Deltek Dela, Copilot or a custom assistant: which does a contractor actually need?
The question arrives as a choice between three products. It is really a question about where your answers live. Here is what each one reads, according to Deltek's and Microsoft's own documentation, and a way to sort the questions your finance and contracts teams ask every month.
The short answer: They are not substitutes, because they read different things. Deltek's Dela is included with the Costpoint license, acts as the signed-in user inside Costpoint and now handles in-system work such as voucher approvals, bill review and anomaly flags. Microsoft 365 Copilot answers from the documents, mail and meetings a user can already see in Microsoft 365, and does not see Costpoint unless someone builds a connection. A custom assistant answers the questions that cross Costpoint, documents and other systems, on read-only access your administrator grants, with the source behind every figure. Most contractors will use the first two for what they already cover and build the third for the questions neither can answer.
The choice is usually framed as Dela versus Copilot versus "something custom." That framing hides the fact that matters: each of the three sees a different slice of the company.
Each one reads a different set of data
Dela reads Costpoint. Deltek's Dela FAQ says it "acts as another user in Costpoint," inherits the user's organization and security permissions and answers only about information that user can already reach. Since the 2025.3 release, customers can also point Ask Dela at internal policy and handbook URLs, and the Contract Agent reads contract documents uploaded to Costpoint. Everything else, the funding modification in SharePoint, the program manager's forecast spreadsheet, the proposal archive, is outside its view unless someone connects it, and Deltek has not documented what a connection can reach.
Copilot reads Microsoft 365. Microsoft says it "only surfaces organizational data to which individual users have at least view permissions," respects sensitivity labels and retention policies, and does not use prompts, responses or Microsoft Graph data to train foundation models. To reach anything outside Microsoft 365, Microsoft's extensibility overview describes Copilot connectors that "ground Microsoft 365 Copilot in approved external organizational data," declarative agents that "can call an external API or remote MCP server," and custom engine agents with your own orchestration and models. When they are combined, Microsoft says, each part "retains its own identity, authentication, deployment, distribution, and governance requirements." Each is something an administrator has to set up.
A custom assistant reads what you connect, and nothing else. For Costpoint that means the read-only paths the customer already controls: web services an administrator enables per user, read-only ODBC and JDBC in Deltek's cloud through a service request, Costpoint Business Intelligence report subscriptions, or the database itself on premises. Add the document stores and the other systems the question needs. The assistant answers with the report, the period and the figures it used, and logs who asked what. We covered what that access path looks like, and why read-only keeps DCAA calm, in Can AI read our Costpoint data without creating a DCAA problem?
| The question | Answer lives in | Dela | Copilot | Custom |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Which vouchers are waiting on me, and what did the review flag? | Costpoint | Dela 5 of 5 | Copilot 1 of 5 | Custom 2 of 5 |
| Create a voucher from this vendor invoice and route it for approval | Costpoint | Dela 5 of 5 | Copilot 0 of 5 | Custom 1 of 5 |
| Year-to-date overhead against the provisional rate: what moved it, and where does it land at year end? | Costpoint and the forecast | Dela 3 of 5 | Copilot 0 of 5 | Custom 5 of 5 |
| Does the funding mod the contracts team filed match the funded value in Costpoint? | SharePoint and Costpoint | Dela 1 of 5 | Copilot 2 of 5 | Custom 5 of 5 |
| Draft each program manager's monthly status note from this month's actuals | Costpoint, then Word | Dela 2 of 5 | Copilot 2 of 5 | Custom 5 of 5 |
| Find the past performance that fits this solicitation, across old proposals and Costpoint | Proposal archive and Costpoint | Dela 2 of 5 | Copilot 3 of 5 | Custom 5 of 5 |
| Summarize the customer call and draft the follow-up email | Teams and Outlook | Dela 0 of 5 | Copilot 5 of 5 | Custom 1 of 5 |
| What does our travel policy say, and which open expense reports break it? | Policy document and Costpoint | Dela 3 of 5 | Copilot 2 of 5 | Custom 5 of 5 |
Fit scores are our reading of what each option can reach, taken from Deltek's Costpoint release notes and Dela FAQ and Microsoft's Copilot documentation as of this article's date. They are not measurements. A full row means the option reads every source the question needs and can act where the question asks for action; an empty row means it cannot see the data at all. The pattern to notice: the questions that score highest for the custom assistant are the ones whose answer lives in two places.
Dela: use what the license already includes
The case for Dela is simple: you are already paying for it. The FAQ says "Dela is included with the Costpoint License," and Deltek's Dela platform page says the assistant comes with the core license in Costpoint and Vantagepoint. On-premises customers must obtain their own Microsoft license for the Azure OpenAI service behind it. Deltek says customer data is never used to train the model, that requests to Azure are stateless, and that Deltek does not store what passes through Dela.
What it does has grown quickly. The 2026.2 release, dated April 15, 2026, added voucher creation from invoices uploaded through Dela's chat, financial anomaly analysis against two years of history, and "MCP Servers for Dela Integration." The 2026.3 release, dated July 15, 2026, brought Agentic Financial Close with Dela-flagged bills, AI-assisted voucher approval that records a confidence level and a reason, timesheet auto-posting, and a Proposal Generation Agent that drafts an outline from a solicitation (the proposal screens it works through need a separate add-on license). The 2026.4 release, dated October 21, 2026, added an Indirect Rate Anomaly Analysis card for pool journals and let Dela start closing plans from Ask Dela or Teams. If a task is a Costpoint transaction and Deltek has shipped an agent for it, that is where the task belongs; we made the same point in What should a government contractor automate with AI first?
