Tag: Copilot Chat

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What are Copilot connectors?

A Copilot connector is the plumbing that brings your organisation’s external content into Microsoft 365 so Copilot can ground answers in real, company-specific data.

Practically speaking, a connector extracts or fetches items from a third‑party system (files, tickets, PRs, CRM records, etc.), indexes those items into the Microsoft Graph, and makes them available to Copilot and Microsoft Search under your tenant’s security and governance rules.

How it works in plain terms

A connector usually has three moving parts: the source adapter (code that knows how to read the external system), an agent or orchestration layer that schedules crawls and handles incremental updates, and the ingestion into Microsoft Graph where items are stored and security‑trimmed. Microsoft provides a Connectors SDK and a lightweight connector agent so you can build custom connectors or run Microsoft’s prebuilt ones; the agent handles full and incremental crawls, delete detection, ACL stamping, and ingestion into Graph.

Real connector examples

Copilot connectors already cover a wide range of enterprise systems. Here are practical examples you’ll see in the wild and the kinds of prompts they unlock:

  • Salesforce – pull opportunity summaries and recent activity to prep for a customer call.  
  • Jira / Azure DevOps – surface sprint status, open bugs, or backlog items when you ask for release readiness.  
  • GitHub / GitLab / Bitbucket – summarise open pull requests, list failing CI runs, or extract changelog notes.  
  • Box / Dropbox / Google Drive / SharePoint – compare versions of a spec or summarise the latest product doc.  
  • ServiceNow / Zendesk / Freshservice – analyse incident trends and recommend process changes.

Each connector turns source content into indexed, searchable items so a prompt like “Summarise the top five customer issues from Zendesk this month and suggest fixes” returns grounded, citeable results instead of generic advice.

Connector versus MCP server versus calling an API

Copilot connector (indexed or federated). 
A connector’s job is to make content available to Microsoft Graph and Copilot.

Many connectors perform a crawl and index model (content is ingested into the Microsoft  Graph), while newer federated or user‑level connectors let Copilot fetch live data on demand using the user’s credentials. The indexed model is great for broad search and fast responses; federated connectors are useful when you need real‑time, user‑scoped access.

MCP server (Model Context Protocol). 

MCP is a protocol and server model that standardizes how AI assistants call external tools and fetch context in real time. An MCP server exposes a set of tools/endpoints that agents (like Copilot or Teams Channel Agent) can discover and invoke; it’s about runtime tooling and live interactions, not indexing. Think of an MCP server as a live automation or tool host — for example, a calendar MCP server that creates events or a custom MCP server that exposes internal business actions to an agent. MCP servers are registered so Microsoft 365 agents can discover and securely call them.

Direct API Calls

Calling a service’s API is the most basic integration pattern: your app authenticates and requests data or performs actions directly. That’s perfect for bespoke workflows or when you need full control over data flow, but it doesn’t automatically make that data searchable inside Microsoft Graph or available to Copilot across the tenant. If you want Copilot to use that data as part of its knowledge, you either build a connector that indexes it into Graph or expose it via an MCP/federated connector for live access.

How they differ…

  • If you index Jira with a connector, Copilot can quickly answer questions such as “What’s blocking Product release X?” using indexed issues.  
  • If you run an MCP server that exposes a ticket‑triage tool, Copilot (or an agent) can interface and directly open a triage workflow and assign owners in real time without needing to open the app.
  • If you call the Jira API from a custom app, you can build any workflow you want – but Copilot won’t automatically see that data unless you also surface it via a connector or MCP endpoint.

Security, governance, admin controls

Connectors are designed to respect tenant boundaries and Microsoft 365 governance. Indexed content is ingested under your tenant, encrypted, and security‑trimmed so users only see what they’re allowed to see. Admins manage connectors from the Microsoft 365 admin center, control which connectors are available, and can stage rollouts or disable federated connectors if they don’t meet policy. The connector agent and SDK also let you enforce crawl schedules, incremental updates, and ACL mapping so indexing behaves predictably at scale.

Connector, MCP server, or API?

When you need Copilot (or an agent) to work with an external service, you usually have three realistic integration patterns to choose from: indexing via a Copilot/Graph connector, exposing live tools through an MCP server, or calling the service’s API directly from your app. Each option solves different problems.

Below I will try to explain the tradeoffs in plain language, give concrete examples, and finish with a short decision checklist you can use immediately. NB: I’m still learning this myself so bear with me!

