TechWolf vs Microsoft People Skills

Both of these products work out a person’s skills from the work that person already produces. Of the 139 skills products in our guide to skills intelligence software, 18 mainly work out skills on their own rather than asking people, and these are two of them. They are not alternatives to each other, because of two limits on Microsoft’s side: its AI reads only Microsoft 365, and the skills it suggests cannot be exported. TechWolf is built to do what those two limits rule out: it reads work in systems outside Microsoft 365, and it sends the skills it finds on to the systems you already run.

By Ashish Manchanda Published 16 Sep 2026 Last updated 16 Sep 2026

The decision

Start with Microsoft, and know why you will outgrow it

Start here

Microsoft People Skills

If you already pay for Copilot, Viva Suite, Viva Insights or Viva Learning, this comes with that licence, and most people see their first skill suggestions within about 48 hours. Before you pay anyone else, it will show you what your Microsoft 365 data already says about your people’s skills.

Your people work mainly in Microsoft 365
You want to find who has worked on something
You have no skills framework and no budget for one
You want an answer this week rather than this quarter

Move when

TechWolf

Any one of these means Microsoft on its own is no longer enough.

You need skills written into Workday or SAP automatically
You need to know how good somebody is, not just that they have done it
Your people do much of their work in Jira, Salesforce or ServiceNow
You are in education or government, where People Skills does not come with Copilot or standard Microsoft 365

We have also written about TechWolf on its own: what it does, what its figures measure, where it stops, and what it needs from you.

We have also written about Microsoft People Skills on its own: what it reads, what it is good at, and why the skills its AI finds stay inside Microsoft.

The two do not draw on the same budget, and they do not run to the same timetable. Microsoft People Skills is a quick setup that an administrator runs, after which its AI is on by default for everyone with a Copilot or Viva licence. TechWolf is a programme with named owners, three to six months of work, and a price you have to ask for. So rather than choosing between them, you are deciding whether Microsoft is enough on its own, and at what point TechWolf is worth adding.

At a glance

Twelve facts, side by side

TechWolf Microsoft People Skills

Owner

TechWolfTechWolf is based in Ghent and was founded in 2018. SAP, ServiceNow and Workday are among its investors, and it has raised a $42.75m Series B, on top of a €10m Series A.

Microsoft People SkillsMicrosoft makes it. Since it launched under this name in April 2025, Microsoft has presented it as part of Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft 365 and its Viva apps.

What it reads

TechWolfJira, Confluence, GitHub, ServiceNow, Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Drive, your HR system and your learning platform.

Microsoft People SkillsMicrosoft 365 only. Emails, chats, meetings, documents, profiles and job titles.

How a skill arrives

TechWolfIts AI works skills out from what is written in those systems, then by default sends them to each employee to accept or reject.

Microsoft People SkillsIts AI works skills out from Microsoft 365 activity, and the employee can confirm or remove them. Skills nobody reviews stay on the profile.

Proficiency

TechWolfFive levels by default, adjustable from three to eight, or mapped to your own scale.

Microsoft People SkillsNot described in Microsoft’s People Skills documentation.

Skills library

TechWolfTechWolf keeps its own skills library and will take yours as well, and it typically maps 70 to 80% of an existing list onto its own automatically.

Microsoft People SkillsMore than 16,000 skills, drawn from LinkedIn. You can upload your own as well: between 20 and 5,000 skills, with each file under 100 MB.

Where the data goes

TechWolfBack into Workday, SAP, Visier, Power BI or Tableau.

Microsoft People SkillsThe skills its AI works out cannot be exported. Only skills an employee has confirmed by hand can leave.

Price

TechWolfNot published. Each project is scoped with TechWolf’s team before a contract is signed.

Microsoft People Skills$0 extra, so far. Comes with a Copilot or Viva licence you may already hold.

Smallest they have sold to

TechWolfNot published. The smallest customer TechWolf names in a case study is Cotality, at about 5,000 people.

Microsoft People SkillsNo minimum, and it can be rolled out to a small group of pilot users first.

