Executive Summary
- ChatGPT is one of the most powerful AI tools out there, but what if you could have your own version trained on your organisation’s data? That’s what Microsoft Copilot Studio aims to deliver.
- With Microsoft Copilot Studio, you’re able to build, design, and deploy a chatbot powered by the same GPT models which run ChatGPT, then publish them across websites, mobile apps, Microsoft Teams, and elsewhere.
- Microsoft Copilot Studio is available now and priced at £164.40 (ex.VAT) per month for 25,000 messages per month.
Introduction
Few technologies have had as large – or as rapid – of an impact as generative AI.
Since November 2022, and the launch of ChatGPT, AI has quickly become the world’s biggest buzzword, finding its way into all sorts of products and conversations.
As one of the biggest investors of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, Microsoft has a large foothold in the AI space – and it shows. We’ve already covered the latest AI updates with Microsoft 365 Copilot, but this product line is evolving fast.
With that in mind, let’s look at Microsoft’s new Copilot Studio and how it can help you build ChatGPT dedicated to your business.
What is Microsoft Copilot Studio?
If you’re already familiar with either Microsoft Copilot or Microsoft 365 Copilot, (a quick guide here if you’re not), then you’ll know how powerful these generative AI tools can be.
Just one quick conversation and you can answer practically any question using natural language – like search on steroids. But what if you could improve the experience so that the chatbot didn’t just help you search, but also answer questions about your business? Or had access to your company’s data so your employees didn’t need to go searching? With Microsoft Copilot Studio, that’s what you get.
Microsoft Copilot Studio is a low-code tool which enables you to either customise Microsoft 365 Copilot (for use across the core Microsoft apps), or even create your own chatbots to be published in your own apps or as a local web app for your team. Low-code means you don’t need any experience in coding to built out copilot workflows, working in a similar way to the existing Power Apps service.
You can daisy-chain data sources, AI plugins, customised GPTs to create an experience which is essentially ChatGPT built around your business.
How (and where) can your Copilot be used?
As we mentioned above, Copilot Studio allows you to create copilots in two distinct ways:
- By extending the existing Microsoft 365 Copilot which appears within apps like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. In this way, your team can continue to use copilot as they already do, but it’ll have additional resources and knowledge to draw upon which is unique to your business.
- By building your own copilot from scratch within Microsoft Copilot Studio. With the low-code environment, this is as simple as dragging and dropping connectors and giving natural language explanations of how the copilot should act and respond. There are currently 1100 prebuilt plugins which enable connections to apps you may already use, such as SAP and Workday.
Once you’ve designed your copilot within Copilot Studio, you can test in extensively, share it with colleagues for feedback, and then – when you’re ready – publish it to a web app in a couple of clicks.
After that, you can also use in-depth Analytics offering valuable intelligence (like engagement rate, total sessions, abandon rate, and so on) to help you understand how your users are interacting with your copilot.
Building in Teams vs. the Copilot Studio web app
There are two distinct ways to create a copilot using Copilot Studio: a standalone web application and a Microsoft Teams app.
In both cases, much of the functionality is the same, but the Teams app will create what are known as ‘classic’ bot built on the Power Virtual Agents platform (more on that shortly). Importantly, the chatbots built using the Teams app will be available only within Teams – so they’re more suitable for internal-facing bots accessible only to your team.
For the full suite of Copilot Studio features, and the ability to publish chatbots to external web apps, you’ll need to use the dedicated Copilot Studio app found at copilotstudio.microsoft.com.
Isn’t this the same as Power Virtual Agents?
If you’ve been a Microsoft 365 subscriber for a while, you might have noticed a similarity between Copilot Studio and a previous featured called Power Virtual Agents. An astute observation, indeed, because Copilot Studio is essentially the successor to Power Virtual Agents (PVA).
Originally announced in 2019, PVA was designed to help build chatbots using a low-code, step-by-step workflow. Sound familiar? But it was created before the huge leap in generative AI we’ve seen since late 2022. In light of Microsoft’s investments in AI since the launch of PVA, it makes sense that PVA now become part of Copilot Studio. You can read more about this change in the company’s blog post from November 2023.
How much does Microsoft Copilot Studio cost in the UK?
As explained on Microsoft’s UK Copilot Studio page, the current price for access to the app is £164.40 per month, and this allows for 25,000 messages to be processed by the chatbot.
Not sure if you really need Copilot Studio? You can also opt for a free trial to get a sense of the feature set before taking the plunge.
For more help with Microsoft Copilot Studio, just ask your Get Support account manager, or call our team today on 01865 594 000.
