Copilot Chat vsus. Microsoft 365 Copilot. What's the difference?
While their names sound similar at first glance, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, they differ in several aspects. And more importantly: one is built on top of the other. What is Copilot Chat (Basic)? First things first. Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is often simply called Copilot Chat. Copilot Chat (Basic) generates answers based on web content, while Microsoft 365 Copilot (Premium) is also grounded on users' data, like emails, meetings, files, and more. Since early 2025, Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat has been available to all users in organizations, becoming the entry point to AI assistance for many organizations. Copilot Chat (Basic) is the foundational Copilot experience available at no extra cost for everyone with an eligible Microsoft 365 plan, including: Microsoft 365 E3 / E5 Microsoft 365 A3 / A5 Microsoft 365 Business Standard & Business Premium Copilot Chat (Basic) is secured, compliant, and it does not required the full Copilot add-on license. Copilot Chat (Basic) is able to ground responses on: Public web content. Content explicitly shared or work data manually uploaded to the chat by the user. On-screen content or content displayed on-screen in apps like Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. When it comes to agents, Copilot Chat (Basic) offers these features: You can create your own declarative agents grounded on public web content with Agent Builder. You can use agents built by your org grounded on organizational data with the pay-as-you-go method. There are Microsoft prebuilt agents available like Prompt Coach, however Microsoft premium prebuilt agents like Researcher or Analyst are not included. The screenshot below shows how Copilot Chat looks and highlights its main capabilities. Note the Upgrade button, meaning this is not Microsoft 365 Copilot, but the Copilot Chat (Basic) experience. Note that EDP (Enterprise Data Protection) is available in Copilot Chat (Basic). What is Microsoft 365 Copilot (Premium)? Microsoft 365 Copilot (Premium) is a paid add-on license that builds on top of Copilot Chat and unlocks Copilot's full power. It is available for selected Microsoft 365 plans, including: Microsoft 365 E3 / E5 Microsoft 365 A3 / A5 Microsoft 365 Business Standard & Business Premium With a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, users get everything Copilot Chat (Basic) offers, plus much more: Data grounding: Microsoft 365 Copilot (Premium) includes Copilot Chat grounded on web and/or on user's Microsoft 365 data like emails, meetings, chats, and documents. Office apps: It integrates deeply into Microsoft 365 apps like Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, and more. The integration includes features like Edit with Copilot allowing Copilot to adjust live your documents or email based on your prompts. Custom agents: It brings the capability to create your own declarative agents grounded in organizational data and/or web data. You can create agent either using Agent Builder or Copilot Studio. MS prebuilt agents: Premium prebuilt agents like Researcher and Analyst are included in Microsoft 365 Copilot (Premium). The screenshot below shows the Copilot chat experience for users who have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Note that EDP or Enterprise Data Protection also applies here How can I access Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat? Today, Copilot Chat is accessible via https://m365.cloud.microsoft or https://copilot.cloud.microsoft using your Entra ID (work or school account). One important difference in day-to-day experience: Users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license typically see Copilot prominently surfaced across Microsoft 365 apps. Users with Copilot Chat only may not see it pinned by default on the Microsoft 365 home page. To improve discoverability, Microsoft 365 Copilot administrators can pin Copilot Chat via the Microsoft 365 admin center, ensuring that users can easily access it without friction. Especially convenient is that if you use the M365 Copilot Chat app on Windows, you can open Copilot using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + C. What’s the difference? The differences between Copilot Chat and Microsoft 365 Copilot mainly come down to: Licensing Data grounding (web-only vs. personal work data) Integration depth within Microsoft 365 apps I’ve listed the key differences in the comparison below. 👇
Using Copilot to help with 1:1 meeting prep for managers?
I tried using Copilot to summarize our last meeting notes and pull up recent emails but it doesnt really give me a structured agenda or remind me about open action items from previous meetings. Anyone using Copilot for meeting prep in a way that actually works? Or is there a better approach for structuring recurring 1:1s in Teams?