Time to first result

TechWolfFirst skill profiles arrive in two to six weeks, and checked skills for everyone in scope take three to six months.

Microsoft People SkillsAbout 48 hours.

Who turns it on

TechWolfTechWolf’s own project team runs it as a programme, with your subject-matter experts checking the results.

Microsoft People SkillsA Microsoft 365 administrator switches it on in the Microsoft 365 admin centre.

Named customers

TechWolfHSBC, Ericsson, T-Mobile, Atlas Copco, Belgium’s Federal Public Service for Health and Genesys.

Microsoft People SkillsTwo preview customers are named: Lloyds Banking Group and Grundfos, quoted in Microsoft’s launch announcement.

Cannot buy it

TechWolfNo stated restriction.

Microsoft People SkillsEducation and government licences are excluded from the plans that come with standard Microsoft 365 and with Copilot. Microsoft states no such exclusion for the plan that comes with Viva.

In depth

The seven things that differ

Seven differences decide which of the two you need, and each one ends with what it means for you.

01What each one can see

TechWolf

It connects to the systems where work leaves a trace, such as Jira, Confluence, GitHub, ServiceNow, Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, Slack and Google Drive, alongside your HR system and learning platform. It checks them for new material on a schedule you set, daily, weekly or monthly, and reads what people have written there.

Microsoft People Skills

Its AI works out skills from Microsoft 365 alone, and does not use what people do in any other business application. If your engineers live in Jira and GitHub, your sales team in Salesforce, or your support team in Zendesk, its AI never sees any of that work.

What it means for youThis is the first thing to check, and it is a quick one. Write down which systems your people do their work in. If most of it happens outside Microsoft 365, the option that comes with your Copilot or Viva licence will describe only part of your workforce well. Microsoft itself says results may be limited for people who spend little time in Microsoft 365, such as frontline and field workers.

02Getting the data back out

TechWolf

TechWolf works behind the scenes, feeding skills data into the other systems you use. It pushes skill profiles into Workday Skills Cloud, SAP SuccessFactors, Visier, Power BI or Tableau, so the system you already run stays the place where skills are kept. It does have screens of its own, though not an app for employees: experts check job skills in TechWolf’s own software, and employees confirm theirs through its assistant in Teams or Slack.

Microsoft People Skills

Only skills an employee has confirmed by hand can be exported. Skills the AI works out on its own cannot be exported at all, and even confirmed skills come out only through a test version of the connection Microsoft offers other software for reading its data. Microsoft says that test version is subject to change and not supported for use in live systems.

What it means for youThis is the difference that decides which one you need. If you want the skills Microsoft’s AI has worked out in your workforce plan, your succession review or your HR system, Microsoft will not let you export them. Even the skills employees have confirmed come out only by a route Microsoft does not support for live use, so a regular feed into your HR system would depend on something Microsoft says may change.

03Knowing how good somebody is

TechWolf

It uses five proficiency levels by default, adjustable between three and eight, or mapped onto whatever scale your HR system already uses. It tracks job proficiency, the level a role needs, separately from person proficiency, the level somebody has.

Microsoft People Skills

Skill levels are not described in Microsoft’s People Skills documentation, and the file for adding your own skills has no place to record one either.

What it means for youIf all you need is to find somebody who has worked on a subject, knowing the skill is on their profile is enough. Deciding who is ready for a role, or defending a pay band, means knowing how good they are as well, and Microsoft itself says People Skills is not designed for promotion or pay decisions.

TechWolf works out a level only for the skills that matter most to the business, not for every skill. At T-Mobile, which has its own five-level scale but has not yet applied it to this work, proficiency is still an open question.

04Privacy, and the works council

TechWolf

It will not use LinkedIn profiles or any other outside profile data to work out an employee’s skills, by design. At Belgium’s Federal Public Service for Health, the works councils were reassured once they saw that the data sent to TechWolf identifies people by number rather than by name, so TechWolf does not know whose profile it is looking at.

