Microsoft Copilot Masterclass by David Fortin, Microsoft MVP
A hands-on Microsoft Copilot course for finance and business professionals, built around the Microsoft 365 apps you use every day, plus sharper prompting, lesser-known features, and no-code Copilot agents. Taught by a CPA and Microsoft MVP.
Is This You?
Before you dig into the curriculum, here's who tends to get the most out of this course.
You'll get real value if you
- Live in Microsoft 365 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams)
- Already have Copilot, or expect it soon
- Want practical wins, not AI theory
- Prefer short lessons you can apply the same day
- Are a finance, FP&A, ops, or general office pro
You'll benefit most if
- You've tried Copilot and felt underwhelmed
- Your prompts come back generic or wrong
- You want faster analysis and cleanup of messy data
- You want to summarize meetings and docs in seconds
- You want to move past demos into daily workflow
Why I’m recommending this
Straight up: I haven’t personally gone through this course. What I can tell you is that I know David, I follow his work, and he’s someone I’ve seen teach Copilot with a real finance and business lens instead of drifting into generic AI theory. I have seen enough of his work to recommend his course to others.
This page includes an affiliate link, which means I earn a commission if you enroll, at no extra cost to you. You also get 10% off with code FPAGUY10. I only partner with people whose work I’d recommend regardless.
What’s Inside
Organized around practical use cases, not abstract AI theory.
About the course
The Microsoft Copilot Masterclass is a self-paced course built for working professionals who want more than surface-level Copilot use. It runs from foundations and licensing (including which version of Copilot to actually use), through a proven prompting framework, lesser-known advanced features, real workflows across the Microsoft 365 apps you use every day, and building your own no-code Copilot agents.
Lessons are short, practical, and example-driven. The payoff is hours back in your week.
What you’ll walk away able to do
- Write prompts that get usable results the first time
- Analyze and clean up messy data faster
- Draft emails, docs, and summaries in a fraction of the time
- Pull action items from meetings and long email threads
- Build simple no-code agents to handle repetitive tasks
Course Modules
Five modules, each built around workflows you run every week.
1. Copilot Foundations
- Which of the three Copilot versions is safe for work data, and how to spot it
- What an LLM actually is, and why IT blocked ChatGPT but allows Copilot
- Why picking the right model makes a real difference in the quality of your answers
- Set up custom instructions so Copilot knows how to answer you
2. The Prompt School
- The GCES formula (Goal, Context, Expectation, Source) you’ll reuse every day
- Compare two PDFs side by side and get a clean summary in seconds
- Work through long documents by pointing Copilot at specific pages
- The Copilot dos and don’ts
3. Lesser-Known Features
- Digitize handwritten notes in seconds: snap a photo, get clean structured text
- Build full HTML dashboards straight from a spreadsheet
- Use Copilot Notebooks for the projects you keep coming back to
- Create images, banners, and infographics you’d actually use
4. Copilot in Your 365 Apps
- The new Edit Mode in Excel and Word, and what it can actually do
- Turn a PDF into a full PowerPoint deck with zero design work
- Auto-capture meeting notes in Teams and push action items to OneNote
- Triage and prioritize your Outlook inbox
5. Build Agents
- How Copilot agents work, explained in plain English
- Use the Researcher agent to plan your entire work week in about five minutes
- Build your first agent step by step, with a written guide to follow along
- An introduction to Copilot Cowork
David is a Chartered Professional Accountant with over a decade of corporate finance experience, and he’s become one of the go-to voices for teaching professionals how to use Copilot in real work. What stands out is that he teaches AI through a finance and business lens.
Hear David for Yourself
Glenn Hopper and I had David on Future Finance to talk about automating Excel work with Copilot, and where Python fits without overcomplicating it. Check out how he explains things for yourself.
Frequently Asked Questions
Direct answers so you can decide with confidence.