All blog posts

Cassidy vs Microsoft Copilot: AI Automation vs Microsoft 365 Assistant

Index

Cassidy and Microsoft 365 Copilot both bring AI assistance to the workplace, but they differ significantly in scope and approach. Cassidy is an AI-native automation platform designed to integrate AI into diverse workflows across an entire business, while Microsoft 365 Copilot functions as an assistant within Microsoft’s suite of apps (Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams).

While Copilot is useful for enhancing productivity within Microsoft tools, Cassidy goes further by enabling cross-platform workflows, providing AI model flexibility, and offering enterprise-level support. Below is a comparison of how Cassidy and Microsoft Copilot stack up across key areas:

Feature Cassidy Microsoft Copilot
AI Flexibility ✅ Supports multiple AI models (GPT-4, Claude, Gemini) ❌ Locked to Microsoft’s OpenAI model
Workflows & Automation ✅ No-code AI-driven workflows spanning multiple tools ❌ In-app assistance only, no cross-platform automation
Integration Scope ✅ Connects with 100+ tools, including Slack, CRMs, and ticketing systems ❌ Primarily for Microsoft 365 apps, limited third-party integrations
Enterprise Scalability ✅ Organization-wide AI deployment and admin control ❌ Designed for individual users within Microsoft apps
Onboarding & Implementation ✅ Dedicated support, training, and white-glove onboarding ❌ Self-service setup, minimal implementation support

AI Flexibility: Multiple Models vs. Single Model

Cassidy offers extensive AI flexibility. It supports multiple AI models, including OpenAI’s GPT-4, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude. This allows organizations to choose the best AI for different tasks and future-proof their automation as better models emerge.

Microsoft Copilot, on the other hand, is locked into Microsoft’s chosen OpenAI model. Users have no control over the AI provider and must rely solely on the models Microsoft decides to deploy. This lack of flexibility can limit performance in specific use cases where another model might be a better fit.

Workflows & Automation: Multi-Step vs. In-App Only

Cassidy enables true end-to-end AI-powered workflows across multiple tools and steps. Its no-code workflow builder lets users create AI-driven automations that take action across apps, process data, and even trigger real-time alerts. For example, Cassidy can read an incoming email, analyze its content, update a CRM, and notify the right person in Slack—all in one seamless process.

Microsoft Copilot, however, is limited to acting within individual Microsoft 365 apps. It assists with tasks like writing emails in Outlook or summarizing documents in Word but does not offer full automation across tools. Microsoft’s Copilot Studio allows for some custom Copilot assistants, but these are largely confined to Microsoft’s ecosystem and require developer setup.

Integration Scope: Diverse Tools vs. Microsoft-Only

Cassidy connects with over 100+ third-party applications, including CRMs, ticketing systems, knowledge bases, and communication platforms like Slack and Teams. It integrates deeply with both Microsoft and non-Microsoft tools, ensuring seamless automation across an organization’s full tech stack.

Microsoft Copilot, by contrast, is designed primarily for Microsoft 365 users. It works well within the Microsoft suite but has limited or no native integration with third-party tools like Slack, Google Drive, or external CRMs. This lack of connectivity makes it difficult to implement AI-driven workflows outside of Microsoft’s ecosystem.

Enterprise Scalability: Organization-Wide vs. Individual Use

Cassidy is built for enterprise-wide deployment, allowing teams to create AI assistants and workflows that span across departments. Its centralized Knowledge Base ensures that AI-powered automations pull from company-wide data, maintaining accuracy and consistency. Admins can manage access, enforce security policies, and customize AI responses for different teams.

Microsoft Copilot is primarily a personal assistant within Microsoft apps, meaning it functions on a per-user basis rather than being centrally managed for an organization. Any attempt to extend its capabilities across teams would require significant developer effort and remain constrained within the Microsoft environment.

Onboarding & Implementation: Hands-On vs. Self-Service

Successfully implementing AI tools in an enterprise requires more than just software—it requires expert guidance, training, and ongoing support to ensure adoption and success. Cassidy provides a white-glove onboarding experience, working directly with each organization to build, customize, and integrate AI solutions effectively.

