Microsoft 365 Copilot is coming to education customers beginning January 1, 2024

Last month, Microsoft announced the general availability of Microsoft 365 Copilot for enterprise customers. Today, Microsoft announced that Copilot for Microsoft 365 will be available for faculty and staff with Microsoft 365 A3 and A5 licenses beginning January 1, 2024. Microsoft 365 Copilot will cost $30 per user per month with a 300-seat minimum per tenant. 

In addition to that, Microsoft Copilot (formerly Bing Chat Enterprise) will be available for all faculty users and Higher Education students who are 18 years or older beginning in early February. Microsoft Copilot for education customers will come with commercial data protection, so all user and organizational data will not be saved, and the data will not be used for training language models.

You can find the full list of Microsoft 365 Copilot capabilities below.

With Copilot in Outlook, you can manage your inbox and communicate effectively in less time. Some of the features you can use are:

• Summarize an email thread to get the main points, sources, actions, replies, and meetings.
• Choose “Sound like me” to match your writing style and voice when drafting an email with Copilot.
• Watch a Teams meeting that you missed, directly from Outlook at your convenience. Teams will prompt you to record the meeting and Copilot will notify you when it’s ready.

Copilot in Word makes writing more creative and efficient. Some of the features you can use are:

• Summarize any document to get a recap or catch up quickly, with a detailed bullet list of the information you need.
• Rewrite a paragraph and choose from different options that suit your needs. You can also change the tone of the rewrite to make it more neutral, casual, or professional.
• Improve a prompt by asking Copilot to do things like “make answer more concise” or “add a column in the table for the project owner.”
• Format your text easily by asking Copilot to create a table from your copy.

Copilot in Excel helps you analyze and visualize data like a data analyst. Some of the features you can use are:

• Analyze, format, and edit your data with Copilot in Excel to get more insights and understanding.
• Add a formula column, highlight key data with a prompt like “make all cells red where the value is under 1000,” filter and sort your data, and ask questions to get key insights quickly.
• Access advanced analytics, create professional visualizations, generate forecasts, and sort through data faster with Python in Excel.

Copilot in Loop enables shared thinking, helping teams cocreate, stay updated, and continue where others left off. Some of the features you can use are:

• Collaborate with Copilot as a team, cocreating prompts and reviewing previous interactions to edit and improve your work together.
• Generate a quick table on the page to organize team projects. You can easily convert the table into a Loop component to share with teammates across Teams, Outlook, Microsoft Whiteboard, and Word on the web.
• Catch up where your teammates left off by asking Copilot for a summary of a page or open-ended questions like “What key assignments were made since I was last on this page?” Generate a recap for a teammate that you’re handing work off to, so they can get up to speed on any updates or changes. Save time writing code with Copilot-suggested Code blocks that pop up automatically using the context of your work.

Copilot in OneNote helps you stay organized, prepared, and ready to take action. Some of the features you can use are:

• Get deeper insights on your notes by asking comprehensive questions like: “What are the pros and cons of this process?”
• Generate summaries of your OneNote content quickly.
• Type just a few sentences and get a Copilot-generated paragraph, bulleted list, or organized section.
• Make your writing clearer and more effective with a quick Copilot edit.

Copilot in Stream helps you find the insights and information you need from a video—in the Microsoft Stream web app or anywhere Stream videos work across Microsoft 365 apps—in seconds. Some of the features you can use are:

• Get a quick summary of the video with a transcript of the relevant parts you need to review.
• Ask Copilot open-ended questions—“What was the discussion outcome?” “How did the site walkthrough go?”—to quickly understand outcomes and key points.
• Ask Copilot to identify when people, teams, or topics are discussed, then jump right to that point in the video.
• Ask Copilot for suggested follow-ups or actions from a video you missed.

Copilot in OneDrive helps you find all the insights and information you need. Now you can:

• Ask Copilot open-ended questions related to an individual file or get a summary of the content.