for Microsoft 365. You can find more information about specific pricing details here.

Modern Work Copilots

For modern work, there’s essentially one copilot to rule them all: Copilot for Microsoft 365.

Copilot for Microsoft 365

As we’ve seen already, Microsoft has many copilots to choose from. However, when people hear the term “Microsoft Copilot”, they’re probably thinking of Copilot for Microsoft 365. This is the copilot that was featured in Microsoft’s recent Super Bowl ad and the one that offers the broadest set of features for working with popular productivity suite apps like Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and so forth.

Copilot for Microsoft 365 can do a TON of stuff, so it’s hard to do it real justice here. However, the video below does a nice job of showcasing some of its more compelling features.

Using the data in Microsoft Graph (the service that sits underneath Microsoft 365 apps like Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, etc.), Copilot is able to deeply analyze your Office data using a large language model (LLM) that operates within a secure, closed loop service boundary within your Microsoft 365 tenant account. These deep connections make it possible for Copilot to respond to complex requests such as “create a sales proposal based on the meeting minutes from my sales meeting yesterday and that quote document I created in Word the other day”.

Figure 6: How the Copilot for Microsoft 365 Works

At the time of this writing, Copilot for Microsoft 365 is offered as a $30 user/month add-on subscription to an existing Microsoft 365 license. You can find more pricing details here.

Data & AI Copilots

As Microsoft’s data strategy continues to evolve with Microsoft Fabric, this group of copilots is still very much in development. In this section, we’ll highlight what’s available. However, we highly recommend that you stay tuned to this area as many more innovations will likely be released in the coming months.

Copilot for Power BI (Preview)

Copilot for Power BI brings many of the same kinds of natural language prompts found in Power Platform copilots to Power BI. For example, as you can see in the video link below, Copilot for Power BI can be used to build and tweak Power BI reports, dig for deeper insights, and even apply consistent themes to reports or dashboards.

Although still in preview at the time of this writing, the plan is for the Copilot for Power BI to be incorporated into Copilot in Fabric. There, you will have access to copilot as part of your existing Fabric capacity, but it will consume some Capacity Units/input tokens. See this link for more details.

Copilot in Microsoft Fabric

Copilot in Microsoft Fabric complements the capabilities of Copilot for Power BI to include advanced AI support for data engineers (e.g., working in Data Factory), data scientists (e.g., working in Jupyter/Python notebooks), business analysts, and other key Fabric personas. This heavy-duty support can be used to help developers write SQL, Power Query (M), DAX, Python, and more.

As noted earlier, access to Copilot in Microsoft Fabric is included within your existing Fabric capacity. See this link for more details.

Copilot for Azure (Preview)

Copilot for Azure is a new copilot experience baked directly into the Azure Portal. This tool can be used to discover and analyze resources within your Azure tenant account. You can also use it to create and administer resources from a natural language prompt. Plus, as you can see in the demonstration below, it can also provide recommendations on how to better organize resources and minimize spend.

Right now, Copilot for Azure is in public preview. If you’re an existing Azure customer, then you can apply for access here. Although preview access is offered at no additional cost, Microsoft has not yet specified what the price will be once Copilot for Azure becomes generally available. See this link for more details.

Browser & Search Copilots

In our experience, this group of copilots seems to trip up customers the most. Although all of the copilots we’ll review in this group all fall under the heading of Microsoft Copilot, the behavior and licensing vary greatly depending on whether you’re using it for personal or professional use.

Microsoft Copilot (for Personal Use)

This copilot can be accessed for free by browsing to https://copilot.microsoft.com. As you can see in Figure 7, the user experience with this copilot is similar to that of ChatGPT. Microsoft has also provided an app for iOS and Android to use this copilot on your smart phone.

Figure 7: Working with the Microsoft Copilot for Personal Use

Microsoft Copilot Pro (also Personal Use)

For more advanced capabilities, individuals can purchase Microsoft Copilot Pro via the Microsoft Store for $20 user/month. This premium access provides access to GPT-4/GPT-4 Turbo, accelerated performance, and advanced features.

Users can sign up for Microsoft Copilot Pro using their personal Microsoft Account (e.g., outlook.com, live.com, or hotmail.com). Once they’re signed up, they can access the advanced features by logging into copilot using the same URL as the regular Microsoft Copilot: https://copilot.microsoft.com.