When you adopt Cassidy, you get:

  • A Dedicated Account Manager – Your team is assigned a Cassidy AI expert who helps design AI assistants and workflows tailored to your business needs. This ensures your AI solutions align with your processes and deliver real impact from day one.
  • Team Training Sessions – Cassidy provides hands-on training to help teams in sales, marketing, support, and operations seamlessly integrate AI into their workflows. This ensures that AI adoption happens smoothly across departments, not just in isolated pockets.
  • Weekly Office Hours – Cassidy hosts live Q&A sessions where customers can get expert advice, troubleshoot challenges, and explore new use cases for AI within their business.
  • Private Slack Support – A direct line of communication with Cassidy’s team, allowing customers to ask questions, request features, and receive real-time assistance whenever they need it.

This high-touch support model ensures that organizations don’t just buy AI tools—they successfully implement them and maximize their value.

By contrast, Microsoft Copilot follows a self-service onboarding approach. While Microsoft provides documentation, FAQs, and standard admin guides, there is no dedicated onboarding or personalized implementation support. If an organization needs additional guidance, they may have to work with third-party Microsoft partners at an extra cost. This means that adoption relies heavily on internal IT teams to configure Copilot and train users, which can slow down AI implementation—especially for enterprises looking to scale AI across departments.

Final Thoughts: Why Cassidy Stands Out

Microsoft 365 Copilot is a useful personal productivity tool within the Microsoft suite, helping with writing, summarizing, and task management inside apps like Word and Outlook. However, it lacks true AI-powered workflow automation and is restricted to Microsoft’s ecosystem.

Cassidy, on the other hand, enables end-to-end AI automation across your entire tech stack. It integrates with multiple tools, supports multiple AI models, and allows enterprises to build custom workflows that adapt to their specific needs. With hands-on onboarding, admin controls, and broad AI flexibility, Cassidy is the better choice for businesses looking to deploy AI across departments and tools.

Ready to see how Cassidy can automate your workflows? Book a demo today.

Share online

Page URL

Read more posts

See all articles
 10 Ways Your Sales Team NEEDS to Be Using AI Right Now
Read more

10 Ways Your Sales Team NEEDS to Be Using AI Right Now

AI models

The future of sales is not a distant vision; it's unfolding in real-time, driven by AI's capability to refine and personalize every interaction.

At Cassidy, we're at the forefront of this evolution with contextual automation—a method that doesn't just look to the future but actively shapes the present. By leveraging this technology, sales teams today must embrace AI not only to keep pace but to lead in an already transformed market.

Our platform ensures your sales strategy is not just reactive but proactive, turning every sales challenge into an opportunity. Let's delve into how AI is already making a difference, in the sales world, and how tools like Cassidy can help you every step of the way.

Prepare and Research Meeting Invitees Before Sales Calls

Walking into a sales call unprepared is no longer an option. Cassidy’s AI-powered workflows ensure your team is equipped with detailed, actionable insights about meeting invitees before every call. This workflow does the heavy lifting for you by gathering data like company overviews, recent company news, and detailed information about the invitees.

Cassidy’s AI even dives into LinkedIn profiles to provide a comprehensive look at the organization and its stakeholders. All this information is compiled into a shareable document that can be accessed by your entire team, ensuring everyone is aligned and prepared. Plus, it integrates seamlessly with your calendar tools, so you have everything ready to go before the meeting starts.

For example, before a call, Cassidy can provide a summary of the prospect’s recent achievements or challenges, helping your team tailor the conversation and demonstrate value from the first interaction. It’s an all-in-one preparation tool that sets your sales calls up for success.

Deal Tracking Efficiency

Sales teams often struggle with the time-consuming task of sifting through vast amounts of data to find relevant customer information. That's where Cassidy's workflows come in, allowing you to pull up all the details on a customer or a deal in just seconds, thanks to AI.

This feature enables you and your team to instantly search through records, helping to get right to the point, personalize your approach, and keep the sales process moving smoothly. It's like having a super-efficient assistant dedicated to making your life easier.

For example, before calling a client, you can quickly search for their name in the system. Within seconds, you'll have access to their purchase history, recent interactions, and any notes from previous meetings, allowing you to tailor your conversation effectively.

