TechWolf vs Microsoft People Skills

Both tools read a person’s work to find their skills. Microsoft reads only Microsoft 365. It will not let you export the skills its AI finds. TechWolf reads more systems. It sends every skill it finds into Workday, SAP or other systems. Microsoft turns on reading your email and chats by default. Start with Microsoft if you hold a Copilot or Viva licence. Move to TechWolf once you need those skills somewhere else.

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

Start with Microsoft. Move to TechWolf when exports matter.

Start here

Microsoft People Skills

Start with Microsoft if a Copilot or Viva licence already covers you.

Your people work mainly in Microsoft 365.
You want to know who has worked on something.
You have no skills framework, and no budget to build one.
You want an answer this week, not next quarter.

Move when

TechWolf

Move to TechWolf once those skills need to reach Workday or SAP.

You need skills written into Workday or SAP automatically.
You need to know how good somebody actually is, not just whether they have done something.
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 also cover TechWolf on its own page. It covers what it does, what its figures measure, where it stops, and what it needs from you.

We also cover Microsoft People Skills on its own page. It covers what it reads, what it is good at, and why the skills its AI finds stay inside Microsoft.

One difference decides most of this choice. Microsoft will not let you take out the skills its AI finds. TechWolf sends them into Workday, SAP, Visier, Power BI or Tableau.

Microsoft is also the quicker setup. An administrator switches it on. Its AI then starts working for everyone with a Copilot or Viva licence. TechWolf is a bigger programme. Your own people run parts of it. It takes three to six months. Its price stays private until you talk to its sales team.

TechWolf reads more. Microsoft costs nothing extra.

TechWolf Microsoft People Skills

Owner

TechWolfTechWolf is a company in Ghent, Belgium. It started in 2018. SAP, ServiceNow and Workday have all invested in it. It has raised a $42.75m Series B, on top of a €10m Series A.

Microsoft People SkillsMicrosoft makes it. It launched under this name in April 2025. It comes with Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft 365 and the 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 reads what people write in those systems, then works out each skill from that. By default, it sends each skill to the employee. The employee can accept or reject it.

Microsoft People SkillsIts AI reads Microsoft 365 activity to work out each skill. The employee can then confirm or remove each one. If nobody checks a skill, it stays on the profile anyway.

Skill level

TechWolfTechWolf uses five levels by default, adjustable from three to eight. If you already use a scale, it can match that instead.

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

Skills library

TechWolfTechWolf has its own skills library. You can bring your own list too. It usually matches 70 to 80% of an existing list to its own automatically.

Microsoft People SkillsIt comes with more than 16,000 skills ready to use. Microsoft says this library is powered by LinkedIn. You can also upload your own list. It must have between 20 and 5,000 skills, with each file under 100 MB.

Where the data goes

TechWolfIt goes back into Workday, SAP, Visier, Power BI or Tableau.

Microsoft People SkillsIts AI works out skills that can never leave Microsoft. Only skills an employee has confirmed by hand can leave.

Price

TechWolfNot published. TechWolf’s team works out a price with you before you sign a contract.

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

Smallest company that has bought it

TechWolfNot published. Cotality is the smallest company in its case studies. It has about 5,000 people.

Microsoft People SkillsThere is no minimum size. You can roll it out to a small group of pilot users first.

Time to first result

TechWolfThe first skill profiles arrive in two to six weeks. Checked skills for everyone in scope take three to six months.

Microsoft People SkillsFirst results take about 48 hours.

Who turns it on

TechWolfTechWolf’s project team runs it as a structured programme. Your own experts check the results.

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

Named customers

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

Microsoft People SkillsMicrosoft names two preview customers. They are Lloyds Banking Group and Grundfos, quoted in Microsoft’s launch announcement.

Who cannot buy it

TechWolfTechWolf states no restriction on who can buy it.

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.

Seven differences, and exporting is the one that decides

01Microsoft sees only Microsoft 365, and TechWolf sees more

TechWolf

It connects to the systems where your people do their work. That list includes Jira, Confluence, GitHub, ServiceNow, Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, Slack and Google Drive. It also reads your HR system and your learning platform. You choose how often it checks each system. It can check daily, weekly or monthly. It then reads what people have written there.

Microsoft People Skills

Its AI works out skills from Microsoft 365 alone. It does not look at any other business software. It cannot see Jira, GitHub, Salesforce or Zendesk, even if your people use them every day.

What it means for youWrite down which systems your people work in most. If most of that work happens outside Microsoft 365, Microsoft will only cover part of your workforce. Microsoft itself says results may be thin for frontline and field staff who rarely use Microsoft 365.

02Only TechWolf lets you export the skills its AI finds

TechWolf

TechWolf sends skill profiles into the systems you already run. It sends them into Workday Skills Cloud, SAP SuccessFactors, Visier, Power BI or Tableau. Your HR system stays the place where skills live. TechWolf also has its own screens, but no separate app for employees. Your experts check job skills inside TechWolf’s software. Employees confirm their own skills a different way, through TechWolf’s assistant inside Teams or Slack.