Teams Mode in Copilot & Tools tab missing
Hi All, not sure if this a delay on the roll-out or missing an admin configuration. I have two important features missing in my M365 Copilot (Premium - paid). I'm using web version. 1. I don´t see the "Tools" tab within M365 Copilot Chat. 2. I don´t see the "Start group chat in Teams" in my Copilot Chat an neither I see Copilot as an agent to add on a teams chat. Thanks!How to cancel creating an Agent in Teams?
Oy! I am pretty new to this. I went to Teams and saw the Copilot button on the Navigation Bar on the left. I clicked it and saw the normal "home page" or Chat page or whatever it is called. I clicked the Create button and bounced right into the initial New Agent screen. I'm not ready for that, but now I cannot get out of it. I still the Teams Navigation Bar where I can click on the other apps in Teams, but when I click on the Copilot button again, I am back into the New Agent screen. I also tried clicking the Teams Back button "<" and that does what it should but back to the Copilot screen, I now only see the New Agent screen. HOW do I get out of this and back to the normal Chat screen? I see no cancel button or any such thing. HelP!So many different CoPilots - confusing, unproductive
I think we have all learned that CoPilot is a brand, a suite of tools. That probably makes sense from Microsoft perspective, but it is confusing as heck for end users or people trying to roll out CoPilot in a company. Products include: Sharepoint agents CoPilot desktop app Copilot in Office apps -- different copilots for PPT, Word, excel, Outlook CoPilot Studio - custom copilots (which by the way turn into "apps"???) Teams Copilot Researcher and Analyst Agents Prompting Coach Visual Creator What is even more frustrating is they don't all work together or in the same environments. I want to call my Sharepoint Agent from my Copilot, nope. I want my Custom Copilot to use Researcher (or vice versa even), not happening (despite Copilot giving me instructions on how it should). Meanwhile, in Anthropic-land, I setup an MCP service to integrate Claude and my to do app. Not without hiccups, but it works now. The whole Copilot ecosystem needs to get a lot more consistent and quickly or you are going to continue to loose users. PS - as i went to post this, I needed to select Tags -- there were 20 Copilot products to choose from!Copilot Chat vsus. Microsoft 365 Copilot What's the difference?
While their names sound similar at first glance - Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat - they differ in several aspects. And more importantly, one can't be without another. What is Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat? First since first. Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is also called Copilot Chat. Copilot Chat generates answers based on web content, while Microsoft 365 Copilot is also grounded on users' data, like emails, meetings, files, and more. Since January 15, Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is available for everyone. Everyone in organizations. Also customers with a Microsoft 365 Business Basic subscriptions can enjoy using Copilot Chat securily. The screenshot below shows how Copilot Chat looks like and highlights its main capabilities. Note that EDP - Enterprise Data Protection is available. What is Microsoft 365 Copilot? Microsoft 365 Copilot is an add-on available for specific Microsoft 365 Subscriptions: Microsoft 365 E3, E5, A3, A5, and Business Standard & Premium. It includes Copilot Chat in addition to other Copilot features: Microsoft 365 Copilot also includes a chat grounded on users' meetings, emails, chats, and documents. It integrates into Microsoft 365 apps, like Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, and more. It brings the capability to create agents and additional Copilot management features such as SharePoint Advanced Management and Copilot Dashboard. The screenshot below shows how the Copilot chat experience for those users who got the Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Note that EDP - Enterprise Data Protection is available here too. Copilot Chat can be pinned in MS Teams and MS Outlook as App. How can I access Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat? Copilot Chat is nowadays accessible via m365copilot.com using your Entra account. In contrast to Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed users, Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat users cannot see, by default, Copilot Chat pinned on the Microsoft 365 homepage. Microsoft 365 Copilot Administrators will have to pin the chat in the admin center so it is easy for Copilot Chat users to access it. What's the difference? There are some aspects, such as licensing requirements, subscription fees, data sources, or access to organization content, that determine the differences between Copilot Chat and Microsoft 365 Copilot. I have listed it in the screenshot below. 👇 Image showing a 3-column table: Aspect, Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, and Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Change Default for Copilot Automatic Room Rebooking Setting in Outlook?
