By Daniel Rohregger, Microsoft MVP Published October 31, 2026

Before you start

A person or team that owns the Copilot rollout and takes questions from champions
Leadership backing: the champions' managers know about the role and give them time for it
Access to Microsoft 365 Copilot or Copilot Chat for every champion

The steps in this guide

Define the purpose and draw the line Write down why you have champions and what they don't handle. Microsoft lists IT support, licensing, security and compliance approvals, formal training, and adoption strategy as out of scope.
Write a one-page charter The charter covers purpose, value for champions, teams supported, profile, responsibilities, what's out of scope, escalation paths, recognition, and expected participation on a single page.
Pick your champions Look for curious, credible people in business teams who use Copilot hands-on and whose peers listen to them. Make sure every team the program supports has at least one go-to person.
Set up a home base A dedicated team or channel in Microsoft Teams keeps announcements, questions, examples, and materials in one place.
Meet regularly, ideally monthly Microsoft recommends regular monthly meetings for champions programs and stresses that consistency is what counts. Mix up the formats so the group stays active.
Showcase examples, collect feedback, give credit Champions share prompts and results, gather questions and blockers from their teams, and pass them to the rollout team. Make their work visible so the role doesn't turn into unpaid extra work.

A Copilot champions program is a defined structure in which selected employees from business teams try Microsoft 365 Copilot in their own daily work, share examples with their peers, and report questions and blockers back to the rollout team. It complements IT, training, and compliance. It doesn’t replace them.

Depending on the company, the group goes by champion network, early adopters, pilots, or flight crew. The idea is the same: people who use Copilot before everyone else has it and who are the first ones their team asks. This guide reflects the state of things in October 2026.

What does a Copilot champion do, and what don’t they do?

On its adoption page about the champion role, Microsoft describes champions as trusted changemakers who experiment with Copilot, show its value in practice, and make adoption approachable for their colleagues. The page centers on three jobs:

Explore: find useful, responsible ways to apply Copilot to everyday work.
Influence: share real examples and approaches others can adapt to their own work.
Grow: build AI fluency along with communication, facilitation, and leadership skills.

The boundary is just as clear. According to Microsoft, champions don’t replace IT, compliance, training, or the adoption program team. The charter should list as out of scope: IT support, licensing, security and compliance approvals, formal training, adoption strategy, and business outcomes. Champions translate company guidance into the reality of their team’s daily work.

Who is a champions program for?

A champions program pays off once Copilot is meant to reach several teams, not just a handful of early users. Central training reaches a lot of people, but not every workflow. Champions sit where the questions come up. A Center of Excellence sets standards and governance centrally; champions carry that into teams where central training alone doesn’t land.

Microsoft lists benefits on both sides:

For the organization: champions link company-wide adoption to individual teams, turn experiments into repeatable practices, and shorten feedback loops.
For champions: the role works best when it feels like a development opportunity rather than another volunteer duty. Champions build hands-on AI skills, practice facilitation and change management, connect with other champions, and earn recognition.

Daniel has covered this in his podcast 365 Checkpoint, calling this group essential for rollout projects and describing how it keeps paying off beyond the current project (episode 10, in German).

How do you build a champions program?

Here are the six steps from the overview above, with what matters in each.

1. Define the purpose and draw the line

Start with one sentence: why do champions exist at your company? For example, “bring Copilot into everyday work in our business teams and surface questions early to the rollout team.” Right below it, write what champions don’t do. Without that line, license questions, password resets, and approvals end up with your champions, and the role turns into a second help desk.

2. Write a one-page charter

Microsoft recommends a one-page charter with these elements:

Element	What goes in it
Role purpose	Why the role exists and how it supports practical, responsible adoption
Value for champions	AI fluency, visibility, recognition, influence, community, professional growth
Who the role supports	The teams, departments, or communities champions serve
Ideal profile	Curiosity, credibility, communication skills, willingness to experiment and share
Responsibilities	Modeling responsible use, sharing workflow examples, gathering feedback, pointing peers to resources
Out of scope	IT support, licensing, security and compliance approvals, formal training, adoption strategy, business outcomes
Support and escalation	Where questions outside the role go
Who champions work with	Program owners, IT admins, managers or sponsors, other champions, policy and compliance partners
Development and recognition	How champions build skills, share wins, and get recognized
Participation	Time commitment, meetings and community participation, how often they contribute

The charter doubles as an invitation. Anyone who reads it knows what they’re signing up for and what they get in return.

3. Pick your champions

Microsoft describes strong champions with three traits: curious and credible (they learn by doing and have their peers’ trust), practical (they create reusable examples and prompts and flag blockers), and influential (they lead conversations and demos and connect teammates with the right experts). Deep technical expertise isn’t on that list.

4. Set up a home base

For Microsoft 365 champions programs, Microsoft recommends a dedicated team that handles all program communication, feedback, and resources. A dedicated Copilot channel for your teams, where people share tips, examples, and new features, fits well alongside it. That way questions don’t get lost in one-on-one chats, and good answers stay findable.

5. Meet regularly, ideally monthly

Microsoft recommends regular monthly meetings for champions programs and notes that consistency is key. For Copilot Studio communities, Microsoft suggests having a champion run a regular roundtable for the other champions to share feedback from their departments and coordinate upcoming events. Microsoft’s adoption page lays out the team kickoff in four steps: a team meeting or email announcement, a short demo, office hours for hands-on help, and sessions like lunch-and-learns that spotlight real examples.

Starting a community is the easier part; keeping it alive is harder. In episode 33 of 365 Checkpoint (in German), Daniel walks through ten ideas for community formats that keep something happening in the group.

6. Showcase examples, collect feedback, give credit

According to Microsoft, champion work includes showing prompts and results, measuring success for specific use cases with a survey, sharing wins, and documenting feedback and blockers from the team. For a view of usage, training status, and champions by department, see the enablement and champions dashboard in our Lookbook (in German). It also shows which departments don’t have a champion yet.

How many champions do you need?

Microsoft’s champion role page doesn’t give a fixed ratio. Time commitment, meetings, and frequency are left for each organization to define in its charter. You’ll find various ratios online that contradict each other and don’t come from Microsoft, so we’re not quoting any. A practical yardstick is the “who the role supports” row in your charter: every team the program is meant to serve needs at least one person it knows as its champion.

What mistakes should you avoid?

Handing out the role without time or backing. A title on the side isn’t enough. Without leadership support, a champion network fizzles out quickly. Microsoft advises framing the role as a development opportunity, not another volunteer duty.
Using champions as backup support. Microsoft explicitly puts IT support, licensing, and approvals outside the role. If you don’t settle that up front, you lose your champions to tickets.
Launching without a charter. Clear benefits and clear boundaries, Microsoft says, are what make the arrangement sustainable: champions know what’s expected and what they get back.
Skipping escalation paths. Champions need somewhere to send questions outside their role. Otherwise those questions just sit there.
Going quiet after the kickoff. One reliable meeting a month does more than a big launch followed by silence.

Where can champions connect beyond their own company?

Microsoft runs the free Microsoft 365 Champions Program, with an online community, monthly community calls, and materials companies can reuse in their own programs. Microsoft recommends that at a minimum the people running an internal champions program join. For German-speaking champions who want to swap notes with peers at other companies, there’s the Champions Club (in German): a live session in Teams, usually once a month, plus a group chat.

Sources

Putting it into practice

Everything you need to get started is in this guide. If you want to plan the champions program as part of your Copilot rollout, with the charter, selection, and first meetings, that’s a job for custom projects.