Find Key Decision-Makers to Multithread Sales Deals

Finding the right decision-makers can be the difference between closing a deal and letting it slip away. Cassidy’s simplifies the process by identifying key stakeholders and influencers within a target organization.

Instead of manually researching or guessing who holds decision-making power, Cassidy analyzes CRM data, email communications, and external sources to provide you with a clear map of key players. This enables your team to craft targeted messages that resonate with each stakeholder, streamlining the sales process.

For example, if a deal involves multiple departments, Cassidy highlights which contacts to prioritize and how to address their specific concerns. This insight empowers your team to build stronger connections and accelerate deals without unnecessary delays.

Automatically Enrich New Leads

Finding and understanding new leads can be a daunting task, often requiring extensive research to gather all the necessary details. With Cassidy's AI, this process is automated, allowing you and your team to instantly enrich new leads with relevant information.

By integrating with various data sources, Cassidy's workflows automatically add valuable insights like job titles, company details, and contact information to your CRM. This feature ensures that when you engage with a new lead, you're equipped with a comprehensive profile, enabling more personalized and effective outreach.

For instance, when a new lead enters your system, instead of manually searching for their background, the AI enriches their profile, providing you with the context to tailor your communication, thereby improving conversion rates and enhancing your sales strategy's efficiency.

Streamline Team Responses with Verified Answers

Consistency and accuracy are crucial when responding to client questions, especially during RFP processes. Cassidy’s Answer Hub ensures that your team always delivers approved, verified responses to common queries, saving time and boosting credibility.

This feature centralizes all your organization’s approved answers in one place, making it easy for reps to find and share the right information instantly. No more scrambling to verify details or waiting on approvals—Cassidy’s AI ensures that everyone on your team is aligned.

So if you're ever in a situation where a client requests specific technical details or compliance information, reps can quickly search the Answer Hub to pull up the correct response, ensuring accuracy and consistency in their communication. This not only speeds up the sales process but also builds trust with clients, showing that your team is organized and dependable.

Automatically Transcribe, Save, and Query Meeting Notes

After a sales meeting, capturing and organizing notes can be time-consuming, often leading to missed insights or follow-up opportunities. Cassidy's AI simplifies this by automatically transcribing, saving, and enabling you to query meeting notes.

This feature ensures that all discussions, decisions, and action items from your meetings are recorded without manual effort. You and your team can then easily search through these notes for specific details or follow-ups, enhancing your ability to recall important points and personalize future interactions.

For example, post-meeting, the AI transcribes the conversation, saving it in your system where you can later ask for information like "What was the client's concern about pricing?" or "What follow-up was promised?" This automation not only saves time but also ensures that no detail is lost, making your sales process more organized and responsive.

Create Personalized Cold Emails that Stand Out

Cold emails are only effective when they feel anything but cold. Cassidy’s AI leverages LinkedIn insights, CRM data, and other sources to create hyper-personalized emails that capture attention and increase response rates.

The workflow analyzes key details about your prospect, like their role, company updates, and recent achievements, and crafts tailored outreach messages that feel authentic. For example, instead of sending a generic “just checking in” email, Cassidy generates a message that highlights the recipient’s recent LinkedIn activity or a relevant company milestone, positioning your sales team as informed and relatable.

Even better, Cassidy’s AI ensures these personalized emails are ready to send with minimal effort, saving your team valuable time while maintaining a high-touch approach. With smarter, data-driven outreach, you can turn cold leads into engaged prospects.

Personalize Sales Meeting Follow-Up Emails

The follow-up after a sales meeting can make or break the relationship. Cassidy’s AI ensures every follow-up email feels thoughtful, relevant, and timely, keeping the momentum going with your prospects.

This workflow uses meeting notes, CRM data, and insights from the conversation to draft tailored emails that highlight key discussion points, address objections, and outline next steps. For example, if pricing was a concern during the meeting, Cassidy’s AI suggests a follow-up email that includes a breakdown of value-add features or a link to relevant case studies.

