Microsoft Copilot
Stage 1 — Get startedLives inside Excel, Word, Outlook, and Teams — no copy-paste shuffle. The clear winner if your firm is already on Microsoft 365.
Best for
- Excel formula generation, debugging, and explanation — describe what you want in plain English in the Copilot pane and it writes (and explains) the formula in place
- Outlook 'Catch me up' summarizes a long client thread before you reply, plus draft-reply suggestions tuned to the thread's tone and your past style
- Word document drafting from a brief or template (e.g., generate a client engagement letter from a template plus a few bullets of context)
- Teams meeting summaries with action items, chronological timeline, attributable quotes, and (as of 2026) a video highlight reel — turn it on in advance of every client review call
- Copilot Agents (GA in Word/Excel/PowerPoint as of 2026) — multi-step automation that can trigger Power Automate flows, create tickets, or update CRM records. Useful for repeat advisory workflows like prep packets for quarterly reviews.
Avoid
- Client-facing creative writing — output is competent but sterile; Claude or ChatGPT win for warmth and nuance
- Multi-document research synthesis — Copilot is single-document focused; use Perplexity or Gemini Deep Research for cross-source work
- Anything outside Microsoft 365 — Copilot's value collapses the moment you leave the suite. If your firm is on Google Workspace, Gemini is the equivalent.
Shortcuts
- In Excel, select a range → Copilot → 'analyze' for a one-click chart + insight summary, or 'highlight' for conditional-formatting suggestions
- In Outlook, 'Coaching by Copilot' reviews your draft for tone, clarity, and length BEFORE you hit send — useful for emotionally-loaded client situations
- In Word, type / to invoke Copilot inline without opening the side pane — fastest for short rewrites and tone shifts
- Loop components (rolling out across M365) let you embed live Copilot-powered tables and lists that update across Teams, Outlook, and Word simultaneously
Model variants
Microsoft describes Copilot (Microsoft 365 Copilot is now named Microsoft Copilot) as an orchestration layer over multiple large language models, grounded in your M365 data via Microsoft Graph. Microsoft offers OpenAI and Anthropic models as subprocessors (admins decide whether to enable them; additional terms may apply) alongside Microsoft-hosted models. For most tasks you don't pick a model — Microsoft routes per task. Newer agentic features (Copilot Agents) are rolling out via the Copilot Studio surface for custom workflow automation.
Compliance gotchas
- This is the tightest data-control fit IF you're an M365 Business/Enterprise customer — prompts and outputs stay inside your tenant boundary, inherit your existing M365 DLP and retention policies, and are covered by Microsoft's commercial data-protection terms.
- Consumer Microsoft 365 plans that include Copilot (Personal, Family, Premium, Pro — the former standalone Copilot Pro is no longer listed) do NOT inherit your firm's M365 tenant controls — never use them for firm data. They're different products despite the similar name.
- Some Copilot experiences can use third-party models (OpenAI and Anthropic as Microsoft subprocessors, enabled by your admin). Per Microsoft, Anthropic-provided models are currently excluded from the EU Data Boundary — review your firm's data-residency requirements before your admin enables them.
- Meeting recaps are generated from full transcripts — if a client said something off the record, it WILL show up in the recap. Always notify participants when Copilot is taking the meeting, and review recaps before sharing or saving.
Compliance posture
- SOC 2
- SOC 2 Type II
- Zero retention
- Not offered
- SSO
- All paid tiers
- SCIM
- All paid tiers
- HIPAA BAA
- Available
- Data residency
- Configurable
Inherits M365 stack: SOC 2 + ISO 27001 + ISO 42001 + FedRAMP High. Advanced Data Residency + Multi-Geo add-ons; EU Data Boundary for EU customers. Existing M365 BAA covers Copilot. Web-search queries are NOT covered by the BAA. Retention: Microsoft stores Copilot prompts and responses as activity history under your organization's Microsoft 365 commitments (admins set retention via Microsoft Purview) — it is not zero-retention; Microsoft states prompts, responses and Graph data aren't used to train foundation LLMs.
Editorial data — verify against the vendor's live trust page before relying. Last verified 2026-05-29. Full posture matrix →
Pricing
As listed on microsoft.com (rechecked Oct 2026). Copilot Business add-on: $21/user/mo paid yearly list price, discounted to $18/user/mo paid yearly for offers between July 1 and Dec 31, 2026 ($25.20/user/mo on monthly billing); up to 300 users; available only to existing customers with an eligible Microsoft 365 Business plan — best fit for most independent and small RIA firms. Bundles: Microsoft 365 Business Standard with Copilot $23.50/user/mo and Business Premium with Copilot $32/user/mo (paid yearly). Copilot for enterprise: $30/user/mo paid yearly ($31.50 paid monthly), requires a qualifying Microsoft 365 plan. Copilot Chat is included with eligible Microsoft 365 subscriptions. Consumer Microsoft 365 plans with Copilot are different products — not appropriate for firm data. Copilot Studio (custom agents) is priced separately.