Copilot Notebooks are a new AI-powered feature within Microsoft 365, launched in 2025 as part of the Copilot update announced at Microsoft Build. They are designed to transform how you manage and interact with information by combining notes, files, chats and meeting records into a single, intelligent workspace.
With Copilot Notebooks, users can now centralise documents, emails, and notes, while making the most out of artificial intelligence to generate insights and summaries. This development not only simplifies daily workflows but also reflects Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to advancing human-AI collaboration in business environments.
The main advantage of Copilot Notebooks lies in its workspace design. Users experience less context switching, leading to improved efficiency. AI assistance is available on demand, enabling users to obtain summaries, draft reports and answers rooted in the latest assembled data. The ability to update notebooks with new material ensures that insights remain current and relevant.
What are most people using Copilot Notebooks for?
Users curate relevant files and notes from their Microsoft 365 environment into a dedicated notebook within OneNote. Once content is gathered, they can prompt Copilot to answer questions, summarise lengthy documents or generate drafts for presentations and proposals.
The underlying AI makes the most out of the latest GPT-4o model from OpenAI, which enables advanced understanding and natural language generation tailored to the user’s needs.
A marketing manager might use Copilot Notebooks throughout the working week to refine campaign planning, content development and performance analysis.
For example, Eve Oliver, marketing manager at CSG, used Copilot Notebook to draft and refine messaging for CSG’s promotional stand and marketing materials for an upcoming event.
During Eve’s meetings, she used Copilot Notebook to help summarise the discussions, extract action points and prepare follow-up communications.
With regards to reporting on her marketing activities, she used analysing engagement metrics from Microsoft 365 campaigns which allowed her to identifying trends and visualising data to support strategic decisions.
Centralising tasks and insights with Copilot Notebook has allowed Eve to improve her productivity throughout the day, whilst creating output across the marketing and communications workflow.
Main benefits of Copilot Notebooks
- Everything is in one place. Notebooks brings together Word docs, PowerPoint decks, Excel sheets, Copilot chats, OneNote pages and links into one notebook.
- Generate summaries, action items and content drafts with the power of AI based on your notebook’s contents.
- Copilot can answer any questions you have as you’re working in your Notebook and gives answers that are grounded in your collected materials.
- Busy multitasking? You can quickly grasp notebook content though AI-generated audio summaries which is ideal for multitasking or commuting.
- It works seamlessly with your Microsoft 365 environment, ensuring secure and compliant collaboration as you don’t have to use any third-party tools which could impact your security.
How Copilot’s AI helps you work smarter
Copilot’s AI capabilities allow you to:
- Extract key themes from documents and chats
- Draft responses and proposals based on your notes
- Summarise meetings and emails automatically
- Collaborate in real time with AI-generated suggestions and feedback
This reduces manual effort, improves accuracy, helping you stay organised and productive. Download our guide to creating a notebook in Copilot for easy use:
The technology behind Copilot Notebooks
At the heart of Copilot Notebooks is a sophisticated architecture built on large language models (LLMs), primarily based on OpenAI’s GPT frameworks. These models are fine-tuned for tasks like:
- Natural language understanding and generation
- Code interpretation and generation
- Data analysis and summarisation
- Contextual reasoning across multiple file types
The system is designed to be modular and extensible, allowing integration with Microsoft Graph, OneDrive, SharePoint, and other Microsoft 365 services. This ensures that Copilot can access and process enterprise data securely, without compromising compliance or privacy.
Additionally, Copilot Notebooks support agent-based workflows, where AI agents can be configured to perform specific tasks, like summarising meeting notes, drafting proposals, or analysing spreadsheets, based on user-defined goals.
Intelligent features that drive smarter workflows
Here are some standout features that make Copilot Notebooks a game-changer for your day to day:
1. AI-powered drafting
Copilot can generate content based on the materials in your notebook. Whether you’re preparing a campaign brief or documenting a process, it can suggest structure, tone and even visuals.
2. Contextual Q&A
You can ask Copilot questions like “what are the key risks in this proposal?” or “summarise the last three meetings,” and it will respond using the notebook’s contents as its knowledge base.
3. Audio overviews
For users on the go, Copilot can generate audio summaries of notebook content, ideal for multitasking or catching up during commutes.
4. Secure and compliant
Copilot Notebooks operate within your Microsoft 365 tenant, ensuring that sensitive data is not used for external model training and remains fully auditable.
5. Low-code customisation
Through Copilot Studio, users can build custom agents and workflows tailored to their team’s needs, making the tool highly adaptable for different industries and roles.
Want to learn more? Set up your free demo with CSG today.
