Copilot for Your Staff · Lesson 1 of 7
Which Copilot do you have?
15 minutes. Before anyone uses it, find out which Copilot each person has and what it can reach.
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At Comfort Zone Heating & Cooling (a fictional company we'll follow all course), Marcus asked Copilot to "summarize last week's emails about the Henderson job." It did, nicely. Then Priya asked Copilot the same kind of question from the Copilot app in her browser, about a spreadsheet in the shared drive, and got a polite answer about spreadsheets in general.
Same button. Same company. Two different Copilots. That's the first thing to sort out, and it takes 15 minutes.
Microsoft sells Copilot to businesses in two layers.
Copilot Chat comes with most Microsoft 365 business plans at no extra cost. Microsoft lists Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Business Standard and Business Premium among the plans that qualify, along with Teams Essentials. You sign in with your work account and it's there.
The paid Copilot license is an add-on you buy for each person. For businesses, Microsoft's pricing page lists Microsoft 365 Copilot Business for up to 300 users. On October 10, 2026, the page showed a list price of $21.00 per user per month, paid yearly, with a promotional price of $18.00 through December 31, 2026, and $25.20 per user per month if you pay monthly. It needs a qualifying Microsoft 365 plan alongside it. Microsoft also sells bundles: Business Standard with Copilot at $23.50 and Business Premium with Copilot at $32.00 per user per month, paid yearly. Prices change, so check the page before you buy.
Microsoft renamed both in 2026. Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is now Microsoft Copilot Chat, and Microsoft 365 Copilot is now Microsoft Copilot. You'll see both old and new names for a while. Don't let that throw you.
This is the part that matters, and it's where most confusion starts.
Copilot Chat, in the Copilot app or browser, is grounded in the web. It also uses what you give it: text you paste, a file you upload, a file you reference, or the app you're working in. Without the paid license it can't go looking through your company's email, files and chats on its own. Microsoft says so plainly: without the license, Copilot Chat can't access your shared or individual work data through Microsoft Graph, which is the system that connects your Microsoft 365 content.
Copilot Chat in Outlook is the exception. Microsoft gives it extra reach even without the paid license: your inbox, calendar, meetings, chats and a limited set of related files. That's why Marcus's question worked. He asked from Outlook.
The paid license lets Copilot reason across your work content: emails, meetings, calendars, chats, documents, sites and files, as long as you have permission to open them. It also adds Copilot inside Teams meetings and chats, and Microsoft's ready-made agents such as Researcher and Analyst, with priority access when the service is busy. Microsoft describes the included version as having "standard access," which means it can slow down at busy times.
In Word, Excel and PowerPoint, it depends on your plan and your company's settings. Some people without the paid license still get a basic Copilot in those apps. Microsoft shows a label so you can tell. Labels like Copilot Chat (Basic), Copilot (Basic) or Copilot (Premium) tell you which one you're using.
Two things are true for both:
- Copilot only sees what you can already see. It respects your existing permissions. It doesn't open doors. (Lesson 2 is about the doors you've already left open.)
- Your prompts aren't used to train the AI. Microsoft says prompts, responses and work data accessed through Graph aren't used to train its foundation models, and Copilot Chat signed in with a work account comes with what Microsoft calls enterprise data protection.
There is also a consumer Copilot for personal Microsoft accounts. Same name, different rules. The Copilot app lets you sign in with either, and keeps them separate.
Microsoft gives you visual cues so you can tell which you're in: a Work label under your profile, a different background color, and a green shield for data protection. Teach everyone to look for those before they paste anything about the business.
Open your browser and go to copilot.cloud.microsoft, which Microsoft lists as the main address for the Copilot app. Sign in with your work email. You'll also find Copilot Chat pinned in Teams and Outlook for most business users.
Look for the Work label and the green shield. If you don't see them, you're signed in with a personal account. Sign out and sign back in with your work account.
Open a Word document stored in OneDrive. Look for the Copilot icon (Microsoft's Word help says it's at the bottom right). Note the label it shows, if any: Basic, Premium, or no Copilot at all.
If you don't see Copilot in Word, Excel or PowerPoint, Microsoft says it may not be included with your subscription or your company may have turned it off. That's a question for your IT partner, not a fault on your computer.
In the Copilot app, ask: "What was the last email I got from [a coworker's name]?"
- If it answers from your mailbox, you're likely on the paid license.
- If it tells you it can't see your email, or answers about email in general, you're on Copilot Chat. Now open Outlook, select the Copilot button near the top, and ask the same thing. If it answers there, you're seeing Copilot Chat in Outlook at work.
On the Two-Week Copilot Log template, fill in the top: which Copilot you have, which label you saw in Word, and whether Outlook's Copilot answered from your mail. Ask two coworkers to do the same. You may find, like Comfort Zone did, that the owner and office manager have the paid license and everyone else has Copilot Chat. That's common, and it's fine. Most of this course works on both.
Do steps 1 to 4. Then answer one question for your business: who, if anyone, should get the paid license first? A good rule: the people who live in email and meetings all day, and who'll actually use it for two weeks. Don't buy 18 seats on a hunch. Lesson 7's log will tell you if it's worth more.
Check it worked
- You signed in to Copilot Chat with a work account and saw the Work label and green shield.
- You know whether you have Copilot Chat, the paid license, or both on your team.
- You saw what label, if any, Copilot shows in Word.
- You know that Copilot in Outlook can see your inbox even without the paid license.
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Next: Copilot only sees what you can see. So what can you see? More than you think.
→ Lesson 2: What Copilot can see, and the oversharing check