Return to summer camp: Making Microsoft 365 Copilot fun with Camp Copilot

Your organization has rolled out Microsoft 365 Copilot, and leadership is looking forward to all the productivity improvements it will bring. But to get there, your employees need to start using it more frequently. How do you encourage them?

You could schedule mandatory training or send out mass emails. But what if you could make it fun? Like with gamification? Camp Copilot is here to help!

Our Readiness team in Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization, created Camp Copilot to drive daily usage of Microsoft 365 Copilot. It was a Microsoft-wide peer-led training event that they ran for three weeks.

The event was themed as an online summer camp, starting with a campers’ orientation session on the first day. That sense of fun extended to the short video to promote it, filmed in the style of a 1990s infomercial.

The camp was gamified with badges. To earn each badge, campers completed homework activities that helped them practice what they learned each day. A social aspect—participants sharing their activities on Viva Engage—reinforced learning.

To make the camp happen, roughly a hundred people came together.

“It was a little grassroots and scrappy, but we had amazing results,” says Cadie Kneip, a readiness business program manager in Microsoft Digital and the creative force behind Camp Copilot.  

Kneip leaned heavily on our Copilot Champs community to lead sessions and to promote the camp. Each Champ invited their own team to Camp Copilot. It was an effective way of spreading the word without having to lean on communications teams.

Tom Heath, a business program manager for Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption, acted as a project manager for Camp Copilot. He put together a V-team of business program managers and regional engagement leads who brainstormed the camp activities and promoted Camp Copilot in their communities.

“I took Cadie’s idea and said, let’s explore it,” Heath says. “We put out an idea and asked folks to lean in and make it happen. It wasn’t anyone’s role to make it happen; it was a stretch goal.”

Structuring Camp Copilot

The camp’s three weeks were structured so that week one focused on introducing everyone to Copilot. Week two was a deeper dive into prompting. Week three built the everyday habits of using Copilot. Each week had a main session, breakout sessions, and a campfire activity.

Sessions were offered in three time zones so that people in the Americas, Europe and the Middle East, and Asia could participate. The main sessions were hour-long presentations by Copilot enthusiasts Brian Shaw, David Moore, and David VanGilder that covered basic through advanced skills, making the camp experience inclusive of all skill levels. The breakout sessions were more interactive and focused on specific aspects of Copilot usage: for example, Copilot for program managers or for IT roles.

Live sessions were an important part of Camp Copilot’s value.

“When you watch somebody do it live, it’s really helpful for people who are hesitant to use Copilot because they can see it’s not giving the session leader what they want right away,” Kneip says. “The process of watching a peer leader taking their time with Copilot, working with it using multiple prompts to get what they want, is really reassuring to people.”

There was also active participation in our Microsoft Viva Engage community. For example, one exercise was to create an AI-generated image of an enamel pin collection. Hundreds of campers shared their creations. During the camp, participants could also earn digital achievement pins, badges, and a Camp Copilot Passport stamp.

“It was so well planned-out that it wasn’t just a session you attend, it was a fully immersive experience,” says Jody Ryan, director of Copilot Sales and Compete in Customer Health and Growth, the creator of Copilot Compass, and a Camp Copilot participant. “I really hope we have it again—now that I’ve experienced a Camp Copilot, I can’t imagine not having it.”

Fun with a purpose at Camp Copilot

Besides being fun, the summer camp theme boosted participation in the camp.

“It helped people feel it was safe, welcoming, and interactive, and that they could ask questions,” Kneip says.

It was about meeting people where they were.

“You’re always going to have people with varying levels of Copilot expertise,” Ryan says. “And Camp Copilot created an inclusive environment where people felt safe to ask questions. That’s what happened throughout Camp Copilot.”

Camp Copilot was also good for advanced users. “Even though I use Copilot all the time, it was an opportunity to learn and grow my own skills,” Ryan says.

The fun of the camp experience also helps with retention.

“There’s a lot of research about habit adoption and brand loyalty,” Kneip says. “Associating it with fun makes it something that people want to go back to. Associating Copilot with a fun memory makes it stick in your brain, so it expedites the habit-building experience.”

Peer-to-peer education was also an important part of Camp Copilot’s success.

“People want to hear about Copilot from their own organization, not from somebody in IT,” Heath says. “It’s really key that you’re using your champions in the business. For example, somebody needs to deliver info about using Copilot for sales in a way that resonates for them. You want somebody who’s using it in each role to tell their story and get discussions going that are based on real life.”

Results of Camp Copilot

Camp Copilot was very popular. The organizers expected about 500 people to participate in Camp Copilot—instead there were nearly 11,000 orientation participants.

“As the camp went on, I started to see that attendance increased,” Ryan says. “People would say, ‘I have to reschedule a meeting; I’m in Camp Copilot right now.’ And others would say, ‘That is so cool! How do I get in that camp?’”

And did Camp Copilot do its job—to increase daily usage of Copilot?

It did.

During the camp, the readiness team saw spikes in Copilot usage in the apps that they were demoing on the day they demoed them. More importantly, they observed an increase in favorability based on surveys they ran before and after camp. Survey responses of “I work faster with Copilot than when I don’t” increased by 23%, and “Using Copilot improves my workflow” went up by 38%.

Camp Copilot at Microsoft and beyond

At Microsoft, our Readiness team is taking the lessons and popularity of Camp Copilot and applying gamification frameworks to other skill-building events.

“We’ve learned that people love an interactive event that brings together lots of different activities in a clear timetable and a defined period of time,” Heath says. “We’ll be doing other themed events. We’re thinking about doing something for the holidays. We want to replicate it.”

The success of Camp Copilot has led to tremendous demand.

“At least once a week, I get invited to a customer engagement to talk them through how to do their own camp,” Kneip says. “There’s a massive appetite among customers to replicate it.”

To meet this demand (and share the fun), Camp Copilot will be available for the public as an adoption kit. Soon, customers will be able to use the Microsoft Digital framework to create their own themed, peer-to-peer, gamified learning experiences.