  • Use a Copilot connector when your goal is to make a lot of content searchable and citeable across the tenant so Copilot and Microsoft Search can answer questions quickly (think documents, tickets, PRs).
  • Use an MCP server when you need runtime tooling – live, discoverable actions an agent can call (for example: triage a ticket, kick off a workflow, or run a business action) rather than just read data. 
  • Call the API directly if  you are or need to build a bespoke app or workflow that needs full control, custom logic, or real‑time two‑way operations and you do not need Copilot to automatically see that data unless you also surface it via a connector or MCP. 

These are not mutually exclusive, and sometimes you might need a combination of both. For example you may index the data for search and also expose a small set of live actions via MCP or direct API calls.

Deciding which you need

I found this check list helpful which some of my developer friends use…

  1. What do you need Copilot to do? If it’s answer/search/summarise → connector. If it’s act/execute/triage → MCP or API. 
  2. Do you need tenant‑wide, security‑trimmed search? If yes, prioritise a connector. 
  3. Do you need live user‑scoped actions or interactive workflows? If yes, design an MCP server or expose specific API endpoints as MCP tools. 
  4. How fast do you need it? Real‑time → MCP/API. Fast search across many items → connector. 
  5. What’s your governance posture? If you need Microsoft 365 controls and auditing, connectors and Power Platform connectors give built‑in alignment; MCP requires explicit registration and security design.

The other tip from my limited experience so far (I did say bear with me) is

  1. Use prebuilt connectors first – there are loads. Check the Microsoft Copilot connectors gallery for existing connectors before building custom ones.  
  2. If you need to build (or get someone to build) a custom connextor, use the Connectors SDK and agent to build and test your connector; the agent handles crawling and ingestion. 
  3. Pilot / test with real prompts and measure relevance, latency, and trust (are results correctly security‑trimmed and useful?).

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Copilot Chat comes to Enterprise Office Apps for all

Microsoft is in the process of Copilotizing Business / Enterprise versions of your Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote) even for users that don’t have a Microsoft 365 Copilot License.

Microsoft say that “These updates help make Copilot your true personal AI assistant for work: Whether you’re drafting a document, analyzing a spreadsheet, or catching up on email, Copilot is right there, ready to answer questions, create content, spark ideas, and automate tasks. Here’s what’s new.”

Copilot Chat Interface

This familiar Copilot sidebar will understand the context of your open files, document, PowerPoint or spreadsheet and helps to draft, summarise, analyse, and brainstorm without having to switch apps or leaving your app.

Copilot Chat in Office

Microsoft is introducing a persistent Copilot Chat pane in the ribbon of all it’s core Microsoft 365 Office apps. It will be be:

  • Fully  integrated and content-aware, meaning it will tailors responses based on your current open file.
  • Including in the Core Microsoft 365 license (no specific Microsoft 365 Copilot license required).
  • Will have the ability draft, summarise, assist with content and formulas and of course create and rewrite content.
  • Front and centre to your apps removing (Microsoft hope) the need to deploy other “free” AI plugins such as GPT free which might inadvertently share sensitive data outside your organisation. This is key for organisational compliance, governance and privacy.

How it differs from the Microsoft 365 Copilot license?

The “premium” Microsoft 365 Copilot licence still offers all the advanced capabilities that Microsoft 365 Copilot provides today including file and image upload, image generation, and  cross-document reasoning, as well as (most importantly), organisational awareness and acess to the Microsoft Graph API (meaning you can search across docs, meetings, people, email). It also provides the  deeper analysis tools and custom agents such as Analyst and Researcher.

Why This matters

This brings a number of benefits to users and organisations. Including:

  • Streamlined workflows: Users can draft or revise text in Office without opening a browser or switching apps.
  • Instant insights: Since users can ask Copilot to analyse data ranges, identify trends, or generate pivot tables in Excel. 
  • Faster presentations: Users can get help from Copilot to build outlines, suggest visuals, or transform bullet points into speaker notes in PowerPoint. 
  • Email productivity: By using Copilot in Outlook to summarise long threads, draft replies, or extract action items in seconds. 
  • A Unified experience: Above all, all users get a single AI assistant across their core Office apps. This helps with training, reduces pressure to deploy 3rd party plugins and aids support.
  • Compliance and Governance: keeps data secure knowing that no data is shared online or used to train AI models – a huge risk organisations face when using “free” AI tools such as Gemini or GPT free.