Microsoft People Skills

The controls are thorough: five settings, nested inside one another, each of which can apply to everyone, to a group or to one person. Microsoft names works-council rules, with Germany as its example, as a reason to use them. An administrator can remove People Skills permanently, with most data deleted within 48 to 72 hours and skills data in Viva Learning gone within a week.

What it means for youBoth vendors show how they handle works councils: TechWolf through a public-sector customer whose councils were reassured once names were taken out of the data, and Microsoft through settings that switch features off for the people concerned. Where you need to take care is on Microsoft’s side, because of what its settings do before anyone changes them.

Once an administrator has set it up, Microsoft switches two things on by default for employees with a Copilot or Viva licence. Unless somebody turns them off, its AI reads their email, chats, meetings and documents, and shows colleagues the skills it finds. Raise this with your works council, or whoever speaks for employees on privacy, before it is switched on, because the reading starts as soon as an administrator has set it up.

05What it takes to run

TechWolf

TechWolf runs as a programme of work rather than a software installation. It takes three to six months to validated skills, of which two to six weeks is technical. The work also needs your own people: at Ericsson, more than twenty people from the business each took ownership of a skill area. T-Mobile’s role architecture has grown from about 2,500 roles to nearly 4,000, with new roles still being created, so the work does not stop once it is live.

Microsoft People Skills

An administrator turns it on, and Microsoft says the first skill suggestions start appearing within 48 hours. Most organisations can use its quick setup, but better results start with fixing missing or incomplete job titles, because its AI relies on them.

What it means for youOne takes three to six months and needs your own experts to check its work; the other starts showing results within 48 hours. With TechWolf, budget for your own people’s time as well as the software.

Microsoft’s speed raises a different question, which is who controls it. Only two Microsoft 365 administrator roles, the AI administrator and the Knowledge administrator, can set it up, and inferred skills then appear on profiles by default. If skills strategy is yours, talk to whoever holds those roles before it is switched on.

06Whose taxonomy you end up with

TechWolf

It brings its own map of more than 30,000 skills and how they relate to each other, and it accepts your own list on top. It typically maps 70 to 80% of an existing skills list across automatically, and most of the rest in the next round. You still own the structure your skills are organised into, although TechWolf says around 95% of its customers let it build and maintain the taxonomy for them.

Microsoft People Skills

It comes with more than 16,000 skills ready to use, in a library Microsoft describes as powered by LinkedIn, and you can upload your own on top: between 20 and 5,000 skills, with each file under 100 MB. There is nothing to build on day one.

What it means for youIf you have already spent a year building a skills framework, TechWolf will map most of it onto its own. Microsoft will import up to 5,000 of your skills and let you map them to your jobs, but each one comes across only as a name of up to 50 characters and a short description in English. If you have nothing, Microsoft hands you a working structure immediately.

Microsoft also takes over the profile card, the panel that shows a person’s details when you click their name in Outlook or Teams. Once People Skills is on, only skills that come through People Skills appear there. If another tool feeds skills onto those cards today, they disappear from the card and show up only in people search and Copilot Chat.

07How much you can trust the output

TechWolf

In Ericsson’s pilot, more than 77% of the employees taking part accepted the skills it had inferred for them. At T-Mobile, 78% of the skills it suggested for jobs were approved, while confirmation by employees, which was never made compulsory, sits at around 32% across the company.

Microsoft People Skills

Microsoft cites accuracy of around 80%+, reported by early adopters. In an independent hands-on review, the Microsoft 365 writer Tony Redmond found it credited him with knowing Exchange but not SharePoint, a subject he writes about often.

What it means for youNeither is a system you let make a promotion decision on its own. Treat both as a strong first draft that a person still checks, and ask each vendor what its accuracy figure measures before you quote it.

