Transcript
Use with ChatGPT / Claude Auto-scroll A
Introduces the two Copilot versions available at work and explains how to tell which license you have. It also outlines the basic cost difference and sets up the comparison.
If you're using Copilot at work, sometimes it can be confusing to understand which version you're on and therefore how you can find learning materials that are going to help you.In this video, we're going to unpack the difference between the Copilot chat basic version, which is the free version included with your Microsoft 365 subscription at work, and the Copilot premium version, which is what your organization would bepaying for.That one has an additional $30 US per user per month cost on top of the regular work license.Now, as you would expect, these things have quite different values given that one of them is included or free and one of them is not.First thing you want to do to understand which one you've got is when you log in to Copilot either on the main website, which is copilot.cloud.microsoft, or you might have a Copilot icon on your desktop that you can
open up, log in with your work account, and I'm talking about the work product here, and have a look down in the bottom left-hand corner.You either have something like this that says Copilot chat basic, of course with a prompt to upgrade.If that's what you're seeing, then you have the free, I'm going to use free in inverted commas cuz it's actually included with the main Microsoft 365 license that your organization is paying for, or if you're lucky like Mirandahere, you will have something here that says M365 Copilot brackets premium.That is the paid license that includes all of the very rich functionality.So, let me help you understand the difference between these two things and what you're paying for.
Covers what basic and premium Copilot have in common, including enterprise data protection, secure work chat, and the ability to create agents. The speaker explains how agents work and why they simplify repeated prompts.
Let's start first with what they both have in common and then what they have that is different.So, what they have in common, when you are logged in with your work account, regardless of whether you've got the, I'm going to call it basic and premium so that we level set on the terminology, whether you've gotthe basic or the premium, these things are both the same.Firstly, you have enterprise data protection.So, this is secure chat.What that means is you can use this securely for your work for things that are confidential or sensitive and Microsoft does not have any eyes on what you're doing and what you're doing does not go back into thedata model to get trained into the data model.So you'll hear this sometimes with consumer tools like Claude or chat GPT that your data is leaking.Those are quite different.
What we're working with both with basic and premium is that we are bringing AI into your work.You're not taking your work out to AI and that's the core value, core difference of Copilot as a work AI tool compared to anything else.You are bringing it inside your work environment.
Enterprise data protection, you can click through.If you hover over that, you can click through and have a read at the official Microsoft description of what that actually means so that you understand that.That's the same for the free and the paid, the basic and the premium license.So this chat experience allows you to ask questions, analyze, gain insights, generate content, all of those kinds of things.The other thing that they both have in common is the ability to create an agent.Now an agent inside Copilot basic or premium is essentially a narrowing down of that experience so that you've got a set of instructions that it works with every time so that you don't have to write a great biglong prompt.So for instance here, I've got a thinking partner agent that has got in the back side of it a whole lot of instructions that say, "You're a thinking partner agent.
You understand six hats thinking.You understand five whys."All of these different things and you can help me solve a problem and it will choose the right way of thinking about it and allow me to answer those questions.If you're interested in the agent builder, I've got a whole tutorial on this for both the basic and premium version.Go check that out.So the differences now.So in common we have secure enterprise chat that can do all of these things and this agent builder.
Explains the premium-only Work IQ layer, including access to work data, contextual memory, and personalization. It also shows how premium Copilot works inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the chat experience.
The thing that really differentiates them, there are two things that are what you're paying for.And the first one, once you go into the premium license, is this layer called Work IQ.Now, Work IQ is essentially the data layer of all of the things you do at work.And honestly, this is the core value of what you're paying for, what your organization is paying for with a premium license.There's actually three things going on here.We've got your work data.So, it is natively connected, not a plug-in or an integration, but natively connected on the same platform to all of the Microsoft 365 things that you do at work.Your emails in Outlook, your Teams chats, channels, all of the documents that you work with that are saved in OneDrive for Business or in Teams folders or in SharePoint that you have access to.So, it won't give you access to anything else.
