Teams Who Bot Deprecated, Replaced by Copilot?

[MontyPyspock]

We just started getting this message in the Teams Who Bot app:

Who bot is being deprecated and will be replaced by Copilot https://aka.ms/m365copilotadoption in December 2023. Please check with your Tenant Admin to prepare for Copilot.

We are an Educational (A) tenant and my understanding is that we aren't able to use Copilot right now (it's only available for E tenants). In addition, even when it arrives for A tenants, if it's the same pricing, it will be $30/month/user with a minimum of 300 users. That means that Microsoft is essentially removing the Who Bot functionality for non-E tenants.

Even for E tenants, that's a massive amount of money just to replace Who Bot, and many places won't be able to afford Copilot or just don't want it...they just want the very useful functionality of the existing Who Bot.

Is it possible that the Copilot replacement for Who Bot will be available to all at no cost, kind of as a tease for the functionality, but without all the massive lift of the general Copilot functionality in a given tenant?

[#2]

Yep, that sounds about right. It's a complete removal of a free feature in Teams with a high barrier of entry paid solution that most SMB's don't even meet the minimum requirements for (300 users).

And ONCE AGAIN, poor marketing by Microsoft on this, the message in Who should indicate that it's being deprecated in favor of a paid solution.

I'll add, I work for an org with just under 100 users, I use this feature *every day*.  I'm absolutely astounded at the tone deafness on show here.

[#3]

/ keyboard commands too. I used /chat for quick status messages. No more.

[#4]

We are in the same boat here. Having this replaced with very little notification is upsetting. Then the cost of CoPilot which is $30/month/user ensures that this very basic feature is behind a paywall of at least $108,000 for a company with the minimum of 300 user licenses. My organization is just under that amount. Yes, I have read that this will be available to SMBs at some point but it is being removed in one month. Before this is available to most consumers and most cannot afford this cost.

The cost of CoPilot around the same as what we pay for our E3 license. We are a well known and established company but we cannot afford to pay this much for unproven technology that frankly no one will use to the extent that it is being pushed by Microsoft. It requires training and end user knowledge just to have this be useful. We don't have that type of time, money, or resources to devote to this. This will backfire on Microsoft. Don't give in to this cost so Microsoft sees needs to lower or include some basic features for all licensed customers. Basic copilot features with existing security context on what files or data a user can see need to be included with all base licenses if you are going "replace" something that was included in the past.

Very disappointed in this Microsoft.

[#5]

Please Bring Back WhoBot, it was a very useful tool.

[#6]

Who is gone, and CoPilot is far too expensive, even though they removed the minimum license count. But in the New Teams, you can get most or all of what Who did now in the top Search box. Just enter a person's name in there and choose the person you're looking for from the list, and it will start a Chat with them. You can then click on their icon and get what Who used to offer.