Start here: your Microsoft 365 Copilot journey
Most people start with Copilot Chat and gradually discover a much larger Microsoft 365 AI environment. This guide helps you understand what you can do now, what becomes possible next, why some features are missing or disabled, and what you should ask your manager or administrator for.
Last reviewed 2026-09-05
Where are you now?
Choose the question that sounds most like your situation.
The discovery journey
| Stage | What becomes possible |
|---|---|
| Copilot Chat | Ask, draft, summarise, analyse supplied material and research. You can also create simple personal agents. |
| Basic personal agents | Think of these as saved specialist helpers: reusable instructions plus limited knowledge. They can be useful, but they are not autonomous AI workers and have significant file and organisational-data restrictions. |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot | Adds automatic work grounding through Microsoft Graph and Work IQ, richer Copilot experiences and more capable agent scenarios. |
| Copilot in apps | Use Copilot directly in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams. |
| Copilot Notebooks | Bring a deliberately selected set of files, SharePoint content, emails, meetings and other supported references into a focused working context. |
| Richer and shared agents | Agents can become more useful with approved organisational knowledge, broader grounding and sharing — subject to licence, admin controls and source permissions. |
| SharePoint and organisational workflows | Ground AI in approved team knowledge and connect it to governed work processes. |
| Cowork | Delegate defined multi-step jobs that can work across Microsoft 365. |
| Power Automate | Run predictable processes, triggers and actions automatically. |
| Copilot Studio | Build governed organisational agents with controlled knowledge, actions, connectors and channels. |
This is a practical map of the capabilities people commonly discover as more access is added. In Microsoft 365, the word Agent can describe anything from a saved specialist helper to a more advanced action-taking capability, so do not assume every agent is autonomous or powerful.
Follow the typical discovery path
Built for awarding organisations
Examples and risks are considered in the context of awarding organisations, including qualification development, centre support, assessment integrity, candidate and centre data, reasonable adjustments, safeguarding, malpractice, complaints, appeals, governance and regulatory responsibilities.
Useful starting points
Sources
- Overview of Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat — checked 2026-09-05
- Microsoft 365 Copilot overview — checked 2026-09-05
- Get started with Microsoft Copilot Notebooks — checked 2026-09-05
- Microsoft 365 Copilot release notes — checked 2026-09-05