Identify Copilot accounts and subscriptions - Microsoft Copilot Tutorial

- Microsoft has several products that use the Copilot name. There are several different features and ways to use Copilot, and not all users are able to access all of those features. So this is the key: Which Copilot features and products you are able to use depends on whether you use Copilot with a certain account or paid subscription. One of the main ways to work with Copilot is on the Copilot website, copilot.microsoft.com. At the top, there is an account button. You can click that to find the option to sign in. Users who do not sign in get the smallest set of features, but they can still ask questions, make requests, or have ongoing chat conversations with the Copilot AI using this chat field. We will see how that works as we go through this course. But if you do sign in to an account, there are different types of accounts. To start, you can sign in with a free Microsoft Online account. If you don't have a free account, there's an option to make one. And signing in with a free account enables a few extra features. Or you can pay for a subscription to enable even more features. An individual can pay for the Copilot Pro subscription. This enables faster responses with newer language models. But the big thing with Copilot Pro is that you can use the Copilot assistant integrated inside of Office applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. So as an individual, you can sign in with a free Microsoft account. A Microsoft account is sometimes referred to simply as MSA. Or you can pay for a Copilot Pro subscription. But what about people who use Microsoft products in a business or a similar organization? Well, if you have a Microsoft 365 account that was assigned to you by your employer, school, or a government agency, then you can sign in to Copilot with that account. Now, you could go to copilot.microsoft.com, then click the Sign in button there. However, if you are working with a company, school, or government account like this, Microsoft recommends you use a different website because you will get more controls there. So you can go to microsoft365.com/chat or office.com/chat. This allows you to use the core Copilot chat tool with faster responses and enterprise-level data protection to protect your privacy when using Copilot for work-related tasks. Or just like we saw for individuals, there is a higher-level subscription that you can purchase. Or to be clear, since your company, school, or government agency manages the accounts for you and your coworkers, your organization can purchase the upgraded license. This upgraded license is called Microsoft 365 Copilot. The Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription allows users to work with Copilot inside of the office applications, including Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Teams. But it also allows people in the organization to use the chat assistant to ask questions about their coworkers, calendar events, documents, and other private information in their organization. This is known as Business Chat or BizChat. So these are the options for users in a business, enterprise, school, or a government organization. Those users can work with the core Copilot Chat Assistant with enterprise data protection, or they can upgrade to Microsoft 365 Copilot to use the Business Chat, and use Copilot inside of the Office applications. This is just a brief overview, but you can see why it's pretty important to know which accounts or subscriptions you have or may want to have before you start working with Copilot. And as we go through the rest of this workshop, we will start with the free Copilot features that are available to all users, then explore how to sign in and use some of the other features included in these higher-level accounts and subscriptions.