Under the hood: How Copilot Chat works

Context awareness 

Copilot Chat works by reading the contents and metadata of your open document in real time, so it knows what you’re working on—even titles, headings, tables, and comments. 

Secure Processing

Queries are processed within Microsoft’s trusted cloud environment. No data or prompts ever leaves your organisations compliance boundaries or is used to train Microsoft or OpenAI LLMs

Natural-language interface 

Copilot Chat allows the users to type or “speak” questions like “Summarise this report” or “Show me the top three trends in this data set,” and Copilot replies conversationally. 

Continuity and history 

All your Copilot interactions stay visible in the sidebar, so you can scroll back to previous prompts and refine follow-ups without losing context.

Copilot Chat in Office. Image (c) Microsoft

Copilot Chat rollout

  • Copilot Chat will start rolling out to Business users with Microsoft 365 Enterprise and Business subscriptions.
  • Rollout will start with users running Microsoft Office Current Channel.
  • IT Admins may need to enable Copilot Chat in the Microsoft 365 Admin Centre if not already enabled.
  • Organisations are advised to work with their training and adoption team (or partner) to ensure this is included in training and update communications.
  • Training or IT can Use the Microsoft 365 usage analytics dashboard to track adoption, active users, and common Copilot queries.

With Copilot Chat in Office Apps, do we still need use Microsoft 365 Copilot?

In many cases users that already have Microsoft 365 will not want to give it up. There are many things to consider however when comparing Copilot Chat to Microsoft 365 Copilot. These inckude:

  • Whether users want/need to analyse multiple documents or entire SharePoint libraries in one session.
  • Build (or use) Copilot Agents (whilst Copilot chat users can do this they are cost option and charged on consumption)
  • Rely on GPT-5’s advanced reasoning, creativity, and summarisation capabilities. 
  • Want built-in image generation or the ability to upload custom files for Copilot to process. 
  • Use other Microsoft Copilot agents for sales, service, or finance workloads that will soon be bundled.
  • Use features like Facilitator, Interpreter and Meeting Recap in Microsoft Teams
  • Other advanced features such as Copilot Notebooks.

My Thoughts and Comments

Brining Copilot Chat directly into Office apps should help streamline and standarise IT provision whilst boosting productivity, reduce context-switching, and eliminate routine tasks for all users.

I love that Copilot Chat is now integrated directly into the Microsoft 365 apps and is governed by the Copilot Control System (CCS). CCS is the enterprise-grade portal for IT administrators to secure, manage, and analyse the use of Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Chat, Copilot Studio, and related agents across their business.

Confusion? Training and awareness will be key to ensure users know that they can and can’t do in Copilot based on the license they have. It could become easy for users with a Copilot Chat acess sitting next to a user with Microsoft 365 Copilot to question why they don’t have access to some features where as their colleague does!

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Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat: Everything you need to know including features, agents, pricing, and how to access it.

Copilot Chat on a Phone

Microsoft announced last week (15th Jan) that Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is coming to every Microsoft 365 Commercial Customer regardless of whether or not they have paid Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses and what’s more we now get access to use agents with company data grounding support. Along with it comes a new pay-as-you-go tier that allows employees to access everything from chatbots to agents without the need for a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.

While Microsoft is still confident that the full Microsoft 365 Copilot remains “our best in class personal AI assistant for work“, the new pay-as-you-go tier means organisations can start using the technology at a much lower entry point and look to address key business cases rather than going full in on Microsoft 365 Copilot. .

“Copilot Chat enables your entire workforce — from customer service representatives to marketing leads to frontline technicians — to start using Copilot and agents today”.
Jared Spataro | Chief Marketing Officer | AI at Work | Microsoft.

What is Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat?

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is Microsoft’s AI-powered chat feature designed to empower every person in every organisation to leverage Generative AI to make their “work lives easier and more efficient”.

For the employee, Microsoft Copilot Chat is a “personal assistant” they can chat with to get get answers, understand things better and get things done faster. Copilot Chat is It’s part of the broader Microsoft 365 Copilot suite but focuses specifically on enhancing communication and collaboration through chat.

How is Copilot Chat Different from Microsoft 365 Copilot?

The main differences between Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and Microsoft 365 Copilot is three-fold.