I know a lot of people get concerned this.But, it acts as you as the logged in user.You don't get permissions.So, if there's something that you don't have permission to access in a team site that you're not in, Copilot can't reach that.Sticks to your permissions.Just makes it easier to find and work with the stuff that's there.So, that's that first layer of your work data.But, where it gets interesting is that there's whole other layer here of context and personalization.So, it's more than just the data because with tools like ChatGPT and Claude, you can plug those tools in.But, it has this very rich contextual layer that understands how you work and the relationships between the people you work with and all of the things you do, and it builds that working memory of your context at work.This is what makes it really valuable is that it sort of becomes and the more you use it, the more it understands that.
The third part here is that you actually have access to skills and tools so that it can do things for you.And the main place that that shows up is inside the applications.For users with that premium license, there is a lot of capability inside the apps that you use every day, in particular Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to do things and to take action.So, I've got an example here of a document that's open in Word, and you'll see I've got Copilot on the side here.I can actually edit this document, chat to it on the side, have it fill in things, rewrite, generate text, all of those kinds of things.In Excel, I've got the ability to create very sophisticated sort of reports and dashboards and analytics and edit the data and work with the data.And in PowerPoint, I can use it to generate entire slide decks, generate slides, update slides, redesign slides.
If I go across into my persona here who does not have that Copilot premium license, you'll see with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint open, there isn't an option to use Copilot inside those apps.Those functionalities are extremely valuable and extremely rich.They're not just chatting on the side, they are actually doing things, editing and co-creating documents, analyzing data in spreadsheets, and and designing things in PowerPoint.So, two things we've covered there in the differences between the basic and the premium license.With the premium license, you've got this Work IQ layer.It is deeply connected to everything you're doing.You'll also see that in the chat here.If you use the forward slash at any point, you'll be able to browse through recent documents, the people you collaborate with, the files you've been working on, the meetings and the meeting transcripts, your emails, SharePoint sites, all of
those things.Whereas in the basic version here, if we go back to the chat, that option just you can upload a file, but you don't have access to all of those other things.So, that Work IQ layer, access to all your stuff, and rich context and memory over all of those things is the core thing you're paying for in that premium license.
Describes the additional premium pathways for advanced tools and consumption-based features, then summarizes why premium Copilot is much more capable than basic. The video closes by encouraging viewers to identify their license and look ahead to agent-building topics.
Secondly, access to these very rich, capable editing and co-creating and analyzing features that sit inside the apps that you use every day, and then the open pathway into other things.So, you'll notice with my person here with the basic license, the top menu just says Copilot.You cannot pass go, cannot collect $200, there's nowhere else to go here.That's what your experience is.Whereas, my person over here who has the premium license, at the time of recording, chat, co-work, and code, but there's more coming here.So, there are a bunch of tools that consume Copilot credits.This is over and above the seat license that allow you to do even more sophisticated delegating of long-running workflows and creating apps and creating autopilots.I've got a whole other licensing video if you want to explore that, but the premium seat license is the kind of baseline prerequisite if you also want to explore those consumption-based billing tools.
So, I hope you can see there's a there's a very big difference here between these things in terms of the capability.One is secure everyday chat at work, the other one is very deeply and richly connected to everything you do.When I see people on forums going, "Copilot is rubbish.I've been using Claude, and now I've been given Copilot at work, and I can't do anything."Chances are, the problem is that your work hasn't given you a premium license.If you're in that situation and you've got basic, that's why you haven't actually got the full Copilot, because believe me, the full Copilot has a lot of things in there that are immensely valuable.So, understanding which license you've got is going to help you on that value journey to being able to get the most out of it.If you would like to understand the next level, which is agent building, Copilot agents versus Copilot Studio agents, I will see you in the next video, and if you've got questions about understanding the difference between these things, please
let me know in the comments.Thanks for watching.