Overview
Learn about Microsoft 365 Copilot—Premium. This generative AI tool within UO Microsoft 365 applications is available on a subscription basis to UO faculty and staff. It provides some safeguards.
What is Microsoft 365 Copilot—Premium?
- Microsoft 365 Copilot—Premium is an AI assistant within the Microsoft 365 desktop and web applications.
- This protected version of Copilot is available through a subscription available only to faculty, staff, and researchers.
Accessing Microsoft 365 Copilot—Premium
Purchasing a subscription
- Microsoft 365 Copilot—Premium adds Copilot to Microsoft Office productivity apps such as Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams.
- It also adds a Work IQ button to the Copilot Chat website.
- For more information and to purchase a subscription, see the AI Subscription-based Licenses Purchase Request form.
Data protections in Copilot
Our protected version of Microsoft 365 Copilot—Premium is the only AI tool approved for use with moderate-risk (“amber”) or high-risk (“red”) data.
- This approval follows a review by the university’s Information Security Office, AI Council, and AI Executive Steering Committee.
- Data you enter is encrypted and isn’t used to train AI models outside the UO.
- The UO’s existing agreement with Microsoft provides extensive protections for information entered into Copilot Chat, SharePoint, and other Microsoft services.
As long as you're logged in with your UO account, your interactions with Copilot:
- Will be encrypted.
- Won't train any external large language models (LLMs).
The data you input won't leave our organization.
- Microsoft Copilot does learn from our organization, but only uses UO data to train Copilot for the UO.
- UO data is and will remain UO data.
Learn more in the More information section.
What about other AI tools?
You must still follow all applicable rules and guidelines for data handling when using other AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude among others. Notably:
SharePoint safe data handling in Copilot
Do you manage a SharePoint site that stores sensitive, regulated, or restricted-use material? Please consider requesting Restricted Content Discovery for your site by submitting a ticket at Microsoft Office 365 Support Request.
That prevents the site's contents from appearing in Microsoft 365 Copilot—Premium responses and organization-wide search results. (UO's standard Copilot Chat can't access your site's contents.)
For details on how this setting works, please see Restrict discovery of SharePoint sites and content documentation.
Using Microsoft 365 Copilot—Premium
Below are some examples of how Microsoft 365 Copilot—Premium works.
You’ll also be able use Microsoft 365 Copilot—Premium in Outlook to interact with your inbox, calendar, meetings, chats, and enterprise data using prompts such as:
- "Which unread emails are the most important? Summarize them, include relevant context from my chats and documents, and prioritize my responses."
- “Let me know when my next meeting with my skip-level manager is. Help me draft an agenda based on my current projects and create a first draft of a pre-read.”
- "Write a welcome email for a new hire. Include what they should do in their first four weeks, an org chart for the team with details on each person's role and current projects, and any documents they should review."
- “Arrange a meeting with /name to discuss [project or customer name].”
For more information, see Chat with Copilot in Outlook (Microsoft Copilot)
You'll be able to use Microsoft 365 Copilot—Premium in Word to create documents from simple prompts to reformatting content into different formats like making a list into a table.
- You can draft by using the Draft with Copilot feature with a simple sentence or a more complex request with outlines, notes, or referenced files.
- Once a prompt as been used, you can modify it, have Copilot rewrite your content or its generated content, or overwrite existing content when you want.
- You can highlight text in an existing document to have Copilot transform it into something new.
You'll be able to use Microsoft 365 Copilot—Premium in Excel to create and edit workbook files from simple prompts.
- Editing with Copilot is great for complex, multi-step tasks like reshaping data, merging sheets, or building reports with multiple elements.
- Note: For complex requests, Copilot may take a few minutes to generate an initial response and refine it, while it's running, you’ll see its reasoning in the pane.
- After you submit a prompt, Copilot analyzes your task and creates a step-by-step plan. It works directly in your document to carry out that plan, review the results, and evaluate whether the outcome matches your intent.
You'll be able to use Microsoft 365 Copilot—Premium in Teams to bring together data from your documents, presentations, email, calendar, notes, and contacts. You can also find and use info that's buried in documents or lost in conversations.
- You can prompt Copilot to summarize meeting notes with headings and action items.
- When recordings are available, you can view audio and video recaps of meetings for up to 120 days after their completion.
- You can catch up on what you missed by asking Copilot to summarize chats, channel discussions, and meeting transcripts and chats.
Limitations
Note: Limitations and features are subject to the UO software license agreement with Microsoft. While some features may be available, some may not be yet.
While Microsoft 365 Copilot—Premium is powerful, its presence within each of the Microsoft 365 applications will be limited to certain capabilities within each app. New features are added frequently.
See Microsoft 365 Copilot help & learning (Microsoft Support) for ideas.
Responsible use
Any generative AI tool may produce unexpected results or errors. Users should verify the accuracy of the information provided.
Variants of Copilot
More information
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