Copilot Lives in Office. What Would a Replacement Need?

The objection is right. It just does not say yet which part of the integration counts.

“Integrated” means four things: where the button sits, which data the model sees, under which permissions it sees them, and who runs the whole thing. A replacement only has to cover the parts your people actually use. Where to ask about it is shown in Microsoft’s own usage report, broken down by app.

Every alternative to Copilot meets one objection that is hard to dismiss: “Copilot is integrated into Office.” The point is: another solution may be cheaper. But it does not sit where the work happens.

The objection is fair. In Outlook, Copilot summarises an email thread without anyone copying text. In Teams, a summary appears in the meeting chat after a recorded and transcribed meeting. In Word, it writes where the document is being written. A cheaper request to a language model replaces none of these workflows on its own.

So the question is not whether the integration is worth something. It is: which part of it does your company use? To answer that, “integrated” has to be taken apart first.

(Microsoft is renaming the product: Microsoft 365 Copilot becomes Microsoft Copilot. This article means the paid version for businesses.)

Four things “integrated” can mean

1. The place

The button sits in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams. Nobody switches windows. This is the visible part of the integration.

2. The data

Copilot pulls content through Microsoft Graph. According to Microsoft, that means documents, emails, calendars, chats, meetings and contacts. On top comes the working context, such as the meeting someone is in right now, or the email exchange on a topic. An answer can therefore draw on material nobody uploaded on purpose.

3. The permissions

According to Microsoft, Copilot only surfaces data the person is at least allowed to view. The search index behind it keeps the same boundary. For encrypted files, for example via sensitivity labels, the person’s usage rights apply.

That sounds obvious. It is also the part where a replacement has the most work to do. More on that below.

4. The operation

Copilot runs under the existing Microsoft 365 commitments. Prompts and responses are stored under the same contractual terms as the other content there. Administrators can find them through Content search and set retention policies in Microsoft Purview. For users in the EU, traffic stays within the EU Data Boundary, according to Microsoft. Microsoft names one exception itself: models provided by Anthropic are currently excluded from it.

Whoever replaces Copilot needs an answer of their own for each of these four points. But only for the points that are actually needed.

Where your people use Copilot is in the usage report

Microsoft’s Copilot usage report in the Microsoft 365 admin center shows active users per app. The table below it lists, for every licensed person, the last activity date per app. Listed separately are Teams, Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Loop and Copilot Chat. The timeframe can be set to 7, 28, 90 or 180 days.

An intentional action counts as active, such as a submitted prompt. Merely opening the Copilot pane does not count. The report can be exported, and user names are hidden by default. That is enough for this question: what you are after is the distribution across apps, not a list of individuals. How to involve the works council in this is covered in Measuring AI Usage Without Sidelining the Works Council.

Three patterns can be told apart. Each is a reason to ask, not proof:

• Usage sits mainly in Copilot Chat. The work happens in a chat window, not in the document. The place probably matters little then. The report also separates chat with work data (“work”) from chat with web search (“web”). That shows which mode was chosen. It does not show whether a task really needs company data.
• Usage sits mainly in Teams and Outlook. That can point to meeting summaries and email threads. But Microsoft also counts Copilot Chat opened inside Teams or Outlook there. A high number in Teams does not yet mean that meeting features are used.
• Usage sits in Word, Excel or PowerPoint. A lot depends on what exactly is being done. The report combines all features of an app.

In all three cases: the report assigns usage to apps, not to features or tasks. A few conversations with the people who use Copilot clarify what is behind it. Whether the result was any good is not in the report either. More on that in Copilot: What the Admin Center Shows.

What a replacement would need, part by part

The place: solvable, with development effort

Microsoft itself offers a way for other solutions into Office: Office Add-ins. They add custom buttons and task panes to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote. They run on Windows, Mac, iPad and in the browser. Administrators can deploy them centrally across the organisation. Teams is not among them. For Teams there are separate Teams apps, which Microsoft documents on their own.

So a replacement can sit where the work happens. But it has to be developed, deployed and maintained for that, and once more separately for Teams.

The data: reachable, with consent

Through the Microsoft Graph interface, a third-party application can also reach mail, calendars, files and Teams messages. For that it needs permissions. If it acts on behalf of a signed-in person, that person may consent themselves, depending on the permission and the company’s policy. The application then never sees more than that person. If it acts without a signed-in person, an administrator has to consent.

