Introducing Copilot for Microsoft 365
At Microsoft Ignite 2023, we are announcing new innovations across Microsoft Copilot—one copilot experience that runs across all our surfaces, understanding your context on the web, on your PC, and at work to bring the right skills to you when you need them across work and life. Microsoft is the Copilot company. And soon there will be a Copilot for everyone and for everything you do.
On November 1, 2023, Copilot for Microsoft 365 became generally available for enterprises, and already
Copilot for Microsoft 365—your AI assistant at work
At Ignite, we shared three thematic updates to Copilot: more personalization, sophisticated mathematical and analysis capabilities, and Copilot becoming a full participant in collaboration.
We’re bringing more personalization to Copilot. New capabilities allow you to give Copilot details about your role and instructions on what’s important to you, so you can get tailored responses based on your unique role and preferences, including preferences on formatting, style, and tone. This new capability will roll out initially in Word and PowerPoint and will follow soon in the other Microsoft 365 apps, complementing previously announced personalization features such as “sound like me” for Copilot in Outlook, which matches your unique writing style and voice when drafting emails.
The recently announced Python in Excel allows you to perform sophisticated mathematical analysis using one of the most powerful programming languages in the world. And, in combination with Copilot in Excel, users will be able to unlock this capability using natural language.
We’re also announcing powerful new capabilities that make Copilot a full participant in collaboration, helping everyone stay focused on the discussion in a Microsoft Teams meeting, turn notes from a brainstorm into visualizations on a digital whiteboard, and build shared workspaces in Microsoft Loop that help your team collaborate and stay in sync.
Read on for the full list of new capabilities in Copilot for Microsoft 365—all generally available unless otherwise noted.
Introducing Microsoft Copilot Studio
At Ignite, we announced Microsoft Copilot Studio, a low-code tool to customize Copilot for Microsoft 365 and build standalone copilots. It brings together a set of powerful conversational capabilities—from custom GPTs, generative AI plugins, and manual topics. You can customize Copilot for Microsoft 365 with your own enterprise scenarios—build, test, and publish standalone copilots and custom GPTs and manage and secure your customizations and standalone copilots with the right access, data, user controls, and analytics. Copilot Studio exposes a full end-to-end lifecycle for customizations and standalone copilots within a single pane of glass—build, deploy, analyze, and manage all from within the same web experience. With Copilot Studio, you can connect Copilot to other data sources, including pre-built or custom plugins and GPTs, to tap into any system of record—from SAP, Workday, and ServiceNow—and even your own proprietary business solutions. Copilot Studio is available today, and the integration with Copilot for Microsoft 365 is now available in preview.
Copilot in Microsoft Teams
COPILOT IN MICROSOFT TEAMS MEETINGS
- Next year, new Copilot in Teams experiences will give Copilot a seat at the meeting table, transforming it into a meeting assistant so everyone can stay present, engaged, and focused in the meeting. Copilot in collaborative notes takes notes throughout your meeting that are then shared with participants, and you can even instruct Copilot to capture specific content—for instance, ask it to “Quote Ben,” and Copilot will transcribe Ben’s remark for everyone to see.
- Customers who want to leverage the power of Copilot in Teams meetings—but without creating a recording—now have the option to enable it without transcription. When enabled without transcription, Copilot can answer questions and provide information during the meeting, but no record of interactions will be retained afterward.
Copilot in Microsoft Outlook
COPILOT IN OUTLOOK
- Coming in early 2024, Copilot in Outlook helps you prepare for upcoming meetings—combing through invitation details, related emails, and pertinent documents to build a synthesized summary that you can review quickly and show up prepped.
- Copilot now also helps you navigate bulky email threads effortlessly with an email thread summary. Copilot extracts crucial information, proposing actionable steps like a follow-up meeting. Once a meeting is selected, it drafts agendas, summarizes discussions, creates engaging meeting titles, populates attendees, appends the original thread for clarity, and suggests times when everyone can meet.
Copilot in Microsoft Word
COPILOT IN WORD
- Coming soon, you can use catchup and comments in Copilot in Word to quickly get up to speed on document revisions by asking questions like, “How do I see what has changed in this document?” to reveal changes and revisions made by anyone who has accessed the document.
Copilot in Microsoft PowerPoint
COPILOT IN POWERPOINT
- With the new brand asset and image library (coming soon), you can ask Copilot in PowerPoint to use your corporate brand assets and leverage Microsoft Designer to reimagine them using AI-generated visuals—no photo shoot required.
