Enhancing Your Microsoft Teams Workspace:
Teams Premium and Microsoft 365 Copilot

Microsoft continues to develop impressive add-ons for Teams. Two add-ons with significant potential to transform your business are Teams Premium and Microsoft 365 Copilot. To help you work out which is best for you, we’ll set out their features and how they improve the core Teams experience. Plus, we explore how these tools can benefit your company across different roles and departments. 

September 24th, 2024

Power Up Your Microsoft Experience With…

Teams Premium and Microsoft 365 Copilot

“Copilot adds AI superpowers to Teams, while Teams Premium is a bigger, better, more secure, AI-enhanced Teams.”

Tailoring Teams to Your Needs: Exploring which Add-On is Right for Different Work Styles

Consider how your organisation uses Teams before choosing which add-on would be most beneficial to you. Teams Premium may be more beneficial if you host many meetings or complex online events. However, if you regularly work across multiple Microsoft 365 applications, Copilot might be better for comprehensive cross-application integration and thus a streamlined workflow.

To keep the comparisons fair, we’ll be focusing solely on Copilot’s various Teams features and functionality within this article – and not the wider Microsoft stack.

Budget is another important consideration. Teams Premium is considerably cheaper than Copilot. And Teams Premium licenses are currently discounted by 30%, making it an opportune time to consider upgrading. On the other hand, Copilot’s higher price can be justified by its advanced AI capabilities, which can significantly enhance productivity and provide deeper insights, making it a valuable investment for roles that require extensive data analysis and decision-making. 

Key Features and Example Applications of
Teams Premium and Copilot for Teams

Both add-ons offer powerful tools to help businesses enhance productivity, collaboration, security and creativity. To offer further insight, we’ve picked our top features from each to showcase why we think they can make a huge difference to any type of business. 

Teams Premium: Elevating Virtual Meetings and Events 

Teams Premium provides more functionality and advanced features on top of the Teams Standard experience, making it ideal for businesses that already rely on hosting Teams virtual communication and events. There are loads of nifty features we could talk about, but here are our top four: 

  1. Advanced virtual appointments and events. 
  2. AI intelligent recap and real-time translations. 
  3. Custom branding. 
  4. Enhanced security measures.

Customer service teams can deliver a seamless customer experience and boost their productivity with intelligent queue and appointment management, scheduling, and analytics. Attendees receive pre-appointment SMS reminders and can easily join appointments from their mobile, even if they don’t have the Teams app. 

You can host up to 50 town halls simultaneously, each with up to with up to 20,000 attendees. AI will be by your side for every meeting to auto-generate translations and summaries with speaker details, highlights and actions. Plus, by adding brand colours, logos and consistent meeting backgrounds, your organisation will have a seamless appearance and better brand recognition.   

All this, whilst safe in the knowledge that your sensitive information is safeguarded, and meetings are confidential. HR teams can discuss personal, sensitive, or confidential information without fear of data breaches. 
  

Microsoft 365 Copilot: AI-Powered Assistance in Teams 

Harness Copilot’s power of generative AI directly from Teams. From summarising and automating comms to providing expert knowledge, analytics, and creative support, Copilot simplifies, speeds up and enriches daily Teams tasks. 

  1. AI-generated summaries.
  2. Data analysis. 
  3. Task automation. 
  4. AI-powered collaboration.
     

Copilot enhances productivity at all levels within Teams. Sales can use AI to summarise large threads, multiple attachments or long documents, then craft more engaging client communications to improve conversions. Similarly, senior leaders can analyse chats and threads to check key decisions and gain actionable insights in a fraction of the time. 

Copilot also handles administrative tasks with ease. It can automatically schedule meetings and follow-ups and draft messages within the Teams app. With the time saved from the digital debt, colleagues can get more done and have more time for strategic work. 


The creative elements of GenAI will also aid collaboration across departments. Product development teams can use Copilot on a call or virtual meeting to discuss creative improvements with real-time AI suggestions. And then create notes to present to stakeholders, including tables of the pros and cons of ideas discussed in Teams. Because Copilot is context aware and uses natural language, quick, simple questions can prompt a wide range of meaningful responses.
 

Combining Teams Premium and Microsoft 365 Copilot 

Individually, they are great. But together, Teams Premium and Copilot for Teams can turbocharge organisations looking to boost productivity, deepen engagement and personalise Teams. 

  

Using both, you’ll get secure, feature-rich meetings and events coupled with AI-assisted content creation, task automation, and data analysis. For example, a marketing team could host a secure town hall meeting for up to 20,000 attendees using Teams Premium. Copilot’s AI-generated suggestions can help the speakers stimulate discussion and keep timings on track, while they analyse data in real-time using Copilot’s AI magic. 

  

So, whether you choose to upgrade Microsoft Teams with a Premium or Copilot license (or both), it’s clear they each offer significant potential improvements to make life easier across your organisation. The key is to match their powerful capabilities with your unique operational needs and objectives with Teams. Whichever you choose, their strategic integration can transform how your organisation collaborates, innovates and competes. 

Ready to enhance your Microsoft Teams experience?

Our expert team is here to help you maximise the benefits of Microsoft technologies. Whether you’re considering Teams Premium, Microsoft 365 Copilot, or both, we’ll guide you through the decision and support your implementation process. 

Contact us at modernworkplace@westcoastcloud.co.uk to transform your Teams workspace. 

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