Capabilities

What each one can and cannot do

Capability comparison · Sep 2026
	TechWolf	Microsoft People Skills
Reads work your people produced	Yes	Yes, inside Microsoft 365
Reads systems outside Microsoft	Yes	No
Tells you how good somebody is	Yes, three to eight levels, for the skills that matter most to the business	Not described in Microsoft’s People Skills documentation
Exports what the AI worked out	Yes	No
Writes into Workday or SAP	Yes, that is the point of it	No
Takes your existing skills list	Yes, and 70 to 80% usually maps on its own	Yes, by file: between 20 and 5,000 skills, with each file under 100 MB
Skills library out of the box	Its own library of more than 30,000 skills, which your list is mapped onto	More than 16,000, from LinkedIn
Works in several languages	Yes, including mixed-language workforces	Custom skills must be in English
Controls for a works council	Yes, taking names out of the data reassured the councils at one Belgian federal public service	Yes, unusually detailed
Accuracy figure	About 95%	Around 80%+, reported by early adopters
Named customers you can check	Yes, six or more	Two, quoted in its launch announcement
Covers frontline and deskless staff	Frontline staff lagged in confirming their skills at T-Mobile	Microsoft says it may be limited
Covers soft skills	Only as far as your HR records capture them	Microsoft says it may be limited
Buy it without a procurement cycle	No	Yes, if you hold the licence
Complete removal of the data	Erasure requests handled within 30 days	Yes, most within 72 hours and all within a week

Several of these answers come with a condition, such as the number of levels or the language your own skills must be written in, so check the condition as well as the yes or no.

Money

What each one costs

TechWolf

Not published

TechWolf publishes no price, or whether you would pay per employee, per module or a flat fee for the platform, so the first figure you see will come from its sales team.

The licence may not be the biggest cost, because the programme runs three to six months and your own experts have to check what it finds. When you build the budget, cost the whole programme, including your experts’ time, rather than the software alone.

Microsoft People Skills

$0 extra, so far

There is no separate price. It comes with a Copilot or Viva licence, and what it costs you depends on which licence you already hold. Microsoft 365 Copilot is $30 per user per month on an annual commitment. Copilot Business, sold for up to 300 users, is $18 per user per month for the first year if you sign up by the end of 2026, against a normal price of $21.

If your organisation holds no Copilot or Viva licences at all, employees can add skills to their profiles by hand but do not get the part that works out skills on its own, which is the main reason to use it.

The constraint that decides it

What Microsoft will not let you do

Microsoft People Skills comes with a licence you may already hold, produces its first results within days, and is good at finding who has worked on something. Before you treat it as your skills record, though, four things are worth knowing, because they limit what you can take out of it and change what your people see from the day it is set up.

The inferred skills cannot leave

Only a user’s confirmed skills can be exported, and AI-generated skills cannot. The skills the AI works out for you are the whole reason to use it, and they stay inside Microsoft.

The one way out is not supported for live use

The skills your people confirm by hand can be exported, but only through a test version of the connection Microsoft offers other software for reading its data. Microsoft says that test version is subject to change and not supported for use in live systems, so a workforce plan that depends on it could be affected whenever Microsoft changes that connection.

It hides your other skills data

Once People Skills is on, only skills that originate from it appear on the profile card. If you already have a skills tool feeding those cards, its skills drop off the card and can then be found only through people search and Copilot Chat.

It is on by default

Once an administrator has set it up, the reading and the sharing are both on by default for Copilot and Viva users, so the AI goes through their emails, chats, meetings and documents and shows colleagues the skills it finds unless an administrator or the employee turns it off.

One more thing to weigh is how settled the product is. Microsoft announced that Viva Goals, another of its Viva apps, would be retired at the end of 2025, and stopped adding new features to it a year before that. People Skills has already been renamed once, from Skills in Viva, and Microsoft now documents it and sets it up under Microsoft 365 Copilot. Neither fact says it will go the same way, but both belong in the decision before you make it the place your skills data lives.

Common ground

Where neither of them helps

Your frontline and deskless people

Microsoft says performance may be limited for users who do not spend considerable time in Microsoft 365, giving frontline and field workers as the example. In TechWolf’s own T-Mobile study, where confirming skills was voluntary, the confirmation rate was about 32% across the company and closer to 70% in back-office teams, with the gap concentrated in frontline retail and care. If most of your workforce is in a shop, a ward or a warehouse, neither vendor has shown that its product works well for them.

