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Start by Stage

Find your rung on the ladder in two minutes, then take the next concrete step.

This site is a ladder, not a library. You don't need to read it front to back — find where you are now and take the next step.

Prefer to start from your job, not your skill level?

Head to Start by Role — the same walkthroughs, grouped by how you actually spend your day.

Rolling Copilot out for a team or org?

This page finds your rung. To organize everyone else's, see Build your AI empowerment team and the Choose the Right Path decision tree.

The 2-minute self-check

Read down the rungs in order. The last one that still sounds like you is roughly where you are today — start there.

Rung You're here if… Your next step
1 · Chat You have a Copilot license but mostly use it for quick questions and rewrites. Turn a meeting into follow-ups
2 · First-Party Agents You're fluent in chat and want more — but didn't realize agents are already included. The agents in your license
3 · Cowork You trust Copilot for single steps and want to hand off whole tasks. Hand off an end-to-end task
4 · Agent Builder You keep repeating the same delegated task and think "I wish this just existed." Build a team-knowledge agent
6 · Copilot Studio Your simple agents are hitting limits — you need real knowledge, actions, and governance. Build your first Studio agent
7 · Foundry You've outgrown low-code — you need pro-code, custom models, autonomous orchestration, or MCP tools at scale. Cross into the pro-code frontier

You don't have to climb one rung at a time

Jump straight to where you are — but each stage is designed to make the next feel obvious rather than a cliff. The shift at each rung:

  • Chat — use it in the flow of work
  • First-Party Agents — use what's already built for you
  • Cowork — let it run multi-step work
  • Agent Builder — build something simple, no code
  • Copilot Studio — build for production
  • Foundry — engineer pro-code agents when low-code can't reach

If you only do one thing today

Open Turn a meeting into tracked follow-ups, copy the prompt, and run it against your most recent meeting. It's the fastest way to feel what the ramp is about — and everything else builds from there.

📚 Learn more. Microsoft's own front doors are worth bookmarking: the Which Copilot is right for you hub and the Microsoft 365 Copilot Adoption Hub.

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