On 2 June 2025, Researcher and Analyst became generally available in Microsoft 365 Copilot. I have been testing them for a while, and they have quickly become the two agents I open most.
1️⃣ Researcher: your multi-step research assistant
Researcher is built for questions that need more than a quick answer. It plans its approach, searches across your work content, such as emails, meetings, chats and files, and the web, and brings everything together into a structured report with sources.
How I use it: preparing for a customer meeting. I ask Researcher to pull together what we discussed before, what the customer announced publicly and which open topics we have. What used to take an hour now takes a few minutes.
2️⃣ Analyst: a data analyst on demand
Analyst reasons over data step by step, much like a data analyst would. It can work with spreadsheets and data files, run code to do the calculations, and explain what it found.
How I use it: licence and usage reports. I give Analyst an export and ask for trends, outliers and a short summary for management.
3️⃣ Why this is a big step
- Copilot moves from answering to working through a task.
- You get the reasoning and sources, not just the result.
- It shows people what “agents” really mean in practice.
Tips to get the best results
- Be specific about the goal and the audience of the output.
- Tell Researcher which sources matter most.
- For Analyst, make sure your data has clear column names.
- Always review and verify before you share the output.
My take
Researcher and Analyst are the best demo I have for people who say Copilot “just summarises emails”. They show what reasoning agents can do inside Microsoft 365, with your data and your permissions.
Have you tried Researcher or Analyst yet? What is the best prompt you have used? 💡
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