Soft skills and judgement

Microsoft says performance may be limited for soft skills, because work that touches on a skill may not be a clear sign that somebody can apply it. TechWolf relies on HR data to capture soft skills, so for these it can only reflect the reviews and records you already keep.

Knowing how accurate any of it is

Microsoft cites accuracy of around 80%+, reported by early adopters, and TechWolf puts its accuracy at about 95%. The two figures come from different measures, so ask each vendor what its figure counts before you tell anyone how accurate the skills are.

Anybody who does not write things down

Both work largely from written records: Microsoft from key phrases in emails, meetings and documents, and TechWolf from the text in the systems it connects to. A person whose contribution is a decision on the shop floor or a repaired machine leaves little for either system to find, and can look less skilled than a colleague who writes a lot of documents.

If any of those is the reason you started looking, this pair is not your shortlist. Our guide to skills intelligence software sets out what else exists, and which jobs need this kind of product at all.

If neither of them fits, the third route is building the job on the systems you already run. See what that looks like

Questions we get

The things buyers ask

Can we run both?

Yes, and for a lot of companies that is the sensible answer. Microsoft comes with licences you may already hold and covers head-office knowledge work. TechWolf covers the systems Microsoft cannot see and puts the result somewhere you can use it. The two do not conflict, though you should expect the profile card to show only Microsoft’s version.

We are 800 people. Is TechWolf even available to us?

TechWolf is built for large enterprises, and it points smaller organisations to JobBERT, a free AI model it publishes openly, as a place for technical teams to start experimenting. The smallest customer it names in a case study is Cotality, at about 5,000 people. A smaller organisation with clean data can finish implementation nearer three months. At 800 people you can still ask, but expect to be pointed towards JobBERT rather than the paid product.

If Microsoft comes with our licence, why would anyone pay?

Because it stops at the edge of Microsoft 365, and because you cannot get the AI-generated data out. Those two limits do not matter if all you want is to find an expert, but they rule Microsoft out for almost everything else HR does with skills data.

Could Microsoft retire People Skills, as it did Viva Goals?

Nobody can say, but two facts are relevant: Microsoft announced that Viva Goals would be retired at the end of 2025, and People Skills has already been renamed once, from Skills in Viva. Neither fact predicts anything, but together they are a good reason not to make it the only place your skills data lives.

Our workforce is mostly in stores and warehouses. Which one?

On current evidence, neither vendor has shown that its product works well for people in stores and warehouses. Microsoft says performance may be limited for people who do not spend much time in Microsoft 365 and gives frontline workers as its example. In TechWolf’s own T-Mobile study, where confirming skills was voluntary, the confirmation rate was about 32% overall and closer to 70% in back-office teams, with the gap concentrated in frontline retail and care. A skills matrix built for frontline work will serve you better than either.

How do we test this cheaply before committing?

Turn on Microsoft People Skills if you already pay for Copilot, Viva Suite, Viva Insights or Viva Learning. Most people will have results within two days and everyone within five. You will see what your Microsoft 365 data already says about your people’s skills, and where the picture is thin. The gaps it shows tell you whether it is worth asking a paid vendor such as TechWolf for a price.

Sources and method We read Microsoft Learn’s documentation for People Skills, covering how it works out skills, how it is licensed and how administrators control it, in early September 2026, and checked it again against the live pages on 14 September 2026. Microsoft 365 Copilot prices come from Microsoft’s own pricing pages. We read TechWolf’s own site, FAQ, blog, trust centre and published case studies in early September 2026, and checked those pages again on 14 September 2026. Apart from Tony Redmond’s independent review of People Skills, every limitation described here comes from the vendor’s own documentation, blog, trust centre or published case studies. What each vendor publishes about its own product is taken as its description of that product.

For People Skills, the two customers named are Lloyds Banking Group and Grundfos, quoted in Microsoft’s launch announcement, and Microsoft’s accuracy figure of around 80%+, reported by early adopters comes from a Microsoft blog post. For TechWolf, the customer results quoted here all come from its own case studies, and its Capterra listing had no user reviews when we checked.