Microsoft 365 Copilot

MICROSOFT | 2024

*0 to 1 product

Microsoft 365 Copilot is an AI-powered productivity tool that integrates into daily Microsoft 365 apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams to help users draft content, analyze data, automate tasks, and improve collaboration.

It uses large language models and your organization's data to provide personalized assistance, responding to natural language prompts to turn words into powerful productivity tools and streamline workflows, all while protecting your sensitive data. 

M365 Copilot Product Website

Project Overview

  • Title: Microsoft 365 (M365) Copilot

  • My Role: UX Lead

  • Team: Product Manager and Engineering Team

  • Duration: 4 months

  • Impact: Owned and evolved the design of M365 Copilot Extensions, MChat, and Advanced Templates—shaping experiences showcased at Microsoft Ignite 2024.

Context & Problem Definiton

  • Background: Users needed a seamless way to create, explore, and interact with agents without running into conflicting patterns or visual identities.

  • Target Users: Anyone creating and customizing an AI agent in M365 Copilot

  • Problem Statement: How do we unify Copilot experiences across teams and products—ensuring consistency, usability, and scalability—while also delivering polished designs for key launches?

  • Constraints: Working on a high visibility product with multiple teams and stakeholders involved and operating with a fast approaching deadline

Solution

  • Designed an embedded authoring experience: Allowed users to create and edit Copilot scenarios directly within their workflow, reducing friction and context-switching. This streamlined experience increased efficiency, built user trust through in-context customization, and accelerated adoption by making advanced Copilot functionality more approachable.

  • Designed a template experience: Pre-built, customizable starting points that let users quickly create their own Copilot experiences without needing to design everything from scratch.

Impact

  • Lowered barriers to entry by enabling non-technical users to quickly create Copilot experiences with pre-built templates.

  • Accelerated adoption through ready-to-use, customizable scenarios that showcase immediate value.

  • Reduced friction and context-switching by embedding authoring directly into user workflows.

  • Increased efficiency and confidence with in-context customization that felt seamless and intuitive.

  • Built user trust by making advanced Copilot functionality more approachable and transparent.

  • Supported scalability by providing consistent, extensible patterns that organizations can tailor to their unique needs.

Embedded Authoring

Embedded authoring is when users can create, edit, or configure content directly within the context of the product or workflow they’re already in, rather than being redirected to a separate tool or interface.

Instead of going to a separate “builder” app to configure an AI Agent, embedded authoring allows users to set rules, author prompts, or adjust logic directly inside Microsoft Teams, Planner, or Copilot Studio where they’re already working.

Creating a new agent

Going to M365 Copilot to open and begin using the newly created agent

The option to build an agent by describing it or selecting a template to start with

Success message

Selecting a template

Loading the template and customizing it with the chat

Customizing the template’s knowledge sources and actions for added robustness

Customizing template starter prompts on the left and viewing the changes live on the right

Viewing all the template changes before creating a custom agent

Creating the agent

Copilot Templates

With a template experience, users can define prompts, workflows, or data connections, and can extend templates or adapt them to specific business scenarios.

Copilot templates lower barriers to entry by making it easy for non-technical users to build and deploy Copilots, while also accelerating adoption by helping customers see value quickly through practical, ready-to-use scenarios. They ensure consistency with standardized patterns aligned to Microsoft’s design and security practices, and support extensibility by allowing teams to customize and scale Copilots to meet their unique organizational needs.

Selecting a template to use in Copilot Studio

Viewing available templates in Copilot Studio

Installing the template

Setting up the template

Installation failure message

Installation success message

Viewing list of all agents that have been created with a template

Viewing newly created agent