Two limits. Dela stops at Costpoint's edge: it can flag that a pool journal looks odd, but it cannot read the forecast spreadsheet that explains why. And if you run GovCon Cloud Moderate, Deltek's own documents disagree about whether you have Dela at all: the undated Dela FAQ says no, and an August 2025 Costpoint Dela overview says GCCM Dela runs on Azure GCC High. We set both out in Is Deltek's Dela available in GovCon Cloud Moderate? Confirm it in writing before you plan around it.
Copilot: the document side, priced per seat
If your company runs Microsoft 365, some Copilot is already there. Microsoft's enterprise pricing page lists Copilot Chat as included at no additional cost for users with an eligible Microsoft 365 subscription, with agents metered by usage, and the full Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on at $30 per user per month paid yearly, on top of a qualifying Microsoft 365 license. Microsoft's business page lists a Copilot Business add-on for Microsoft 365 Business plans at $21 per user per month paid yearly, discounted to $18 through December 31, 2026 for the first year. Both pages carry the same footnote: "Some AI experiences require usage-based billing and may result in charges based on usage." Pricing in GCC and GCC High is not stated on those pages.
It is strong where the answer is a document: a contract clause, a meeting, a thread of email, a draft. It is the wrong tool for a rate variance, because it cannot see the rate. The bridge Deltek is building is worth watching: the Costpoint 2026.3 notes say Dela can "operate as a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server," so that "Copilot or other MCP-compatible tools" can reach Costpoint, and the Costpoint help now shows a Dela tab with an MCP connection switch, an endpoint URI, an authentication method and a Trusted MCP Clients list. What a connected client can actually reach, and whether any of it works in GCCM, is not stated. Which Copilot you have, and what it may touch when CUI is in the room, is the subject of Is it safe to put CUI or contract documents into ChatGPT or Copilot?
A custom assistant: for the questions that live in two places
Look at the table again. Every question that scores a full row for the custom assistant has an answer split across systems: the mod in SharePoint and the funded value in Costpoint, this month's actuals and the status note in Word, the solicitation and the past performance in two archives. Those are the questions finance and contracts staff answer by hand every month, and neither vendor's product reads both halves.
This is the work Rockford builds. The assistant reads Costpoint through the access your administrator grants, never writes to it, reads the document stores the question needs, and answers with sources attached: the report, the period, the figures, the document and page. Every answer shows where it came from. No black boxes. The log records who asked, what was asked and which sources answered, which is what you want on the table when DCAA asks how a number was produced. Costpoint stays the system of record. AI drafts and flags; people approve and sign. No Deltek partnership is needed, and Rockford holds none. What a build like this costs, line by line, is the subject of How much does a custom AI assistant on Costpoint data cost?
There is a trust reason to want this layer, not only a convenience one. In Deltek's 17th annual Clarity study (May 2026, 917 government contractors), the top AI concerns were data privacy and security at 37 percent, inaccurate forecasts at 29 percent and difficulty validating AI-provided insights at 26 percent, and 45 percent said they were unclear on the return on investment. An answer you can validate is one that shows its sources. That is a design choice, and it is the one a custom assistant lets you make for every question, not only the ones a vendor chose.
How to decide
Write down the ten questions your finance and contracts teams answer most often. Next to each, write where the answer lives: Costpoint, Microsoft 365, somewhere else, or two of those. Questions whose answer lives wholly in Costpoint go to Dela, once your account team confirms what your environment has. Questions whose answer is a document go to the Copilot you already have. Questions whose answer lives in two places are the custom assistant's, and the first one should be read-only, monthly, and checked against a number a person already knows.
Then check the data rules once for all three. Indirect rates, payroll and billing figures are sensitive business data but usually not CUI; contract deliverables and technical data may be. If CUI touches a question, the environment answering it must sit inside your NIST SP 800-171 scope, whichever vendor's name is on it. Small proof first, then scale.
Common questions
Does Microsoft 365 Copilot see our Costpoint data?
Not by itself. Microsoft documents Copilot as answering from the Microsoft 365 data a user already has permission to see, and describes Copilot connectors, declarative agents and custom engine agents as the ways to ground it in approved external data or call an external API or MCP server. Deltek's Costpoint 2026.3 release notes say Dela can operate as an MCP server for Copilot and other MCP-compatible tools. Each connection is something an administrator has to set up and govern.
Does Dela cost extra on top of Costpoint?
Deltek's Dela FAQ says Dela is included with the Costpoint license, and its Dela platform page says the assistant comes with the core license in Costpoint and Vantagepoint. On-premises customers must obtain their own Microsoft license for the Azure OpenAI service. Some features are opt-in for cloud customers, and Deltek's license terms let it monitor, measure and log AI consumption, so ask your account team what, if anything, is metered.
Can a contractor use all three at once?
Yes, and most will. Dela handles work inside Costpoint, Copilot handles documents, mail and meetings in Microsoft 365, and a custom assistant handles the questions that cross both, on read-only access your administrator grants. The three overlap less than the marketing suggests, because each reads a different set of data.
Do we need a Deltek partner to build a custom assistant on Costpoint data?
No. Every path for reading Costpoint data is granted by the customer: web services enabled per user by your administrator, read-only ODBC and JDBC in Deltek's cloud through a service request, Costpoint Business Intelligence report subscriptions, or direct database reads on premises. Deltek's SaaS terms define an Authorized User to include a third party contracted to use the services on the customer's behalf. Rockford holds no Deltek partnership and does not need one.