Microsoft Copilot Pro also provides some of the same features as Copilot for Microsoft 365 in apps like Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The primary difference is that while Copilot for Microsoft 365 unlocks copilot features as part of a Microsoft 365 business subscription, Microsoft Copilot Pro unlocks copilot features in a Microsoft 365 Personal or Microsoft 365 Family subscription.

Microsoft Copilot (Business Use)

Lastly, we have Microsoft Copilot for business/work use. This option is included for free with most Microsoft 365 subscription licenses (e.g., E3, E5, etc.).

Here, once again, users access the copilot from https://copilot.microsoft.com, but this time they log on with their Entra ID work email. As you can see in Figure 8, the general user experience remains the same. However, up in the top-right corner, you can see a little green “Protected” pill button that indicates that commercial data protection is turned on.

Figure 8: Working with the Microsoft Copilot for Business Use

Copilot for Microsoft 365 (Again)

If you want to level the experience up beyond the default (free) capabilities of Microsoft Copilot for business use, you would need to purchase a Copilot for Microsoft 365 license. This license enhances the Microsoft Copilot experience in much the same way as Microsoft Copilot Pro while also providing all the copilot goodies within the Microsoft 365 productivity suite (e.g., Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint).

What About Bing Chat?

If you work extensively in the Microsoft Edge browser, you may have encountered the Bing Chat sidebar extension shown in Figure 9 below. Although originally released separately, Bing Chat was incorporated into Microsoft Copilot. Now, you can sort of think of this sidebar as a simple and convenient way to get to Microsoft Copilot without having to launch the https://copilot.microsoft.com site.

Figure 9: From Bing Chat to Microsoft Copilot

Still Confused?

The video link below provides a detailed breakdown of the features/protections/benefits available in each of the available Microsoft Copilot experiences we’ve discussed in this section.

Operating System Copilots

The last group of copilots we’ll be reviewing fall under the category of operating system copilots. Over time, we expect to see this group expand as more and more copilots are introduced to help with device and policy management, etc.

Copilot in Windows

Recently, Microsoft introduced Copilot in Windows for Windows 11. By default, Copilot in Windows offers many of the same features as Microsoft Copilot. However, it extends the experience to the desktop by providing advanced features to operate desktop apps, work with desktop productivity tools, and even make changes to Windows itself. The video link below highlights some of the cool features supported by Copilot in Windows.

Currently, Copilot in Windows is being offered for free as part of your Windows 11 license, although this could change in future versions of Windows.

Microsoft Security Copilot

Similar to the Copilot for Azure, the Microsoft Security Copilot harnesses the power of AI technology to simplify and streamline security management tasks. Check out the video link below to see some of the powerful features offered by the Microsoft Security Copilot.

Copilot Extensions

Before we wrap up our whirlwind tour through the Microsoft Copilot ecosystem, we should close by briefly touching on the Microsoft Copilot Studio.

In a nutshell, Microsoft Copilot Studio is a tool that your makers/developers can use to extend Microsoft Copilot. To learn more about just how powerful Microsoft Copilot Studio can be, check out the demo from Charles Lamanna in the video link below.

As a developer tool that can also be used to create standalone chatbots (replacing the functionality formerly provided by Power Virtual Agents), Microsoft Copilot Studio is licensed separately from Microsoft Copilot. You can find specific details about Copilot Studio pricing here.

Closing Thoughts

We hope this survey of the Microsoft Copilot ecosystem helped to clarify some of the questions you may be wrestling with. With so many changes coming seemingly every week, it can be hard to stay on top of it all.

As more announcements are made, we’ll do our level best to provide updates to this post so that you have a one-stop shop for keeping up with all the changes. If you have more specific questions, please give us a call or drop us an email to schedule a meeting. We’re always happy to help customers navigate the licensing maze and find the right solution.

About the Author

Author Headshot
James Wood

Best-selling author and SAP Mentor alumnus James Wood is the co-founder and CEO of Bowdark, an IT consulting firm that specializes in the development of custom business software solutions using Microsoft, SAP, and cloud-based technologies.

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