Three updates in Microsoft 365 Copilot that will transform your business

Microsoft Copilot Wave 2 is here and its exciting new features promise to unleash a torrent of workplace productivity.

Unveiling the biggest release of Copilot innovations since the platform launched in 2023, Microsoft introduced three new features that will continue to revolutionise the way users interact with, and get the best from, the AI-driven technology.

In this article, we’ll provide key information about:

• Copilot Pages
• Copilot M365 Apps
• Copilot Agents

More than 1,000 Copilot customers fed back on the platform’s launch features, and their insights have helped to shape its latest iteration. Microsoft says it has implemented more than 700 product updates and 150 new features in this version. As an example of Copilot’s growing usability, responses to prompts are now twice as fast.

But what does all of this mean for your teams and your business as a whole?

Copilot Wave 2 is ‘UI for AI’

Businesses are already using Copilot have seen it become an organising layer for teams. It transforms workflows to boost collaboration by breaking down the walls between departments, and turbocharges productivity by accelerating traditionally lengthy processes for better results.

Microsoft hails the latest iteration of Copilot as the new ‘UI for AI’: a place where users and Copilot technology can work with each other to research and simplify complex tasks; producing results that can push your organisation forward.

A new work pattern

The new wave of Copilot heralds new ways to work. With Copilot Pages the technology connects users with the AI as well as their colleagues – all in one place.

Designed with an easy-to-use interface, Copilot Pages features two tabs: Web and Work.

As a simple example, imagine you’re running an electric vehicle charging infrastructure company and you need to submit a proposal to a major airport. First, in the ‘Web’ tab of Copilot, you can quickly construct an outline of your response in a document, asking the platform to seek out in your folders proposals that have previously won business, which it can use as a template.

You can then set off Copilot in search of relevant facts and figures to show you’ve understood your prospect’s business need: the annual number of passengers, the number of electric vehicles used, and so on.

Copilot will surface answers in next to no time and verify them with citations. While you continue to shape your proposal you can bring on board other users at your organisation to add further research and insights. This new collaboration capability is supported by switching to the ‘Work’ tab. It’s underpinned by new feature; Biz Chat, which turns all of your organisation’s data into a reusable asset from which to extract value.

Copilot will then guide everyone working on the proposal, collating and organising information, and being on hand to help with further prompts. Your output is a slick, branded proposal that provides a great chance of winning the business.

Personal productivity gains

The new updates to Copilot in M365 Apps are designed to keep you organised without dragging you out of your workflows. Whether you need to make sense of your inbox, analyse data or quickly produce an RFP, the technology takes the weight off by handling cumbersome tasks while you add value. This wave brings even further Microsoft 365 Apps augmented by Copilot.

Copilot in Excel – Gives you one gateway to all of the data across your systems, from product sales and pricing information to customer feedback. Copilot provides a workbook whereby it can help you to shape and analyse data, eliminating the complexity that comes with big volumes of information. Another exciting development is the integration of Python software into Excel. Using it is like instantly adding an expert data analyst to your team.

Copilot in PowerPoint – Create compelling presentations and proposal decks in your organisation’s template. Copilot develops an outline, populates it with starter text, and lets you choose from company-approved images to add a flourish. It’s quick and easy to restructure and edit your document, and also pull in pitch-winning case studies and testimonials from across your organisation. If you prefer, or if the task is slightly different, you can develop a proposal with Copilot in Word with equal simplicity.

Copilot in Outlook – ‘Prioritise My Inbox’ does as it suggests, by analysing the context of your messages alongside your work objectives. The AI understands what’s most important in enabling you to achieve your short- and long-term goals, sorts messages by priority, tells you why they are significant, and even sets out next best actions to take. A mobile version enables email drafting and editing on the go. With just a few prompts, Copilot suggests message content, and lets you choose and edit your preferred text.

Find out more on Microsoft Copilot

Secret agents offering support

Fuelling further productivity in the latest platform update is the release of Copilot Agents. Available at several levels of ‘seniority’, Agents can handle research and planning tasks, connect you in projects with co-workers, and even manage other Agents you’ve created.

Agents are effectively automated project managers. The work they can handle includes collecting the most valuable discussion points from Teams meeting summaries but also Chat streams, so you don’t need to wade through to get to the most important information.

Another key benefit is Agents’ ability to search SharePoint for content that’s relevant to any task at hand, surfacing information that might otherwise be lost to your organisation.

In short, it’s no exaggeration to say Agents act as your team-mates and can scale your operation like never before.

If Copilot’s latest innovations to support collaboration and creativity have persuaded you to expand your number of user licences; test out Copilot for the first time; or raised questions you’d like BCN’s AI experts to answer, get in touch.