Building Internal Copilot Expertise

Overview

Consultants and external partners can help you launch Copilot, but they leave. Your internal experts stay. Building internal Copilot expertise is the most sustainable investment you can make in adoption—it ensures your organization can support users, train new employees, troubleshoot issues, and optimize usage without ongoing external dependency.

This video covers the key roles you need, training paths for each, how to build an organizational knowledge base, and how to sustain expertise as Copilot continues to evolve.

What You’ll Learn

• Key Roles: Administrators, power users, trainers, and champions
• Training Paths: Certification and skill development for each role
• Knowledge Base: Building your organization’s Copilot reference library
• Sustainability: Keeping expertise current as capabilities evolve

Script

Hook: external help is temporary—internal expertise is permanent

Consultants help you deploy. External trainers help you launch. Microsoft FastTrack helps you plan. All of these are valuable, and all of them are temporary.

When the consultants leave and the FastTrack engagement ends, your organization needs to sustain Copilot adoption on its own. That means having people internally who understand the technology, can support users, can train new employees, and can keep up with new capabilities as Microsoft releases them.

Building internal expertise isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the foundation of sustainable adoption.

Key roles for internal expertise

You need four types of internal experts. These aren’t new positions—they’re existing people with expanded skills.

Copilot administrators handle the technical side. Licensing assignment and management, admin center configuration, policy settings, and governance. These are typically your M365 administrators who add Copilot to their existing responsibilities. They need to understand Copilot-specific settings, reporting tools, and troubleshooting procedures. In government, they also need to understand how Copilot interacts with your compliance and security controls.

Power users are the people who push Copilot’s capabilities furthest. They develop advanced prompting techniques, discover new use cases, build workflow optimizations, and serve as the organization’s knowledge leaders for what’s possible. Power users often emerge organically—they’re the ones who figured out how to use Copilot for complex data analysis in Excel or built a sophisticated prompting workflow for briefing preparation. Identify them, support them, and give them a platform to share what they’ve learned.

Trainers design and deliver Copilot training. They don’t need to be technical—they need to understand how to teach effectively, how to design hands-on exercises, and how to make training relevant to different roles. In many organizations, this falls to the change management team, the learning and development group, or a combination. Train your trainers on Copilot first, so they can teach from experience rather than from slides.

Champions are the peer support layer. They’re distributed across the organization, know Copilot well enough to help colleagues, and actively promote adoption through demonstration and encouragement. You’ve built your champions program already—now ensure that champions have the ongoing support and development they need to stay effective.

Training paths for experts

Each expert role needs a different training path.

For administrators, start with Microsoft Learn’s Copilot administration learning paths. These cover licensing, configuration, reporting, and governance. Supplement with hands-on experience in your specific environment—GCC, GCC High, or DoD configurations have nuances that generic training doesn’t cover. Plan for quarterly refresher sessions as Microsoft adds new admin capabilities and settings.

For power users, the path is less formal and more experiential. Provide advanced prompting workshops that go beyond basic usage. Teach prompt chaining—using Copilot’s output from one step as input for the next. Cover cross-application workflows—starting in Teams with meeting notes, refining in Word, and presenting in PowerPoint. Create space for power users to experiment and share discoveries. A monthly “power user lab” where experts explore new scenarios together produces continuous learning.

For trainers, run a train-the-trainer program. Walk trainers through your organization’s standard Copilot training materials. Have them deliver practice sessions to each other before training real users. Provide ongoing coaching and update their materials as you learn what works and what doesn’t. The most important trainer skill isn’t Copilot expertise—it’s the ability to make hands-on training engaging and relevant.

For champions, deliver dedicated champion training quarterly. Cover new features, advanced scenarios, and common questions they’re hearing from users. Keep champions one step ahead of the general population so they can answer questions with confidence. Connect champions with each other through a community of practice where they share what’s working across different parts of the organization.

Building your knowledge base

Your internal knowledge base captures what your organization learns about Copilot so it doesn’t live only in people’s heads.

Start an internal prompt library. When someone discovers a prompt that works well for a specific task, add it to the library. Organize by role and task—”Program Manager: Status Report,” “Analyst: Data Summary,” “Executive: Meeting Prep.” Include the prompt text, the scenario it’s for, and any tips for customizing it. Store this in a SharePoint site or Teams wiki where everyone can access and contribute.

Create a FAQ document from the questions your support team and champions hear most often. “Can Copilot access my classified files?” “Why doesn’t Copilot find my SharePoint content?” “How do I get better results from my prompts?” Update this document monthly based on new questions.

Build a troubleshooting guide from the issues you’ve resolved. Licensing problems, network issues, feature limitations in government cloud environments, and common configuration mistakes. Document the symptoms, the cause, and the fix. This reduces support ticket volume and empowers users to self-serve.

Document best practices and lessons learned from your deployment. What training approaches worked? What communication strategies resonated? What deployment decisions would you make differently? This institutional knowledge is valuable for future technology deployments, not just Copilot.

Close: sustaining expertise over time

Internal expertise isn’t a one-time investment. Copilot evolves. Microsoft releases new features regularly. Your organization’s needs change. Your experts need to stay current.

Keep administrators updated through Microsoft’s release notes and monthly admin briefings. When significant changes appear, brief your admin team before they affect users.

Rotate champions to prevent burnout and expand the expertise pool. Some champions will move to new roles, lose bandwidth, or simply need a break. Recruiting new champions quarterly ensures continuity and brings fresh perspectives.

Share learnings across expert groups regularly. A monthly meeting where administrators, power users, trainers, and champions share what they’re seeing creates cross-pollination. Admins hear about user experience issues. Trainers learn about new features from power users. Champions bring field feedback to administrators.

Measure the impact of your internal expertise through adoption metrics, support ticket volume, and user satisfaction. If adoption rates are climbing, support tickets are manageable, and users are satisfied, your expertise model is working. If any of these trend negatively, investigate and adjust.

Internal expertise is what turns a Copilot deployment into a Copilot capability—something your organization doesn’t just have, but knows how to use well.

Sources & References

• Microsoft Copilot adoption resources — Resources for building internal capability
• Get started with Microsoft 365 Copilot — Training paths for developing Copilot skills
• Microsoft 365 Copilot overview — Copilot capabilities for internal expert training