Microsoft 365 Copilot

Enabling Copilot in Microsoft 365 depends on your organisation’s subscription and setup. Here’s a clear breakdown of what you need to do:

1. Pre-requisites:
   • Licensing. You need a Microsoft 365 Copilot license (separate from your standard Microsoft 365 E3/E5 or Business Standard/Premium subscription). Copilot is currently available for Enterprise (E3/E5) and Business (Standard/Premium) customers.
   • Apps and Services. Ensure users can access the apps Copilot works in (Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, PowerPoint, OneNote, etc.). Some advanced features (like security or compliance integration) require Microsoft 365 E5 or add-ons.
   • Data Security and Compliance. Review your information protection, data governance, and access policies, because Copilot uses your Microsoft Graph data (emails, chats, files, calendar, etc.).
2. Steps to enable Copilot:
   • Purchase and Assign Licenses.
     • Go to the Microsoft 365 admin centre → Billing → Purchase services.
     • Search for Microsoft 365 Copilot and purchase licenses.
     • Assign licenses to users via Users → Active users → Select a user → Licenses and apps → Enable Copilot.
   • Check Admin Settings.
     • In the admin centre, ensure apps like Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams are included in user subscriptions.
     • Confirm your cloud storage (OneDrive/SharePoint) is set up correctly so Copilot can access files.
   • Configure Security and Compliance (Recommended).
     • Review sensitivity labels, DLP policies, and conditional access in Microsoft Purview to ensure Copilot respects your organisation’s compliance needs.
     • It is highly recommended that you work with information protection and compliance specialists like Professional Advantage to ensure that you cover all the bases in securing your data before rolling out Copilot. Check out our information management and compliance solution here.
   • Rollout and Training.
     • Start with a pilot group of users to test Copilot in real work scenarios.
     • Provide training on prompts and best practices to maximise productivity.
     • You can also commission Professional Advantage to formally on using Copilot.

It includes:

• Foundational Capabilities and Web Grounding.
• Commercial Data Protection and Enterprise-Grade Data Protection.
• Copilot in Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Teams.
• Microsoft Graph Grounding, plus Work IQ grounding across Power BI and Dataverse business data.
• Copilot Cowork — an agentic mode that plans and completes full tasks, not just single prompts.
• Choice of AI model, including OpenAI GPT-5.5 and Anthropic Claude, depending on the task.
• Copilot Vision, for getting answers based on what's on your screen or in front of your camera.
• Deep citations linking directly to the source section inside a document.
• Copilot Notebooks for organising chats, outputs, and references by project.
• Customisation via Copilot Studio.
• Support for 42 languages.

Contact us for a free demo on the latest features of Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Copilot Chat answers questions and helps you draft content as you work.

Copilot Cowork goes further: you describe a task, and it plans and executes the work end-to-end, returning a finished deliverable rather than a starting point.

Both sit inside the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, with a toggle to switch between the two. Cowork is billed separately on a usage basis, so it's worth planning budget and governance for it before rollout, something our AI Readiness Consultation covers.

Microsoft 365 Copilot now supports multiple underlying models, including OpenAI's GPT-5.5 and Anthropic's Claude, and can automatically select the best-fit model for a given task. For example, Claude for visual and presentation work, or GPT-5.5 for deeper research with citations. This gives organisations greater flexibility without requiring users to manually manage model selection.