10. Glossary

Agent — A Copilot experience scoped to a specific kind of job, with its own instructions and knowledge. Agents are either prebuilt by Microsoft (Researcher, Analyst, the coaches) or custom-built by an organization. Distinct from general Copilot Chat and from Copilot Cowork.

Agent Builder — The no-code tool inside the Microsoft Copilot (formerly Microsoft 365 Copilot) app for creating lightweight custom agents, typically Q&A over organizational knowledge for yourself or a small team. Governed in the Microsoft 365 admin center. See Copilot Studio.

Agent Store — The catalog of agents (opened from All agents in the Copilot navigation) where users can add Microsoft-built and other agents their admin allows. Not exclusively for IT administrators.

Analyst — A Microsoft-built agent for data analysis across spreadsheets and other data files: statistics, trends, outliers, charts and tables.

Citation check — A verification method in which you confirm that specific claims in AI-generated content trace back to a real, accessible source.

Connector (Microsoft 365 Copilot connector) — An admin-enabled bridge that lets Copilot reach data outside Microsoft 365 (for example Salesforce, ServiceNow or Box). Synced connectors index data into Microsoft Graph, and federated connectors fetch it live. Read-only by default and permission-trimmed. Formerly called Graph connectors.

Copilot Chat — The general-purpose chat experience for drafting, summarizing and answering. Available at no extra cost with qualifying work or school plans. Renamed Microsoft Copilot Chat in October 2026 (see Microsoft Copilot).

Copilot Cowork (Microsoft Copilot Cowork) — An agentic system that carries out multi-step work across Microsoft 365 (sending emails, scheduling meetings, creating documents, posting in Teams) with your approval before each sensitive action. Requires a Microsoft Copilot license plus usage-based billing.

Copilot memory — Copilot's personalization, made up of saved memories, details inferred from chat history, and custom instructions. Stored in your Exchange mailbox. In preview. Deleting a chat doesn't delete memories derived from it.

Copilot Pages — An editable, shareable canvas created from a Copilot response, opened with the pencil button. Shared links open in Loop. Collaborators see the Page, not your chat. Distinct from SharePoint pages.

Copilot Studio — A separate web portal for makers and developers to build custom agents for a department, the whole organization or external customers, including workflows, approvals and custom connectors. Governed in the Power Platform admin center. Prebuilt agents such as Researcher can't be extended in it.

Custom skill (SKILL.md) — A user-created Cowork skill: a SKILL.md file (YAML name and description plus Markdown instructions) stored in OneDrive under /Documents/Cowork/skills/. Discovered at the start of each session. Microsoft doesn't validate custom skills.

DLP (Data Loss Prevention) — Microsoft Purview policies that detect and restrict the movement or exposure of sensitive information. A DLP policy for the Copilot location can exclude protected content from what Copilot processes and outputs.

Fabrication (Hallucination) — AI-generated content that is fluent and confident but factually incorrect. A structural characteristic of language models, not a rare exception.

Facilitator — A Microsoft agent for scheduled Teams meetings that takes real-time notes, manages the agenda and timers, captures tasks and answers questions in the meeting chat. Adding it requires a Copilot license. Not supported in channel meetings, instant meetings or calls.

GCSE — Goal, Context, Source, Expectations: the four components of an effective Microsoft Copilot prompt. Only the goal is required. Expectations covers the format, length, tone and audience you want.

Grounding — Anchoring AI responses to specific, verifiable sources (documents, files, web data, work data) provided at inference time. Reduces fabrication risk for topics covered in the source.

Intelligent recap — AI-generated meeting notes and tasks, chapters, speaker timeline and markers added to a Teams meeting's recap. Requires Teams Premium or a Copilot license, and a recorded or transcribed meeting of at least 5 minutes. Distinct from a verbatim transcript.

Large Language Model (LLM) — An AI model trained on large amounts of text to predict and generate language. The underlying technology powering Microsoft Copilot.

Microsoft 365 Copilot — The former name of Microsoft Copilot, the licensed Copilot product (the add-on license, labeled Premium). The exam outline still uses it in objective titles.

Microsoft Copilot — The licensed Copilot product (formerly Microsoft 365 Copilot) that adds Work IQ, prebuilt agents and other capabilities; "Microsoft Copilot Chat" is the former Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. Same product, license and controls; only the name and web address changed. A personal Microsoft account also has a consumer Copilot app, which has none of the enterprise protections, so check which account is signed in.

Microsoft Graph — Microsoft's unified data layer that connects Microsoft 365 services, letting Copilot access emails, calendar, files and Teams data within permission boundaries.

Microsoft Purview — Microsoft's compliance and data governance platform, including sensitivity labels and DLP policies that integrate with Copilot.

Notebook (Copilot Notebook) — A persistent AI workspace that groups related chats, files and other references and grounds Copilot on them. Shared with edit access only, with no groups and no external sharing.

Over-reliance — An AI risk in which a user trusts AI-generated output without appropriate human review, particularly for high-stakes or externally facing content, or by approving Cowork actions without reading them.

Permission inheritance — Copilot's behavior of respecting the user's existing Microsoft 365 permissions. Copilot, agents and Cowork can't surface content the user can't already access.

Plugin (Cowork) — An add-on from the Microsoft 365 App Store that gives Cowork extra skills and connectors for a third-party system (for example a CRM). Admin-deployed plugins can't be removed by users.

Prompt Gallery — Where you find Microsoft-suggested prompts, your own prompts and prompts shared with your teams (Suggested, Your prompts and Teams tabs). Sharing a prompt uses Share to team.

Prompt injection — An AI risk in which malicious instructions embedded in content Copilot reads (documents, emails, web pages) manipulate its behavior or output.

Researcher — A Microsoft-built agent for complex, multi-step research across the web and your work content, producing a source-cited report. Can't be customized, and can't process images in input documents.

Save (prompt) — Bookmarking a prompt so you can rerun it on demand. Saved prompts are private to you. Doesn't automate execution.

Schedule (prompt) — Having Copilot run a prompt automatically at set times. In Copilot Chat this requires a license and allows up to 10 scheduled prompts. Cowork allows up to 25 and also supports event triggers.

Semantic index — The Microsoft 365 intelligence layer that understands the meaning of content across your environment, enabling relevant Copilot responses from organizational data.

Sensitivity label — A Microsoft Purview classification applied to documents and emails that governs how content can be shared, accessed and referenced, including by Copilot. Cowork shows the highest sensitivity label used in a session.

Share (prompt) — Making a prompt available to your team through Prompt Gallery (Share to team).

Skill (Cowork) — A playbook Cowork loads for one type of task, such as Email, Scheduling, Word or Deep Research. Cowork has 14 built-in skills and supports custom skills.

Tenant boundary — The logical boundary of an organization's Microsoft 365 environment. Microsoft Copilot processes data within this boundary.

Transcript (meeting) — A verbatim text record of what was said in a Teams meeting. Distinct from the AI-generated Intelligent recap.

Work IQ — The workplace intelligence layer that lets Copilot and agents reason over your work context: emails, files, meetings, calendar, chats, relationships and connected business data. Controlled by the Work IQ button, which is on by default for licensed users. Turning it off doesn't turn off personalization.