My users with Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses have noticed a newer feature that automatically rebooks meetings with an alternate room if the selected room is unavailable. It appears that this setting is on by default and can be turned off on a per case basis when a new meeting event is being scheduled. Is there a way to turn it off by default and allow people to enable it when a new calendar item is being created instead? Here is what it looks like for me in Outlook. I can click on Edit from the new meeting window and turn it off for a single event. I haven't found a way to change that default behavior. Has anyone found a way to adjust this? Thank you! Brian
Custom Engine Agent latency 5-7 seconds before webhook is called
We have a Teams bot that we recently extended with Microsoft 365 Copilot support using the copilotAgents.customEngineAgents manifest configuration. When users send messages to our agent through the Copilot sidebar, there's a consistent 5-7 second delay between when the user sends the message and when our Bot Framework webhook receives the activity. Some extra notes: When users message the same bot directly in Teams (not through Copilot), messages arrive immediately with no delay When we send messages from our backend to Copilot (using the serviceUrl for proactive messaging), they arrive immediately with no delay So the latency only occurs in one direction: Copilot → our webhook. Manifest Configuration: { "$schema": "https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/json-schemas/teams/v1.17/MicrosoftTeams.schema.json", "manifestVersion": "1.21", "version": "1.1.1", "bots": [ { "botId": "<client_id>", "scopes": ["personal", "team", "groupChat"], "isNotificationOnly": false, "supportsCalling": false, "supportsVideo": false } ], "copilotAgents": { "customEngineAgents": [ { "type": "bot", "id": "<client_id>" } ] } } Environment: Azure Bot Service (not Copilot Studio) Bot region: Global Messaging endpoint hosted in AWS us-east-1 Questions: Is this delay expected behavior for Custom Engine Agents? Is there any configuration to reduce this latency? Are there plans to optimize Custom Engine Agent message routing? This latency significantly impacts user experience - users expect near-instant responses when chatting with an agent.
Typed input routing stops working after navigating back to Home topic via Action.Submit (Invoke)
We are building a Copilot Studio agent with this structure: Home topic (menu page with icons) FeatureTopicA / FeatureTopicB / FeatureTopicC / FeatureTopicD Routing based on typed text (e.g. “feature A”, “feature B”) using a topic with trigger “A message is received” Navigation between topics using Action.Submit buttons (Invoke), including a Home / Back icon Observed behavior On a fresh conversation: Typing keywords like feature A or feature B correctly routes to the expected topic. From any feature topic, clicking Home (Action.Submit → Go to Home topic): Home page loads correctly. After returning to Home, typing the same keywords: Routing does not happen The conversation remains on Home The “A message is received” router topic is not triggered Restarting the conversation makes typing work again — until Home is reached via button navigation. We already tried following Dedicated router topic with trigger “A message is received” and highest priority Clearing global/custom variables when returning to Home Forcing routing using global flags Ensuring Home topic has no message trigger and no phrases Using Invoke-only navigation topics Handling text via Recognizer.TriggeringMessage.Text, LastMessage.Text, etc. Core questions Is this expected behavior in Copilot Studio? After navigating to a topic via Action.Submit (Invoke), does that topic “own” subsequent typed messages? What is the recommended pattern if users must be able to: Navigate via Home / Back buttons Then type free-text on the Home page Have typed text routed reliably every time Is the intended design: Home topic acts as the router itself? Or only one global message-received router should exist? Or typed input should not be expected to work reliably after Invoke navigation? We want to allow users to: Use menu buttons for navigation Return to Home Still type free-text commands Have routing work consistently without restarting the conversation Any official guidance, known limitations, or best-practice patterns would be greatly appreciated.
