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Always-on competitive and news monitor

Equip Autopilot (formerly Microsoft Scout) with a standing skill that watches named competitors and topics, then briefs you on what changed and why it matters.

Stage: Autopilots · For: End user, Manager, Champion · Level: Intermediate · Time: 15 min

When to use this

Competitive news rarely arrives when you have time to look for it. Use this when you want Autopilot to keep a light, scheduled watch over named competitors, customers, products, and market topics, then turn the changes into a brief you can review before a planning meeting, customer call, or leadership readout.

Autopilot is in private preview and access is gated. Treat this as a skill you equip onto an always-on agent that works on your behalf with its own identity in your tenant, with permissions, audit and governance behind it; check current behaviour in the Microsoft Scout desktop app docs.

What you'll need

  • Access to Autopilot (private preview) — or, today, the Frontier desktop app still documented on Learn as Microsoft Scout (needs Frontier turned on by your admin, an Intune policy + admin attestation, a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, and a GitHub Copilot Business or Enterprise licence). See Find out if you can get Autopilot.
  • The competitors, customers, products, or market topics you want Autopilot to watch, plus any trusted sources it can access.
  • A sense of what matters to your role: pricing moves, product launches, executive changes, customer wins, regulatory shifts, or messaging changes.

Try it now — the prompt

Equip the monitor as a named, scheduled skill:

Take on a standing "competitive monitor" skill for me.

Watch [competitors/topics/customers] using sources you can access, including
[preferred public sources or internal sources]. Run this on [schedule].

Send me a short digest that covers:
- what changed since the last digest;
- why it matters for [my team/account/market];
- any source link I should read myself;
- suggested follow-up questions or actions.

Keep the digest concise and separate confirmed facts from interpretation.
Do not contact anyone or post externally without my review.

Why this works: it gives Autopilot a durable watch list, a trigger, trusted sources, and a clear output format. It also keeps the human-in-the-loop boundary explicit: Autopilot briefs and drafts; you decide what to do.

Step by step

  1. Open Autopilot and confirm it can use the work surfaces and sources that are appropriate for your organisation. Keep the watch limited to information you are permitted to access and use.
  2. Equip the skill. Paste the prompt, replacing the bracketed variables with your competitors, topics, sources, and schedule.
  3. Review the first digest as calibration. Autopilot should summarise what changed, link back to sources where available, and distinguish facts from its interpretation.
  4. Tighten the watch list. Tell Autopilot which topics were noise, which sources are more trusted, and what deserves escalation before the next scheduled digest.
  5. Use it before live work. Read the digest before account reviews, planning meetings, or executive updates; ask Autopilot to draft talking points only after you have checked the sources.
  6. Leave it running. Once calibrated, the monitor becomes background context instead of a search you remember to run manually.

Screenshots

We deliberately don't ship screenshots that go stale — the Microsoft Copilot UI changes often. Follow the numbered steps above, which we keep current. Maintainers can regenerate fresh captures with the Playwright tool in tooling/screenshots/.

Make it better

  • Ask for source grading. "For each item, label the source as official, press, analyst, community, or internal, and tell me how much weight to give it."
  • Add account relevance. "When a competitor move affects [customer/account], call that out separately with the likely sales implication."
  • Create a pre-meeting version. "Before my [meeting], turn the latest digest into talking points and questions I can use live."
  • Narrow the alert threshold. "Only interrupt me between digests for material changes that affect [priority product/market/account]."

Watch out for

  • Autopilot is in gated preview. Availability and behaviours can change; confirm current scope in the Microsoft Scout desktop app docs.
  • Public news is not the same as truth. Autopilot can summarise what sources say, but you still need to verify sensitive claims before using them with customers or leaders.
  • Noise grows fast. A monitor asked to watch everything will brief you on everything. Keep topics named and review what should be ignored.
  • Do not outsource judgment. Autopilot can suggest why something matters; you decide whether it changes your plan.

Where this leads (the ramp)

You've equipped an always-on skill that turns recurring market scanning into a governed background brief. When the monitor needs to write into a system of record, route alerts by policy, or combine with formal approval workflows, harden it into a governed tool in Stage 6 Studio.

Next: Stage 6 · Copilot Studio — where an always-on watch can become a governed tool with controlled actions

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