The tool also automates the process, saving your sales team time while maintaining a high level of personalization. With smarter follow-ups, Cassidy helps your team stay top-of-mind and move deals forward faster.

Auto-Completing Security Questionnaires

Navigating through security questionnaires can be a significant hurdle in finalizing sales, often requiring extensive time and expertise to complete accurately. With Cassidy's AI, this process is streamlined, enabling you and your team to auto-complete these questionnaires with ease.

By integrating with your existing security documents, knowledge base, and other resources, Cassidy's workflows automatically fill in the answers, ensuring compliance and accuracy. This feature turns what could be a laborious task into a swift operation, allowing you to focus on closing deals rather than paperwork.

For example, when a new security questionnaire is required, instead of manually searching for responses, the AI quickly pulls the necessary information, completing the form in seconds. This efficiency not only speeds up the sales process but also reduces the risk of errors, making your sales cycle smoother and more secure.

Give Sales Team the Ability to Answer Technical Questions

Handling technical questions doesn’t have to be exclusive to engineers or IT specialists. Cassidy’s AI bridges the gap by enabling non-technical support and sales reps to confidently answer complex technical inquiries.

This feature pulls from your company’s existing knowledge base, integrating seamlessly with tools like Notion, Jira, Confluence, and internal wikis to provide accurate, approved responses in seconds. For example, when a prospect asks a detailed question about product integration or security protocols, Cassidy’s AI suggests the right answer instantly, saving time and preventing delays.

This workflow also ensures responses are aligned with RFP standards and company-approved language, reducing the risk of errors or miscommunication. By equipping your team with these tools, Cassidy enables everyone to contribute to technical discussions without requiring deep expertise, improving responsiveness and fostering trust with prospects.

Use Cassidy to help boost your Sales Performance

Ready to see how Cassidy can transform your sales strategy, streamline workflows, and help your team close deals faster? Start your journey with Cassidy today and experience the future of sales firsthand. Try for free today

Save Thousands of Hours (and Dollars) with Cassidy's New Research Agent
Read more

Save Thousands of Hours (and Dollars) with Cassidy's New Research Agent

AI models

Research doesn’t have to be an expensive, manual, time-consuming process anymore.

With Cassidy’s Research Agent, you get real-time, continuous access to the web until it finds the precise answers you need, delivering up-to-date, accurate information quickly and effortlessly.

Whether you’re after business insights or competitive data to fuel your growth strategy, this tool ensures you get the exact information you’re looking for — no manual research required. 

Unlike tools like ChatGPT, which handle individual queries, Cassidy’s solution is designed for repeatable, in-depth research. It continuously gathers, processes, and aggregates live web data, making it far more powerful for automating complex tasks that drive business decisions.

If you’ve been spending hours on research or relying on tools that fall short, it’s time to save both time and money with this powerful solution. 

Ready to see how it can transform your workflow? Let’s dive in

Simplifying research with limitless reach

Research Agent scours the internet to retrieve real-time data tailored to your needs. Whether you’re conducting in-depth analysis or verifying key information, it eliminates manual effort and helps you make faster, more informed decisions.

At its core, Research Agent combines custom queries, autonomous web scraping, data analysis, and customizable output options. Here’s how it works:

  • Custom Instructions: You define exactly what data you're looking for—whether it’s competitive insights, verifying a company’s online presence, or gathering the latest news. This gives you complete control over the research process.
  • Autonomous Web Scraping: The tool automatically scans public online sources like websites and databases, saving you hours of manual searches. It can’t log into private accounts but uses public-facing data to gather insights. For example, you could input a company domain, and Research Agent would analyze accessible websites and compile a list of competitors for you.
  • Data Processing and Confidence: After collecting the data, it’s analyzed and presented with confidence scores, detailed reasoning, and a step-by-step breakdown of how the results were gathered. You’ll be able to trust the data and understand exactly how it was sourced.
  • Customizable Output: The results are delivered in a format that fits seamlessly into your workflow, allowing you to quickly act on the insights you’ve gathered. Whether you're generating reports, conducting competitive analysis, or validating information, the output is flexible and designed to meet your specific needs.

As Research Agent continues to evolve, new templates and features will be added, enhancing its research capabilities and allowing you to tackle even more complex tasks.

