Set up Copilot

Microsoft 365 Copilot is the chat-plus-agents layer built into the Microsoft 365 apps your company already pays for (Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, SharePoint). Every skill in this Playbook ships with a Copilot variant so a Microsoft-shop team can run the same workflows without bringing in OpenAI or Anthropic.

Why pick Copilot over Codex/Cowork. Zero new vendor approvals. Files stay inside your tenant on OneDrive / SharePoint, governed by the same Purview policies you already use for Office. IT can roll it out per seat through the same admin center they use for Teams. If your company is locked into Microsoft 365, that's usually the deciding factor.

Before you start

You'll need:

• A Microsoft 365 Copilot license assigned to your account by IT. This is a paid add-on on top of your normal M365 license. See the License section below if you need to make the case to IT first.
• OneDrive for Business active for your account (Copilot needs OneDrive to ground prompts on local file uploads).
• SharePoint Online in use at your company (Copilot uses it for organizational knowledge grounding). (Minimum requirements to deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot — Microsoft Learn)
• A modern browser, or the Microsoft 365 Copilot desktop app, or Teams. Mobile works for chat but not for Agent Builder.

License

Copilot is a paid add-on. Two SKUs as of May 2026:

Plan	Cost	Use it if…
Microsoft 365 Copilot	$30/user/month, billed annually	Enterprise plans (M365 E3, E5) or Business Standard / Business Premium. The mainstream SKU.
Microsoft 365 Copilot for Business	$21/user/month	SMB-targeted SKU, organizations under 300 seats.

Both require an eligible base M365 license. (Microsoft 365 Copilot Pricing & Licensing — EPC Group, 2026)

The procurement angle. Microsoft reported 15 million paid Copilot seats by Q1 2026 (160% YoY growth) — your IT team has almost certainly already evaluated this. The conversation isn't "should we buy Copilot," it's "can I have a seat." Use the ROI math in your AI Readiness Snapshot to make the case.

Step 1 — Confirm your seat is assigned

1. Open microsoft365.com/chat in a browser (or open Microsoft 365 Copilot from the app launcher in Teams).
2. If you see a Copilot compose box at the bottom of the screen with a sparkle icon, you're licensed. Skip to Step 2.
3. If you see a "Get Copilot" upgrade prompt or the chat is missing entirely, your seat hasn't been assigned. Email IT and ask them to "assign a Microsoft 365 Copilot license to my account." This takes them about two minutes in the M365 admin center.

Step 2 — Pick your surface

Copilot runs in five places. You don't pick one and stick with it — different skills land naturally in different surfaces.

Surface	Open from	Best for
Copilot Chat (web)	microsoft365.com/chat	Skills that produce a standalone deliverable (reports, briefs, lists). The default.
Copilot in Teams	Teams left sidebar → Copilot	Skills that pull from chat history, channel files, or meeting transcripts.
Copilot in Outlook	Outlook → top ribbon → Copilot	Drafting and summarizing email, scheduled prompts that email the result.
Copilot in Word / Excel / PowerPoint	Inside the file → Home tab → Copilot	Skills that operate on the open document. Less common for these skills; useful for proofreading and reformat passes.
Standalone Copilot app	Download for Windows/Mac	A dedicated window without a browser tab. Same chat as the web.

For most skills in this Playbook, the Copilot Chat web surface at microsoft365.com/chat is the right place to start.

Step 3 — Send your first message

In the Message Copilot compose box at the bottom of the chat screen, paste:

Hello. I just got a Copilot license. Reply with one sentence so I know it’s working.

Press Enter. Copilot responds within a few seconds. Your license and tenant configuration are verified.

Step 4 — Practice attaching a file

Most skills in this Playbook hand Copilot a file to read. Copilot has two attach paths — one for files on your computer, one for files in OneDrive / SharePoint.

Local file (from your computer):

1. In the Message Copilot compose box, click the Add content icon (the paperclip-style icon on the left).
2. Choose Upload images and files.
3. Pick the file. A copy uploads to your OneDrive for Business automatically.

Cloud file (already in OneDrive or SharePoint):

1. Click the Add content icon.
2. Choose Attach cloud files. The OneDrive picker opens.
3. Browse to the file (or to a SharePoint site) and select it. You can attach an entire folder too, not just one file. (Add content to Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat prompts — Microsoft Support)

Reference limit. You can reference up to ten files or pages within a SharePoint site in a single prompt. (Using Context IQ — Microsoft Support) If a skill needs more than ten inputs, package them into a SharePoint folder and reference the folder; or pre-stage a summary file in OneDrive and reference that instead.

Once the file is attached, type: Describe this file's structure in three sentences. Press Enter. The attach flow is verified.

Step 5 — Load your first skill (option A: paste-and-run, simplest)

For one-off runs or while you're still learning Copilot, the fastest path is to paste a skill's prompt straight into chat.

1. Open any skill page in this Playbook.
2. In the section called The prompt, click Copy.
3. Switch to Copilot Chat. Click New chat in the left sidebar (always start fresh — context bleeds between skills on a long thread).
4. Attach every file in the skill's Inputs to attach list (use Step 4 above).
5. Paste the prompt body and press Enter.

That's the loop. Run, review, edit. Skip the rest of this page if you're only running a skill or two.

Step 6 — Save the skill as a reusable agent (option B: for skills you'll run more than twice)

Copilot's equivalent of a saved Skill / Project is a declarative agent built in Agent Builder. The agent stores the instructions, knowledge files, and starter prompts so you don't paste them every time.

