A candid review of the GPT-5-powered free version in requirements engineering, process analysis, and test engineering.
🚀 The Starting Point
After stress-testing Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat (free version) for a week across requirements engineering, business process engineering, and test engineering, here’s a realistic perspective.
The scenario was demanding:
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8,000-character prompts
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15,000-character system prompts in separate files
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15-page requirement documents
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BPMN process diagrams
✅ What Actually Works
The Blank Page Problem is Solved. This is Copilot’s strongest value. Faced with complex requirements needing comprehensive test cases from scratch, Copilot delivers usable output in seconds, eliminating the psychological barrier of starting.
Consistency in Quality – Sometimes. When routed to a more capable model, output quality is consistently better. The problem is unpredictable routing.
Context Handling Exceeds Expectations. The free version meaningfully processes substantial context—long prompts plus up to 3 attachments including PDFs with images and docx files, showing genuine comprehension across document types.
👉 The Bottom Line
Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat occupies an interesting middle ground: strong enough to help with serious engineering work, but not yet mature for enterprise use. Its biggest strength lies in breaking the blank-page barrier – an underrated but powerful advantage. However, professional results still depend on methodical know-how, clean documentation, and human judgment.
Every tool works best when you understand exactly what it can and cannot do.
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