Copilot Extensibility – A Brief Overview

Microsoft 365 Copilot Extensibility indicates an integration of the AI capabilities of the Microsoft 365 products with the other line of business applications within the organization. It provides users with personalized, context-aware assistance with every other task like sales writing, data analysis, marketing preparations, and more. Copilot is built on OpenAI’s language models and Microsoft Graph, enabling it to understand the user’s workflows, documents, and communications to offer all possible suggestions and actions.

Stack of Copilot

Once the AI infrastructures are finalized for the organization’s own requirement, either it can be a cloud-shared model or on-premises development, the next step is to choose between the options available before the orchestration layer, which is choosing the models. Copilot comes with the foundation model, but apart from that, you can choose other models available on the market or you can bring your own model.

Once the model is finalized, you can build extensions for Copilot utilizing the Orchestration layer, which represents the interface between large language models to ground the data available and execute action to bring the right process information.

Here, leveraging the Orchestration layer, Microsoft Copilot is available for users across multiple Microsoft products, including the M365 suite of apps like Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, etc.,

Copilot for Microsoft 365 is for a work profile with a license subscription to enhance productivity. This service can be extended to other applications by building a custom solution.

Types of Extensibilities

Three distinct interfaces are available for Copilot users.

1. Graph Connectors: Bring / Use the data residing on the M365 tenant
2. Standalone plugins: To add unstructured data into Microsoft Graph
3. Declarative copilots: To create a copilot for specific tasks and domain knowledge.

To build your extensions plugins, Microsoft has a wide variety of options to develop the plugin.

Such options include

1. API plugins: Works by connecting both standalone and declarative copilots by calling REST methods via OpenAPI service.
2. Message Extensions: Brings the search and action capability for Teams.
3. Actions using Copilot Studio: Connects Microsoft 365 and the Power Platform environment by categorizing into four parts
   1. Conversational actions
   2. Prompts
   3. Flows
   4. Connectors

Tools available

While building your extensions, Microsoft has given you the flexibility of building either by using the Pro-code method low code / no-code methodology or a mix and match of both options.

How do you choose the extensibility option wisely?

Making the decision on the approach is a very crucial step while developing a solution. Consider the data flow for your approach, and based on that, you can take action. The thumb rule is simple; if you are thinking about transactions both ways, it could be a CRUD operation, then choose a plugin-based approach, or if you are looking only for data that could be both unstructured and structured and only process for a response, then go for connectors.

Benefits of Extensibilities

• Customization for Specific Needs: Extensibility allows organizations to tailor Copilot’s functionality to their unique business requirements. Custom plugins, workflows, and data integrations can be built to address specific use cases, improving relevance and utility.
• Enhanced Productivity: By extending Copilot to integrate with internal systems, third-party apps, or specific datasets, businesses can automate more tasks, streamline processes, and minimize manual work, leading to increased productivity.
• Seamless Automation: By leveraging Power Automate and other tools, users can create workflows that automate repetitive tasks across different apps and platforms. The copilot becomes an intelligent assistant that initiates and manages these automations.

Summary

Microsoft 365 Copilot's extensibility enables businesses to maximize their potential, creating a more customized, productive, and efficient work environment.