🧙🏼 Copilot Agents

Howdy, wizards.

There’s some big Copilot upgrades in Microsoft 365 coming. There’s two brand new apps and a bunch of updates to the existing suite of tools like Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook…

Let’s do a deep dive!

Dario’s Picks – Copilot “wave 2” special

1. Microsoft launches “wave 2” of Copilot. Microsoft just held a “Copilot wave 2” event, announcing new integrations of Copilot across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.

    

   For context: Microsoft first launched Copilot 18 months ago, continuously building out AI functionality inside its Microsoft 365 since then. Companies are reportedly saving hours each week with it.

    

   Here’s two totally new things coming to Microsoft 365:

    

   • Copilot Pages: it’s a new app designed for AI-human collaboration. I’d explain it as a shareable doc that’s deeply integrated with an AI that has all your business data. To understand it better, check out this 2 minute demo.

   • Copilot Agents: a new feature that lets you use and create autonomous AI assistants to automate and execute business processes. It’s seems to me like a twist on custom GPTs for ChatGPT – only totally integrated with your business’ data (big advantage) and more secure. Copilot Agents, along with agent builder inside Copilot Studio is already generally available.

• ‎ Why it matters‎ ‎ Not having to jump across apps, and being able to automate tedious tasks, all while collaborating on the same platform? Yes, please! Microsoft 365 users – this can probably save your team a substantial amount of time.

   

  BUT before getting too excited remember – these features are fresh out of the lab – let’s first see how well it works in the field.

Read on for AI upgrades to Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook + my takeaways… 

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2. AI upgrades to existing Microsoft 365 apps:

   • Copilot in Excel is getting more powerful.

     • The basic Copilot in Excel is now generally available.

     • Copilot in Excel with Python is coming. Microsoft is making advanced data analysis simpler by introducing Python with Copilot, directly in Excel. This will enable more people to do things like forecasting, risk analysis, machine learning and advanced visualisation – which previously required more in-depth technical skills.

   • Copilot in Powerpoint is getting new features:

     • Narrative Builder lets you co-create the first draft of a presentation using Copilot. The feature is now generally available, and the ability to add files to give the AI context for the draft is coming.

     • Brand manager is a new, powerful feature that lets you use your company’s branded template to make your presentations ready to use and on-brand. The ability to connect Copilot to your organisation’s SharePoint Asset Library (for company-approved images) is coming.

   • Copilot in Outlook gets Prioritize my inbox. It does what it sounds like – uses AI to show you the most important new emails, with a concise summary. You’ll be able to influence the feature by teaching CoPilot which topics, keywords, etc. matter to you as well.

   • Copilot in Word: It’ll be easier to get a good first draft quickly.

     • You’ll be able to quickly reference website, files (Word, Powerpoint, PDFs), emails and meetings directly from word for Copilot to use.

     • Word is getting better AI writing features, the most exciting of which is the inline collaboration with Copilot which lets you improve specific sections of your document more easily.

• ‎ Why it matters‎ ‎ While I wouldn’t say anything here is revolutionary, (there’s already standalone AI tools that can do most of this already), the distribution element here is not to be underestimated. A big part of the working world is about to get advanced AI tools right into their laps! And since it’s all on Microsoft’s platform, it’ll enable not just more corporate usage but also more collaboration at work with AI too.

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