Meeting transcripts show where this hits limits. An application can retrieve transcripts of Teams meetings, with its own permission. On top, two settings in the Teams admin center control access. If access through the interface is switched off, the application gets not a single transcript. If speaker attribution is switched off, the transcript no longer says who said what. A meeting summary built as a replacement stands or falls with these settings.

The permissions: the hardest part

There are two ways here.

The first: the application queries Microsoft’s search on behalf of the signed-in person. Then that person’s permissions apply. Microsoft states that search results are scoped to the access control of the individual items. A person cannot find more through search than they could open anyway. The price: the application only finds what Microsoft’s search finds.

The second: the application keeps its own search index over the documents. That gives more control over what is found. But then the index has to carry the permissions of every document and update them on every change. If a person loses access, the very next answer must no longer use the document.

For both ways: if sharing in SharePoint is too broad, a replacement finds the same things Copilot does. Microsoft itself points out that permissions in Microsoft 365 have to be right. The problem moves along with the switch.

The operation: to be set up anew

What Microsoft governs in the existing contract has to be described anew for the replacement. Where do requests run? Which model provider sees which data? Who reads logs, how long are they kept, and how are they deleted?

That is no argument against a replacement. But it is work that belongs in every honest comparison. How it goes into the cost calculation is covered in What Switching AI Solutions Really Costs.

When the integration tips the balance

If the report and the conversations show that meeting summaries and email threads carry the usage, the integration is the core of the product. A replacement would then have to replicate exactly the parts that take the most work: transcripts under the settings the company chose, correct permissions, a governed operation. Then there is a strong case for staying with Copilot. The open question is mainly whether all paid licences are used. More in Paid Per Seat, Used Per Task.

If most of the work happens in chat, the objection carries less weight. Then what counts is which tasks are done there and which model does them well enough. How to measure that is in What Share of AI Tasks Needs the Most Expensive Model.

If the picture is mixed, the decision does not have to be the same for everyone. Licences for the groups whose work depends on features in Teams and Outlook, and another solution for tasks without an Office connection, do not rule each other out.

“Copilot is integrated into Office” is therefore not, on its own, an argument for or against a switch. It is a list of four points. The usage report shows where to ask. The people who work with it tell you which points count.

Frequently asked questions

Can Copilot’s Office integration be replicated? Partly. With Office Add-ins, another solution can sit in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Through Microsoft Graph it can reach mail, calendars, files and Teams messages once the required permissions are granted. The hard part is permissions and operation: every answer has to respect the same access rights as Microsoft 365 itself, and storage, logs and the data path have to be set up anew.

How do I see which part of the integration is used? A first hint comes from the Copilot usage report in the Microsoft 365 admin center. For every licensed person it lists the last activity date per app: Teams, Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Loop and Copilot Chat. It assigns usage to apps, not to features. Which feature and which task are behind it, conversations with the people who use Copilot clarify.

When does it make sense to stay with Copilot? When the features in use mainly concern meetings in Teams and email threads in Outlook. Then the integration is the core of the product, and a replacement would have to replicate exactly the parts that take the most work: transcripts under the settings the company chose, correct permissions and a governed operation. The open question is then mainly whether all paid licences are used.

Sources

• Access through Microsoft Graph, data surfaced only with at least view permission, search index with the same boundary, usage rights for encrypted content, storage, Content search and Purview, EU Data Boundary with the exception of Anthropic models, renaming to Microsoft Copilot: Microsoft Learn, Data, Privacy, and Security for Microsoft Copilot
• Usage report: last activity date per app, timeframes, definition of “active”, split between chat “work” and “web”, summaries in Outlook and Teams, hidden user names: Microsoft Learn, Microsoft Copilot usage report
• Office Add-ins: supported apps, platforms, central deployment, Teams apps as a separate route: Microsoft Learn, Office Add-ins platform overview
• Delegated and application permissions, who can consent: Microsoft Learn, Overview of Microsoft Graph permissions
• Search on behalf of the signed-in user, results scoped to access control: Microsoft Learn, Use the Microsoft Search API to query data
• Teams meeting transcripts through Microsoft Graph, permissions, settings for interface access and speaker attribution: Microsoft Learn, Get callTranscript

Related: Copilot: What the Admin Center Shows, Paid Per Seat, Used Per Task and What Switching AI Solutions Really Costs.