What is Copilot
Copilot is Microsoft's AI assistant that aims to provide personalised help for a range of tasks.
Most staff and students at the University have a standard Microsoft licence. This includes access to Copilot Chat. Copilot Chat is an AI chat assistant integrated with Microsoft 365. It helps with tasks like:
- drafting content
- summarising information
- answering questions using web data and your own files.
You need a specific CoPilot licence for CoPilot integration with Microsoft 365 apps. This is a paid add-on to a standard Microsoft 365 subscription. CoPilot integration gives summaries and suggestions in each Microsoft 365 app.
Teams has an AI feature called Intelligent Recap for recorded meetings. It takes notes, summarises actions, and shows a timeline of who spoke. To use this feature, you need a Teams Premium licence or a CoPilot licence. You may see it if the organiser has either licence, even if you don’t.
Data security in CoPilot
When you sign into CoPilot Chat with your University account, you access the enterprise version of CoPilot. This ensures your data is private. Your data and prompts are not used to train the AI large language models. Read more about Data, Privacy, and Security for Microsoft Copilot.
Microsoft 365 Copilot
Most staff and students at the University have a standard Microsoft licence at no extra cost.
What it can do:
- Access public web information to answer questions.
- Provide contextual suggestions based on the content in an open document or email.
- Function within the Microsoft 365 Copilot app.
What it can't do:
- Access the University’s internal data, such as files, emails, and chats.
- Provide specific insights based on the University of Cambridge.
You need to be signed in with your @cam.ac.uk account to turn on commercial data protection. When it's on, prompts and responses aren't saved, and chat data isn't used to train the large language models. You’ll see the following above the text box when it's enabled.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Chat
If you have an add-on Copilot licence, CoPilot Business Chat works the same way as Copilot Chat. The main difference is that it can also query your work content, like chats, emails, and files.
You will see a toggle for 'work' and 'web' to set the context and can access via web, mobile, and desktop versions of the Microsoft 365 app, Teams, and Outlook. Enterprise data protection applies,and prompts are not used to train the underlying large language models.
Copilot for Microsoft 365 apps
Copilot integrates with Microsoft 365 apps including Word, Outlook, Excel, Teams, and PowerPoint. It can summarise and generate content based on the University’s internal data including existing files and emails.
You must buy a licence, in addition to a standard Microsoft licence, to use Copilot with Microsoft 365. This costs around £300 per annum, per user.
If you only need the Intelligent Recap feature for Teams meetings, you can buy a Teams Premium licence. Intelligent Recap provides AI-generated summaries of meeting recordings. A Teams Premium licence costs £20 per user, per year. You can only use it for meetings after you upgrade to the licence.
What are the benefits?
- Generate topic summaries with Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat
- Quickly amend operating system settings and perfom tasks with Copilot in Windows
- Summarise meetings and emails with Copilot for Microsoft 365
How do I access it?
Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat: https://copilot.cloud.microsoft/ in Microsoft Edge or Chrome browsers.
You can also download the desktop app from the Microsoft store.
Important: this differs from the 'Microsoft Copilot' app and Copilot for Windows app which can only be used with personal Microsoft accounts and do not offer enterprise data protection.
Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Chat: Complete a service request to purchase a Copilot for Microsoft 365 licence. Your account must have an A3 or A5 licence in the University Office365 tenancy.