Microsoft wants office workers building Copilot apps under payment terms it has yet to describe

"I don't respond to every email I receive, though I'm not sure what would be more well received, an AI-generated reply or no reply at all," PCWorld's reviewer wrote after Microsoft's Copilot briefing ^[11]. He was weighing Today, a dashboard Microsoft says will perform to-do tasks as well as list them ^[2]. "What's really important about Today is it's not just surfacing the work, it's actually moving it forward," Jacob Andreou, Microsoft's executive vice president of Copilot, said in a prerecorded briefing. "So Today leverages Copilot to write the draft that needs to be sent. It actually proposes the change to your schedule when there is a conflict." ^[6]

The one user on the record leaves some mail unanswered on purpose ^[11]. Outlook's existing Copilot "daily briefing" highlights action items for the user to answer ^[12]. Today will act on them from inside Outlook and Teams as well as the Copilot Home tab ^[5]. For a pilot, the useful measure is drafts sent without edits against drafts thrown away.

The Code tab carries the bigger claim. "To date, the unit of knowledge work has been the file: the document, the spreadsheet, the deck," said Jared Spataro, Microsoft's chief marketing officer of AI at Work. "Those aren't going anywhere, but Code adds a fourth: small, purpose-built solutions anyone can create to get a job done. Learning to build them is becoming as basic a skill as writing a memo or modeling a budget." ^[8] PCWorld describes users collaborating on and sharing the apps they make ^[10].

In practice, an employee will publish a hosted tracker that a team comes to rely on. If that employee changes roles, the request to keep it running will most likely land with IT. The cost will run through a payment system Microsoft has not described ^[3]. The PCWorld account does not say what admin controls decide who may share an app.

PCWorld calls the announcement the kind of vision statement Microsoft is known for, with elements released over the following months ^[13]. Of the pieces described, only the redesign and Today carry an October date. Code and Autopilots, the two pieces tied to the payment system, are undated ^[14].

Sort each piece on two axes: whether it acts before a person approves it, and whether anyone besides its maker uses it.

- Waits for a person, used by its maker: the Outlook daily briefing. Little new policy is needed. - Acts first, used by its maker: Today. It needs a rule on whether a draft can leave without the user reading it. - Waits for a person, shared: a Code dashboard a team reads. It needs a named owner and a date to review or retire it. - Acts first, shared: an Autopilot that runs for a team. It needs both, and it falls under the same payment system ^[3].

If a tenant gets into Today's October private preview ^[4], I'd give it to a small group and track the sent-unedited rate. I'd keep Code and Autopilots to a named test group until Microsoft publishes payment terms. The tradeoff is a slower start for the staff most eager to build, in exchange for knowing the bill and the owner before a team depends on what they built.