1. In Copilot Chat (web or Teams), click the Agents icon in the right rail. (Agent Builder is available from microsoft365.com/chat, office.com/chat, and Teams Desktop/Web — not mobile.) (Agent Builder in Microsoft 365 Copilot — Microsoft Learn)
2. Click + New agent.
3. Name it after the Playbook skill (e.g., Monthly distributor scorecard).
4. In Describe, type a one-sentence description of what the agent does. Copilot drafts the rest.
5. In the Instructions field, paste the Playbook skill’s prompt body. The cap is 8,000 characters — every skill in this Playbook fits comfortably. (Quotas and limits — Microsoft Copilot Studio)
6. In Knowledge, attach the reference files the skill expects on every run (e.g., the company glossary, the rebate schedule). Up to 500 files, 512 MB per file. (Day-of inputs like "this month's sell-through CSV" are attached at chat time, not as agent knowledge.)
7. Click Create.

The agent appears in your sidebar. To run later: click the agent → attach the month’s inputs in chat → type Run the skill.

Share with your team. From the agent screen, click Share → pick a security group or named colleagues. They’ll see it under Agents in their Copilot Chat. Sharing org-wide is fine if your IT allows it. (Agent Builder governance — Microsoft Learn)

(Bonus) Run a skill on a schedule

Copilot supports scheduled prompts natively in Teams, Office.com chat, and Outlook (generally available since January 2026). Up to 10 scheduled prompts per user. (Manage Scheduled Prompts for Microsoft 365 Copilot — Microsoft Learn · Schedule Copilot prompts — Microsoft Support)

1. In Copilot Chat, find or paste the prompt you want to run on a cadence (or open the saved agent from Step 6).
2. Hover over the prompt → Schedule this prompt.
3. Pick the cadence (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, custom) and the time. Check Email me the result if you want the output dropped in your Outlook inbox.
4. Save.

Where the output goes: scheduled-prompt results appear in the Conversations section of the Copilot Chat sidebar, bolded with a clock icon. If you ticked Email me, the result also arrives by email at the scheduled time. See the standard Scheduled tasks playbook section for which skills to schedule vs. run on demand.

The Power Automate caveat. Microsoft replaced Power Automate as the backend for scheduled prompts in early 2026. If you (or a teammate) scheduled prompts during the 2025 preview, those legacy schedules still run inside Power Automate — you won’t see them in the new scheduled-prompts UI. New schedules use the native Copilot scheduler. (Microsoft Learn)

(Bonus) Share a prompt with your team

Don’t want a full agent? You can publish a single prompt to your org’s Prompt Gallery for one-click reuse.

1. Compose or open the prompt in Copilot Chat.
2. Click the Save prompt icon on the prompt bubble.
3. Choose Share with my org → pick the audience (groups, individuals).

Org admins can see usage analytics on shared prompts via the M365 admin center. (Understand Prompt Gallery — Microsoft Learn)

When something goes wrong

• "I don’t see the Copilot icon anywhere." Your seat isn’t licensed yet, or IT has scoped Copilot to a group you’re not in. Confirm with IT that a Microsoft 365 Copilot license is on your account in the admin center.
• "Copilot says it can’t see the file I attached." The file uploaded but Copilot is grounding on something else. Start a new chat (always one chat per skill run), re-attach, and add to your message: Use only the attached files. Do not reference outside data. If the file is in SharePoint, check the URL is from your tenant — Copilot blocks files from other tenants.
• "The Agent Builder ‘Knowledge’ tab is greyed out." Your IT admin has disabled web/external knowledge sources for Agent Builder via cloud policy. Use SharePoint files as knowledge instead — those are always allowed. (Agent Builder known limitations — Microsoft Learn)
• "My scheduled prompt didn’t run." Two common causes: (a) Optional connected experiences is disabled in your account’s privacy settings — re-enable it under Outlook → File → Account Privacy. (b) The scheduled prompt is one of your old 2025-preview schedules; those still run in Power Automate, check there.
• "Excel attachments come back with garbled numbers." Save the spreadsheet as CSV (File → Save As → CSV UTF-8) and re-attach. Copilot is more reliable on CSVs than on Excel files with merged cells, pivot tables, or macros — same caveat as the other two runtimes.
• "My agent works for me but not my teammate." The auto-share on SharePoint files only works for specific security groups, not "everyone." Manually grant your teammate access to the SharePoint files the agent references. (Agent Builder known limitations — Microsoft Learn)
• "The output is too generic / sounds like a press release." Copilot defaults to neutral corporate prose more aggressively than Codex or Cowork. Add to your message: Do not use bullet points. Do not use the word "leverage." Match the voice of <name a doc>. Then attach the doc.

When to graduate to Copilot Studio

Agent Builder covers everything in this Playbook. If you later need an agent that calls an external API (a non-Microsoft CRM, a custom pricing service, a partner ERP), graduate to Copilot Studio — the full agent platform. Same agents, plus actions that hit external services and agent flows that chain steps together. (Copilot Studio overview — Microsoft Learn)

That’s out of scope for this Playbook — talk to NunnCurtis Labs (or your IT team’s power-platform admin) when you get there.

Where to go next

• AI terminology — what "skill," "thread," "context window," and "agent" mean in this Playbook.
• Using skills — the four-step pattern every skill in this Playbook follows.
• Scheduled tasks — which skills are worth scheduling vs. running on demand.