Microsoft People Skills

Only skills an employee confirms by hand can be exported. Skills the AI works out on its own can never leave, not even one. Even confirmed skills only leave through a test connection. That is the route Microsoft offers other software for reading its data. Microsoft says this test connection can change at any time. Microsoft does not support it for everyday use.

What it means for youThis is the difference that decides. Skills Microsoft’s AI finds cannot go into a workforce plan, a succession review or an HR system. A regular feed of confirmed skills would rest on a connection Microsoft can change at any time.

03Only TechWolf documents skill levels

TechWolf

By default, it uses five skill levels. You can adjust that to anywhere between three and eight. You can also match it to a scale your HR system already uses. It tracks two things separately. One is the level a role needs. The other is the level a person actually has.

Microsoft People Skills

Skill levels are not described in Microsoft’s People Skills documentation. Even the file for adding your own skills has nowhere to record one.

What it means for youFinding someone who has touched a subject is one job. Deciding who is ready for a role, or defending a pay band, needs to know how good someone is. Microsoft itself says People Skills is not designed for promotion or pay decisions.

TechWolf only works out a level for the skills that matter most to the business. It does not do this for every skill on the list. T-Mobile already runs its own five-level scale. It has not yet applied that scale to this work.

04Both handle works councils, but Microsoft reads by default

TechWolf

By design, it never uses LinkedIn or any other outside profile to work out an employee’s skills. At Belgium’s Federal Public Service for Health, works councils were reassured once they saw how the data works. TechWolf tracks people by number, not by name. That means TechWolf never actually knows whose profile it is looking at.

Microsoft People Skills

Microsoft’s privacy controls are thorough. There are five settings, nested inside each other. Each one can apply to everyone, to one group or to a single person. Microsoft points to works council rules in Germany as one reason to use them. An administrator can remove People Skills for good. After that, most data deleted within 48 to 72 hours. Skills data in Viva Learning is gone within a week.

What it means for youBoth vendors show how they handle works councils. TechWolf does it through one public-sector customer. Microsoft does it through settings that can switch features off for the people concerned. Take more care on Microsoft’s side. Two of its settings are switched on by default.

Raise this with your works council, or whoever speaks for employees on privacy, before it goes live.

05Microsoft starts in 48 hours, and TechWolf takes months

TechWolf

TechWolf takes three to six months to reach validated skills. Of that time, only two to six weeks is technical setup. The rest needs your own people. At Ericsson, more than twenty people from the business each took charge of one skill area. The work does not stop once it goes live. T-Mobile’s list of job roles has grown from about 2,500 to nearly 4,000 since it started. New roles are still being added.

Microsoft People Skills

An administrator just turns it on. Microsoft says the first skill suggestions start appearing within 48 hours. Most organisations can use its quick setup as it is. You will get better results if you first fix any missing or incomplete job titles. Its AI relies on them.

What it means for youIf you choose TechWolf, budget for your own people’s time, not just the software.

Only two Microsoft 365 roles can switch it on. They are called the AI administrator and the Knowledge administrator. Once it is on, AI-found skills appear on profiles by default. If skills strategy is your job, talk to whoever holds those two roles before it goes live.

06TechWolf maps your list, and Microsoft hands you one

TechWolf

TechWolf brings its own list of more than 30,000 skills. The industry calls this a taxonomy. That just means a structured list, showing how each skill relates to the others. You can also add your own list on top. It usually maps 70 to 80% of an existing skills list across automatically. It picks up most of the rest in a second round. You still own the structure your skills sit in. Even so, TechWolf says about 95% of its customers let it build and maintain that structure.

Microsoft People Skills

It comes with more than 16,000 skills ready to use. Microsoft says this library is powered by LinkedIn. You can also add your own list. It must have between 20 and 5,000 skills, with each file under 100 MB. There is nothing you need to build on day one.

What it means for youIf you have your own skills framework, TechWolf will map most of it onto its own list. Microsoft works differently. It will import up to 5,000 of your skills. You can then match them to your jobs. Each one comes across only as a name of up to 50 characters, plus a short English description. If you are starting with nothing, Microsoft gives you a working structure straight away.

07Treat both as a first draft

TechWolf

In Ericsson’s pilot, more than 77% of the employees taking part accepted the skills TechWolf worked out for them. At T-Mobile, 78% of the skills it suggested for jobs were approved. Employees at T-Mobile were never required to confirm a skill. Across the whole company, that confirmation rate still sits at around 32%, closer to about 70% in back-office teams. The gap is concentrated in frontline retail and care.

Microsoft People Skills

Microsoft cites accuracy of around 80%+, reported by early adopters. One independent reviewer, the Microsoft 365 writer Tony Redmond, tried it himself. It found one Microsoft product he knows, but missed another he writes about often.

What it means for youDo not let either system make a promotion decision on its own. A person still needs to check the draft.