For more details, check out this overview video: 

Our pre-existing templates can already help you work magic 🪄

We've created a range of pre-built templates available to simplify common research tasks, helping you get started right away.

These templates handle tasks such as:

  • Gathering Company and Competitor Information
  • Analyzing Company ICP and Positioning
  • Finding Company's Social Media Profiles
  • Identifying Person Names from Work Email Addresses
  • Locating Company Executives and Founders
  • Searching for Company Competitors
  • Verifying Domain Status
  • Finding Company Customers
  • Getting Company 10-K Reports

These templates allow you to quickly gather relevant data without having to build workflows from scratch. Whether you’re searching for key contacts or analyzing competitors, the templates are designed to make your job easier.

But the real advantage comes from customization. While pre-built templates offer convenience, you can design your own workflows tailored to your specific needs. Whether you're automating a series of unique tasks or gathering insights for a highly specialized project, you can create workflows that match your exact requirements.

By designing custom templates, you not only save time but also open the door to automating complex tasks. This flexibility allows you to streamline operations, make more informed decisions, and focus on using the data to fuel business growth.

Applying Research Agent's insights for your business

The data gathered by Research Agent can be used across different areas of your business to make smarter, more strategic decisions.

  • For Sales: Detailed insights on potential customers, including their company background and key contacts, allow you to tailor your outreach for maximum impact.
  • For Competitive Analysis: Having access to competitor data in real-time enables you to quickly identify market trends, analyze your competitors’ strategies, and adjust your own.
  • For Lead Generation: By automating research, you can quickly build lists of high-quality contacts and leads, giving your team more time to focus on outreach.
  • For Market Research: Gain access to industry trends and customer preferences to make strategic business decisions faster, putting you ahead of the competition.

Here's an example of how you can conduct industry research: 

As many departments in your organization are likely spending significant time or money on research tools, we aim to simplify that—while offering you the most accurate, current insights available from across the web.

Plus, exporting this data is easy.

With integrations like OneDrive and Word, exporting your data is seamless, allowing you to put research into immediate use. Some integrations work across both Knowledge Base and workflows, such as Slack, making it easy to store data and send notifications where they’re most useful. No matter where your data is headed, outputs are formatted to fit your exact needs.

Experience Cassidy for yourself

Ready to simplify your workflows and make data-driven decisions with ease? Cassidy offers the tools to automate your research and streamline operations across your business. 

Sign up for a free trial today.

Announcing Cassidy’s $3.7M Fundraising
Read more

Announcing Cassidy’s $3.7M Fundraising

About us

Overview

LLMs created a new era of automation. While previous workflow automation platforms could only automate tasks with basic if/then logic, LLMs unlocked complex reasoning in natural language.  

However, the quality of LLM outputs and decisions is highly dependent on the specific context they’re given. Insufficient, disorganized, or outdated data can cause AI to respond inconsistently (or even hallucinate), making it hugely unreliable for business automation. Enter: Cassidy. 

Cassidy is a more intelligent automation platform that makes every decision with full context on your business. 

How it works: Cassidy’s knowledge base connects to your company’s existing knowledge tools (Slack, Notion, Drive, etc.) and automatically cleans, prepares and keeps your business’s data up-to-date. It removes the concept of “one-size-fits-all” logic and instead allows your team to reliably build powerful AI workflows that make complex, human-level decisions, all with a nuanced understanding of your company. 

Cassidy was built for both non-technical and technical users, making effective AI automations accessible to teams of all shapes and sizes. Today, we’re thrilled to announce our $3.7 million funding led by The General Partnership, Neo, Comma Capital, Spacecadet Ventures, Ride Ventures, and angels like Erik Goldman (Co-founder of Vanta), Jason Dorfman (CEO of Orum), Zach Sims (CEO of Codecademy). We closed our round in November 2023 and have been growing fast...

