What’s new in Microsoft 365 Copilot?

16 Oct What’s new in Microsoft 365 Copilot?

Posted at 13:04h in Copilot by Simon Spencer

Microsoft 365 Copilot is simply Microsoft’s headline technology of the past year. Powered by GPT, Copilot is a powerhouse — acting as your virtual assistant with impressive automation and generative AI functionality. And, Microsoft is only just getting started. They’re backing Copilot for the long haul, which is good news for any business that wants to prosper in the new AI age.

Recently, Microsoft announced a multitude of new updates and innovations to take Microsoft Copilot to the next level. These features include new applications, implementations within 365, and so much more on the horizon. But, there is a lot to take in — this is the first major update towards Copilot since its launch, and so knowing what’s included is vital.

In this article, we’re going to go over the ins and outs of the innovations in Microsoft 365 Copilot — we’ll take a look at everything that’s coming, and how you can take advantage of them to truly take your organisation to the next level.

Copilot Pages

With the new Copilot Pages tool, your team can work collaboratively alongside Copilot like never before. Pages is a Copilot chat ‘canvas’ where several people can work together on the same instance and develop ideas through AI-generated content.

Using Pages, AI-generated content is flexible, letting you add to it, edit it, and share it with others, all in real-time. Alongside using content from your company data and files, and information from the web, Pages allows Copilot to be the ultimate AI partner for teams and units wanting to work together and take advantage of its power.

Copilot Pages give employees a whole new way to work together — an entirely collaborative experience, with several minds prompting Copilot’s AI to expand the realms of AI generation and collaboration in the workplace.

Copilot in Microsoft 365

While Copilot Pages brings new life to the Copilot offering, this isn’t the only way they’ve innovated in what Copilot can bring to the table.

In Wave 2, Copilot has received a wide range of updates across Microsoft 365 applications, allowing your employees to boost their productivity even further with Copilot. From adapted support in Excel to prioritisation in Outlook, Microsoft has gone above and beyond to improve Copilot for businesses.

Here’s a quick rundown of some other important features in this update —

Microsoft Excel: Copilot can now read data that hasn’t been formatted as a table. With added functionality for formulas, conditional formatting, and visualisations such as charts, working with Copilot in Excel has never been easier.
Excel with Python: Alongside this major boost, Microsoft has gone even further — combining the power of programming and AI, anybody can use Python to push their data analysis to the next level, just by using natural language.
Microsoft PowerPoint: With the new Narrative builder feature, developing presentations in PowerPoint is a breeze. With just a prompt, Copilot can help employees go from draft to final product in minutes.
Microsoft Teams: Now, Copilot can scan over the meeting chat and transcript at once, letting it summarise information and answer prompts quickly and effectively.
Microsoft Outlook: You no longer have to stress over a full inbox — using Prioritise My Inbox, Copilot analyses the content of your inbox based on employee role and email content, highlighting the important emails and generating summaries where you may have missed things.
Microsoft Word: Within Word, Copilot has received many quality-of-life updates, allowing you to quickly reference data from the internet or company data without disturbing your workflow. Copilot also will now suggest prompts on a fresh document and inline as you work, kickstarting your creative flow.
OneDrive: Locating files and important documents in a busy OneDrive can be time-consuming. However, Copilot can quickly scan your documents and locate the information you’ve been searching for, suggesting several files to compare and summarise, giving you the quick answers you need.

With this package of updates, working with Copilot in Microsoft 365 has never been easier. Teams can now flourish in many different circumstances, across several applications, improving workflow and collaboration like never before.

Copilot Agents

The age of AI is upon us, and one of the major aspects of the business world that’s causing AI to be so relevant is the ability to leverage it to gain a competitive advantage in the industry. Copilot Agents are the epitome of this — these agents work for you in the background and can automate a multitude of tasks throughout your business.

Making an Agent is easy to do within BizChat or SharePoint — and you can instantly empower it with organisational data to be able to make sure it hits the ground running. You can then share this agent with your colleagues in Microsoft Teams and Outlook, and communicate with the Agent as though it’s one of your teammates.

Copilot Studio lets you further customise your Copilot Agent, letting you connect it to data sources or even take actions on your behalf. With this, you get full flexibility and customisability, and your Agent can be far more potent than ever.

Copilot Agents and agent builder in BizChat are generally available, and the SharePoint integration is on the horizon — due to arrive on preview in October.

How to Make the Most of the AI Opportunity

Artificial intelligence is a vital technology of the 2020s, being the headliner for a lot of businesses. Microsoft’s Copilot is one of the most readily available artificial intelligence implementations mand is now being updated to be even more powerful than it was at its arrival. The age of Copilot is here, and Microsoft is just getting started.

If you’re looking to get started with Artificial Intelligence and want to make the most of it, taking advantage of it within Microsoft 365 in your organisation is the best place to start. Reach out to us now, to make sure that you’re ready to implement Copilot into your business — we’ll make sure that you’re ready for these new features, and that you have everything you need to thrive.