Only TechWolf reads outside Microsoft and exports AI-found skills

Side-by-side capabilities, checked Sep 2026
	TechWolf	Microsoft People Skills
Reads the work your people produce	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
Sends skills into Workday or SAP	Yes, exporting is what it is built to do	No
Takes your existing skills list	Yes, and 70 to 80% usually maps on its own	Yes, by file. Needs between 20 and 5,000 skills, with each file under 100 MB
Skills library included from day one	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 going through procurement	No	Yes, if you hold the licence
Deleting all your data	Deletion requests handled within 30 days	Yes, most within 72 hours and all within a week

Microsoft costs nothing extra. TechWolf prices by quote.

TechWolf

By quote

Its sales team gives you a quote. Get the billing basis in writing. It could be per employee, per system you connect, or one flat number.

The software may not be the biggest cost. Your own experts check everything it finds, over three to six months. Budget for their time, not just the software.

Microsoft People Skills

$0 beyond what you already pay

There is no separate price for this tool. It comes with a Copilot or Viva licence. Microsoft 365 Copilot itself costs $30 per user per month, if you commit for a year. Copilot Business is sold for up to 300 users. It costs $18 per user per month for your first year, if you sign up by the end of 2026. After that, or if you sign up later, it normally costs $21.

If your organisation holds no Copilot or Viva licences, employees can still add skills to their profiles by hand. They will not get the part that works out skills automatically. That is the main reason to use this tool.

Microsoft will not let the AI’s skills leave

People Skills is good at finding who has worked on something. Four limits matter before you treat it as your official skills record. They limit what you can take out of it. They also change what your people see from the day it is switched on.

The skills the AI finds cannot leave

Those AI-found skills are the whole reason to use this tool. They stay locked inside Microsoft.

The only way out is not built for daily use

Confirmed skills leave only through a test connection. Microsoft can change it at any time. A workforce plan that depends on it could break.

It removes other tools’ skills from the profile card

Once switched on, only its skills show on the profile card. That is the panel showing a person’s details when you click their name in Outlook or Teams. If another tool feeds skills onto those cards, they drop off. They still show up in people search and Copilot Chat.

It is on by default

Two things switch on for every Copilot and Viva user. This happens once an administrator sets it up. The AI reads their emails, chats, meetings and documents. It then shows colleagues the skills it finds. Only an administrator or the employee can turn this off.

Microsoft announced that Viva Goals, another Viva app, would be retired at the end of 2025. Microsoft had already stopped adding new features to Viva Goals a year before that. People Skills has also been renamed once, from Skills in Viva. Microsoft now documents and sets up People Skills under Microsoft 365 Copilot instead. Neither fact proves it will go the same way as Viva Goals. But both matter before you make this the one place your skills data lives.

Neither has shown it works for everyone

Both miss frontline and deskless staff

Microsoft says results may be limited for frontline and field staff. They spend little time in Microsoft 365. At T-Mobile, TechWolf’s confirmation gap sat mostly in frontline retail and care. If your people work mainly in a shop, a ward or a warehouse, neither vendor has proof it works there.

Neither proves soft skills or judgement

Microsoft says results may be limited for soft skills too. A skill showing up in someone’s work does not prove they can use it well. TechWolf relies on your HR data to capture soft skills. It can only reflect the reviews and records you already keep.

The two accuracy figures measure different things

Microsoft cites accuracy of around 80%+, reported by early adopters. TechWolf claims about 95% accuracy for itself. The two figures come from different kinds of measurement. Get each vendor to state in writing what its figure measures, before you quote it.

Both miss people who do not write things down

Both tools work mostly from written records. Microsoft looks for key phrases in emails, meetings and documents. TechWolf looks at the text in whichever systems it connects to. A decision on the shop floor, or a repaired machine, leaves little for either system to find. They can end up looking less skilled than a colleague who simply writes a lot of documents.

If any of those is why you started looking, this pair is not the right shortlist for you. Our guide to skills intelligence software covers what else is out there. It also covers which jobs actually need a tool like this.

If neither fits, you could build the job on your own systems. See what that looks like

What buyers ask before they choose

Can we run both?

Yes. The two do not conflict. Microsoft comes with a licence you may already hold. TechWolf reaches the systems Microsoft cannot see. The profile card will still show only Microsoft’s version of a skill.

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

TechWolf builds for large enterprises. The smallest customer it names in a case study has about 5,000 people. A smaller organisation with well-kept data can finish nearer three months. For smaller companies, TechWolf points to JobBERT, a free AI model for technical teams. At 800 people you can still ask. Expect to be pointed to JobBERT, not the paid product.

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

Microsoft stops at the edge of Microsoft 365. You also cannot export what its AI finds. Neither limit matters if all you want is to find an expert. Together, they rule Microsoft out for most other HR work with skills data.

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

Nobody knows. Keep a copy of your skills data somewhere else too.

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

Neither, for now. Both vendors’ own evidence is weakest for people who spend little time at a desk. A skills matrix built for frontline work will serve you better.

How do we test this cheaply before committing?

Turn on Microsoft People Skills first, if you already pay for Copilot or Viva. Most people see results within two days, and everyone within five. That shows you what your Microsoft 365 data already says about your people’s skills. Thin results there tell you it is worth asking 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.