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 meeting summaries for performance reviews - how?
Our HR team had this idea to use Copilot meeting recaps as input for performance reviews. Like, if a manager had 20 meetings with a direct report over the quarter, couldnt Copilot help surface key contributions and discussion themes? The problem is theres no way to aggregate multiple meeting summaries into something useful for a review. Each recap is a separate thing in each meeting. Has anyone figured out a workflow or workaround for this?
Copilot pulling last weeks 1:1 action items into this weeks agenda, possible?
Spent 3 hours yesterday trying to get Copilot to pull open action items from last weeks 1:1 OneNote page and turn them into this weeks agenda. Gave up. Is this a prompt problem or just not possible with the current connectors?
Automating the feedback collection process before reviews. Is it possible with Copilot?
Every quarter, our HR team manually emails people asking for peer feedback before reviews start. Its a huge time sink and half the responses come in late. Someone mentioned Copilot agents might be able to handle this, like automatically reaching out to the right people, collecting responses, and organizing them. Has anyone tried building something like this? Or is there a simpler way to automate 360 feedback collection in M365?
AI-generated feedback summaries for managers - is this a thing yet?
Our managers are responsible for 10-15 direct reports each and the biggest complaint I keep hearing is that writing individual feedback for every person takes forever. Copilot can help draft emails and summarize meetings but I cant figure out how to get it to look at someone's goals progress, recent feedback, and 1:1 notes all together and suggest talking points or review comments. Is anyone using Copilot in any form to help managers write better, more data-backed feedback?In Case You Missed It: Frontier Transformation and Wave 3 of Microsoft 365 Copilot Announcements
March brought a major set of Frontier Transformation and wave 3 of Microsoft 365 Copilot announcements across Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Chat, and agents—all focused on helping people move faster from intent to action and helping organizations scale AI responsibly. If you missed any of the updates, here’s a quick recap of what’s new and why it matters. Copilot Transforms Knowledge Work These updates deepen how Copilot shows up inside the flow of work—grounded in your content, context, and tools. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Agents From Copilot Chat, users can ask Word, Excel, or PowerPoint agents to create content, take next steps, or execute tasks, helping them move from intent to action without copying and pasting or switching contexts. 👉 Learn more Edit with Copilot in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Copilot now creates, edits, and refines content directly inside Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, grounded in the context of a user’s work through Work IQ, so people can iterate and improve content without leaving the app they’re working in. 👉 Learn more Sequences shortened for demonstration purposes. Copilot Chat in Outlook Copilot Chat in Outlook enables users to draft and refine emails, manage calendars and RSVPs, and use the Outlook email widget to take action directly from chat, streamlining everyday communication and scheduling tasks. 👉 Learn more Outlook customer calendar instructions & proactive RSVPs Copilot finds available meeting times, sends invites, and keeps calendars up to date based on custom instructions, notifying users of changes directly in chat to reduce manual coordination. 👉 Learn more Copilot Cowork Built with Anthropic, Copilot Cowork brings a multimodel approach to Microsoft 365 Copilot—so your work isn’t tied to a single model. Cowork moves Copilot beyond prompts into long‑running, multi‑step work. With full awareness of your work context through Work IQ, it lets you delegate meaningful work and stay informed as it progresses. 👉 Learn more Claude Sonnet available in Copilot Chat Users can select Claude models directly in Copilot Chat, alongside next‑generation OpenAI models, bringing leading models from multiple providers into a single Copilot experience. 👉 Learn more Dataverse in Work IQ Work IQ connects signals from Microsoft 365—including documents, meetings, email, and chat—and will soon access operational data in Dataverse through Copilot in Dynamics 365 and Power Apps, bringing work context and business data closer together. 👉 Learn more Work IQ Memory (Chat History) Work IQ Memory enables more relevant, personalized Copilot responses shaped by a user’s work and Copilot chat history over time. 👉 Learn more Extensibility: Work IQ API / MCP Work IQ APIs provide access to production‑ready AI capabilities that work directly with enterprise work context, enabling extensibility through APIs and MCP. 👉 Learn more Launch Demo Copilot in Dynamics 365 & Power Apps Microsoft 365 Copilot is accessible directly within Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service, and Power Apps, extending Copilot experiences into business applications where operational work happens. 👉 Learn more Agents That Help Run the Business These announcements focus on building, deploying, and scaling agents across the enterprise. Apps SDK The Apps SDK provides tools to build ChatGPT apps based on the MCP Apps standard, with additional ChatGPT functionality to support agent and Copilot experiences. 👉 Learn more Model Context Protocol (MCP) Apps MCP Apps turn Copilot from a text interface into a governed, interactive execution layer by surfacing interactive app experiences directly in Copilot Chat. 👉 Learn more Apps in Agents: Outlook, Dynamics 365, and Power Apps Agents can bring Outlook, Dynamics 365, and Power Apps directly into chat, allowing users to review information and take action without leaving the conversation. 👉 Learn more Agent Recommendations in Microsoft 365 Copilot When users prompt Microsoft 365 Copilot, the system analyzes intent and recommends an installed, IT‑approved agent directly in the flow of work, making agents easier to discover and use at scale. 👉 Learn more Evaluate agents in Copilot Studio Copilot Studio provides structured, repeatable testing to help catch issues early, reduce the risk of bad answers, and maintain agent quality as agents evolve. 👉 Learn more Visibility, Governance, and Control at Scale As agent usage grows, these updates help organizations move from experimentation to enterprise readiness. Agent 365 Agent 365 serves as the control plane for agents, helping organizations move from experimentation to enterprise‑scale operations by enabling them to observe, govern, and secure agents. 👉 Learn more Microsoft 365 E7: The Frontier Suite Microsoft 365 E7 unifies Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agent 365 into a single solution powered by Work IQ and integrated with the productivity apps and security stack customers already rely on. It includes Microsoft Entra Suite and advanced Defender, Intune and Purview security capabilities, delivering comprehensive protection across agents and employees. 👉 Learn more To explore what’s available now—and what’s coming next—visit the Microsoft 365 roadmap and related announcement blogs. 👉 Explore the roadmapChange 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