  1. Chat within Microsoft 365 Copilot provides work-grounded chat which means that Copilot can reason over data within your Microsoft 365 organisation such as files, SharePoint sites, your OneDrive, people (within Entra ID), your meetings, chat and email etc. Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat cannot access this data unless you “paste” into a chat window.
  2. Copilot within the Office 365 Apps such as Outlook, Teams, Excel, Word etc is only available with Microsoft 365 Copilot.
  3. Microsoft 365 Copilot is a paid add-on, where as Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is included for free within your core Microsoft 365 licensing.

Microsoft Copilot Chat – Beyond Web Grounded Chat!

I’m personally not a fan of the name Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat because I do think it confuses people. The point I want to bring out here and why this was worthy of a post, is that previously, Copilot Chat (as it was called) only had access to data on the web and did note have the ability to leverage any of the new AI features such as Agents.

This has now changed. As the table above shows, with Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, organisation will be able to create agents that do have access to data stored or connected to your Microsoft 365 tenant and also (and this is big) the ability for organisations to build and use autonomous agents (agents that can operate independently of a user).

The use of these new AI capabilities are paid for using a PAYG model. This means non Microsoft 365 Copilot users will have access to AI agents (for example in SharePoint) even if they themselves do not have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.

What does Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat Provide?

Key Features of Microsoft 365 Copilot

  1. Copilot Chat
    • Free, secure AI chat powered by GPT-4 and GPT-4o.
    • Ability to use Copilot Agents for automating tasks directly in the chat.
    • Support for file uploads in chat for summarising documents, analysing data, and suggesting improvements.
  2. Support for Copilot Pages
    • Collaborate in real-time with AI and team members.
    • Integrate content from Copilot, files, and the web.
    • Create AI-generated images for campaigns and social media.
  3. Agents
    • Ability to create and use agents using natural language to automate repetitive tasks.
    • PAYG / metered pricing for agents with IT control over deployment and management rather than requiring all users to have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.
  4. Copilot Control System
    • Enterprise data protection (EDP) for privacy and security.
    • Enables IT to better govern access, usage, and lifecycle of Copilot and agents.
    • Allows for measurement and reporting capabilities just like other Copilot Services.

Use Case Examples

A couple of use case scenarios are;

  1. A customer service rep can ask a customer relationship management (CRM) agent for account details before a customer meeting.
  2. A service or field service agent can access step-by-step instructions or real-time product information from information stored in SharePoint or Dynamics 365.
  3. A sales person can get help with positioning a product based on information on solution propositions or marketing collateral.

How much does it cost?

Understanding the charges is not super straight forward to map. For comparison though, a Microsoft 365 Copilot license costs around $30 per user per month, so use this as a basis for comparison.

In another blog post, Richard Riley, General Manager of Power Platform at Microsoft said that “usage of agents is measured in ‘messages’ and the total cost is based on the sum of messages used by your organization.“

So what does that mean? Well, Microsoft now offers two ways for organisations to access the pay-as-you-go version of Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat:

  1. Track each “message” sent to the AI whereby each message costs $0.01, billed monthly.
  2. Pre-buying a pack of messages. This works a bit like a mobile data plan. As an example, you can buy 25,000 messages for $200 a month

The actual cost vary based on the type of response you need with responses that need generative AI costing more than responses that don’t.

  • Web-based answer: Free / no-cost
  • Classic answer: 1 message
  • Generative answer: 2 messages
  • Answers pulling data from company’s own systems (e.g., SharePoint): 30 messages

This paid capability is of course optional and organisations can decide whether to turn it ‘on’ or ‘off’ in Copilot Studio.”

Riley introduced the concept of “autonomous actions,” describing them as “generatively orchestrated triggers, topics, data connectors, and workflows, visible in the activity map displayed in generative orchestration mode“.

These are also available as pay-as-you-go, with a cost of 25 messages each time they act.

Here’s some costed use examples…

  • An agent answering customer questions online could use 500 classic answers and 2,000 generative ones, costing $45 for those 4,500 messages.
  • Another agent answering HR questions internally using Microsoft Graph data might use 200 generative and 200 tenant Graph messages, costing 6,400 messages or $64 for the day.

This approach allows businesses to fine-tune their AI usage to meet their specific needs, addressing concerns about the high costs of deploying these tools across enterprises. It also helps cost modeling certain scenarios much easier and provides an alternative to just giving every person a $30 per month Copilot License.

Using Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat

Assuming IT have enabled this in your environment, you can try this by navigating to https://m365copilot.com or by downloading the Microsoft 365 Copilot App from your preferred app store.

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