What makes Cassidy’s automations ‘intelligent’

Companies typically want to consolidate their tooling, and since Cassidy's workflows are tailored to how a business operates, it works ‘intelligently’ in a few different ways: 

It gets smarter with more interactions

Cassidy’s automations improve over time. Each interaction cites its sources, allowing you to verify and exclude specific information through human-in-the-loop processes. This transparency ensures your data remains accurate and up-to-date. As more interactions occur, Cassidy’s performance is refined, incorporating added context and prompt adjustments to continually enhance the system’s reliability.

It understands your business

Cassidy connects with all knowledge tools (Slack, Sharepoint, Confluence, etc.) to give AI context on your business, customers, competitors, brand voice, and more. It pulls the information in real-time so that it’s constantly up-to-date with what’s happening at your company and in the market. This gives Cassidy human-like judgment, and keeps responses consistent across your entire team.

It’s fully composable software

Cassidy allows teams to quickly build custom AI automations and agents. Companies can tailor the software to how their business operates, designing workflows that match their exact team’s processes. We're creating hundreds of AI action blocks combined with all the leading AI models (all included with your plan) so you can bring your AI tech stack into a unified platform. 

AI that can run asynchronously

Cassidy’s workflows allow you to build automations that run even while you’re sleeping. You can create triggers from hundreds of different tools to automate tasks automatically. Because our AI runs with specific guardrails and the full context of your company, you can trust it to perform reliably without needing a human in the loop.

Built for teams of all shapes and sizes

We're making AI automations accessible to teams of all sizes and skill sets. To stay ahead in the age of AI, automation is no longer optional—everyone needs to be able to build out automations. Cassidy is designed to make it incredibly easy for non-technical teams to use and build complex automations. We offer a library of pre-made workflows and a simple text-to-workflow creation process. For more technical teams and granular use cases, Cassidy has the flexibility to add code and prompt engineering. Cassidy also has enterprise-grade permissioning and security that you can trust to keep your data private and encrypted. You can set advanced user-level permissions for your automations and knowledge data to keep your data secure. Learn more about our security (including compliance with SOC II) at trust.cassidyai.com

Cassidy in the real world 

We started Cassidy a little over a year ago and are continuously blown away by our customers’ creativity, from startup founders automating responses to RFPs to global public companies automating their sales enablement flows for 12k+ companies. Some use cases to spotlight: 

RVezy is a leader in online RV rentals that built a suite of sales enablement and customer success automations. Since their business model and ideal customer persona are incredibly nuanced, they couldn’t rely on typical if/then logic or scoring criteria to prioritize and respond to customers. The team embedded Cassidy into their workflows to automate customer support triaging, handle chargeback disputes, and draft replies with highly nuanced context. These automations understand RVezy’s business inside-out and make high-context judgments for each ticket trained on thousands of previous support inquiries.

“Cassidy allows us to be much more proactive in addressing critical customer complaints - automatically escalating issues to a manager who can solve customer problems quickly

E78 Partners, a leading advisory firm, utilizes Cassidy's AI automations for research and knowledge transfer across teams. They've built automations that are hyper-personalized to support industry research and client facing projects.

"Cassidy personalizes its AI tools to know our business, clients, and industries better than any other AI-enabled company. Across the board, our team is obsessed with using Cassidy as a copilot to refine solutions, research external industry insights, streamline knowledge transfer across teams and find creative ways to automate the day-to-day monotonous tasks."

Lexer, a customer data platform, generates responses to RFPs in minutes. Their team created an AI workflow that extracts questions from documents, searches their knowledge base for answers, then writes a thorough response in Lexer’s brand voice.

“I never thought I’d be able to automate responding to our RFPs until I found Cassidy. It was incredibly easy to connect my tools, and helps us respond 3x faster to customers so we can close more deals.”

What’s next

At Cassidy, we believe AI is going to become more and more embedded into how companies operate, starting with automations. If what we’re building resonates, check out our many open roles at cassidyai.com/careers 👈

See all articles

Start building AI tools in minutes

Access to the top models

Cassidy includes the top 5+ leading AI models.

Assistants

Intelligent assistants personalized to your team.

Workflows

Automate tasks with custom, data-driven workflows.

Chrome extension

Cassidy at your fingertips with browser extensions.

No model training

Unlike ChatGPT, Cassidy never trains with your data.

Knowledge Base

Centralized intelligence for smarter automation.