Chat, Researcher, Analyst, Facilitator · Route the work

Open Agents in the Copilot app. You may see Researcher, Analyst, Facilitator, and others. You may see none of them. Both are fine. This lesson is a routing card, not a scavenger hunt.

Use this when. Skip it if it is not on your tenant.

Microsoft’s own guidance: Chat for a quick summary, a short reply, or light brainstorming. Researcher when you need deeper reasoning across web plus work, and a report you can share with sources. Analyst when the job is data: tables, charts, a pass that can show its working. Facilitator when the work is a meeting you need recapped or structured.

Core principles

Chat: you will stay in the thread and edit. Minutes, not a report.
Researcher: multi-step, cited, slower on purpose. You still check the sources.
Analyst: spreadsheets and numbers. You still trace the headline to the cell.
Facilitator: meetings. Transcription still matters, same as Copilot Basics.
Declarative agent: a specialist you already tested. Build it in Agent Building, do not start here.
Computer Use (Researcher driving a sandbox): awareness only. IT allowlists it. Not a generalist lab.

Check yourself

When should you pick Researcher over standard Chat?

Do this in Copilot

For your Lesson 1 brief, circle one: Chat / Researcher / Analyst / Facilitator / me. If the agent is missing, circle Chat or me and write why.

If you can open the agent, paste there. If not, paste in Chat and say so in the first line.

Route one brief to one agent

Route this brief. Job: [PASTE]. I can open: [LIST AGENTS YOU ACTUALLY SEE, or “Chat only”]. Recommend one surface and a first prompt I can paste there. If Researcher would be better but I cannot open it, say so and give me a Chat fallback that still asks for sources. Do not send me to Copilot Studio. Do not suggest Computer Use.

Techniques: Goal and context

Open Copilot

Did you run this in Copilot? Mark complete when you have tried it.