DynamicsCon Live happened last week in Denver, and it was incredible. Excellent sessions, speakers, attendees and networking. You may have hazarded a guess, but copilot was a common term thrown around throughout the week (some counted 32 mentions of the term during the keynote!). I attended sessions about Copilot, or that at least mentioned it, led by experts and Microsoft leaders who work on the products themselves.

There were sessions designed to highlight the prepositional differences between completely different products:

• Copilot in Customer Service: This is an in-app feature that agents can utilize directly within Dynamics 365 for Customer Service, designed to streamline customer interactions and data handling.
• Copilot for Customer Service: An add-on license that enhances Dynamics 365’s service tables with advanced AI capabilities, including predictive analytics and deep integration with Microsoft 365 to optimize service delivery.
• Copilot in Sales: An in-app feature available within Dynamics 365 for Sales that assists sales representatives by delivering AI-generated sales insights, suggestions and content.
• Copilot for Sales: An add-on license that offers extensive AI enhancements specifically for sales tables, along with seamless integration with Teams and Outlook, enhancing productivity and collaboration across sales operations.

Attending these left me…. More confused than when I’d started.

An AI-generated image showing confusion about Copilot. 😉

Here is the hard question (which I did ask!): If my organization doesn’t have clear Customer Service/Sales boundaries, which product should my employees use?

I still don’t know the answer.

The problem is that these copilots are all essentially different products. I hypothesize that this is just temporary as they are launching new copilots to get them to market. They will likely become one copilot users access. But now, it seems that the user needs to select the correct product to use, and then to use it.

Why do I think this is a problem?

This clearly isn’t a problem for enterprise customers who have those clear boundaries in place. Sales and Customer Service are never held by the same team or person. In these environments, specialized roles mean that the segregation of copilot products aligns well with organizational structures.

However, the situation presents significant challenges for small and medium-sized businesses, where roles can overlap, and employees wear multiple hats. In such cases, the requirement to purchase separate licenses for Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Customer Service—not to mention managing different Outlook add-ins—complicates rather than simplifies workflow. (Don’t even get me started on how this all fits in with the Dynamics 365 App for Outlook!)

Each version of Copilot is tailored to specific data types, with Copilot for Sales working exclusively with sales tables, and Copilot for Customer Service limited to service tables.

This necessitates not only financial expenditure on multiple licenses but also demands the user to switch between the various apps when appropriate, remembering which copilot to use in various scenarios. A more integrated solution, possibly a unified copilot platform, would significantly streamline operations for these smaller businesses, allowing them to leverage Microsoft’s powerful AI capabilities without the logistical headache of managing disparate systems.