The results of the study are eye-opening. Forrester’s New Technology: Projected Total Economic Impact™ Of Microsoft 365 Copilot for SMB¹ projects that over a three-year period, businesses can experience a return on investment (ROI) ranging from 132% to 353%.²

Moreover, the study reports that businesses are already experiencing the transformational impact of AI for their organizations in the following areas:

• Faster time to market
• Increased productivity
• Improved employee satisfaction

Let’s take a closer look at how early adopters of Copilot have used the power of AI to transform their businesses, while keeping their data secure with enterprise data protection.

Microsoft 365 Copilot

Focus on what matters most with Microsoft 365 Copilot and the power of AI.

Discover more

Investing in Copilot delivers substantial returns for SMBs

The Forrester study demonstrates the transformative results that AI can help bring to businesses—making Copilot not just a productivity tool but a strategic investment for long-term growth:

• 6% increase in net revenue
• 20% reduction in operating costs
• 25% acceleration in new-hire onboarding

“Upskilling on AI now is absolutely critical to being prepared for its capabilities in a few years. In five years, running a business without Copilot would be like trying to run a company today using typewriters instead of computers.”

—Forrester Study: Head Vice President of Technology Services, IT Services and Business Consulting

Turning innovation into action with faster time to market

Bringing new products to market faster and promptly meeting customer demands are critical for business success. Forrester’s study highlights how Copilot can help accelerate revenue growth and open doors to additional business opportunities.

The study found that 24% of businesses experienced a 16% to 20% reduction in time to market for new products, and 27% of businesses saw improvements in time to market ranging from 11% to 15%. These improvements can help you enhance your agility and increase competitiveness in the market.

“With Copilot, we have faster turnarounds…with the ability to turn things around more quickly, clients can come to us with more work. It can be 15% more business.”

—Forrester Study: Head Vice President of Technology Services, Managed Technology Solutions

You can optimize your business processes by working with Copilot to map out your workflow and ask Copilot for recommendations to eliminate inefficiencies. Then you can share the list of recommendations with your team for feedback before deciding how to move forward. Copilot can help ensure projects move forward without delays—ask Copilot to provide updates on your team’s progress to quickly identify where support is needed.

Increasing productivity across your business

Employees at small and medium-sized businesses often wear multiple hats, doing jobs across different departments, and sometimes having less time to spend on their own projects. Copilot can help address this challenge by taking on routine, repetitive tasks, helping teams to focus on more strategic work.

Forrester’s study shows that 51% of businesses using Copilot reported a 1% to 10% reduction in supply chain costs, while 59% saw operating costs decrease by 1% to 20%. This can help you to shift resources toward growth-focused initiatives without overwhelming your team.

“In terms of getting the information to the various departments and having my legal assistants then redo it, so they can enter that data and answer questions from other departments more easily. My guess is on contract review we’ll save at least 50% of time in the coming years.” 

—Forrester study: General Counsel, Chief Diversity Officer at the Staffing, IT, and Business Solutions Firm

With Copilot, your team can quickly find critical details from client contracts or vendor agreements and have emails from key clients prioritized, helping to ensure that the most urgent emails are addressed first. Copilot can also gather data from spreadsheets and text documents, analyze it, and create easy-to-understand charts and tables for faster decision-making.

Enhancing employee satisfaction and retention

The study also highlights Copilot’s impact on employee satisfaction. By freeing up time for employees to collaborate more effectively and take on more fulfilling tasks, SMBs have experienced or anticipated, on average, an 18% increase in employee satisfaction, with a corresponding 11% to 20% reduction in employee churn.

“People have a lot of anxiety [about going] on vacation because of what they’re going to miss. Well, the ability to ramp up fast with summarization on a lot of those key meetings doesn’t just save the person the time, but it also is going to save the other leaders in the organization the time to have to ramp them up.”
—Forrester study: President, Staffing, IT, and Business Solutions

Use Copilot to help pull together training materials and build presentations so you quickly bring new team members up to speed. Copilot’s meeting and email summaries also allow your employees to stay on top of work, even when they miss a meeting. This can help reduce stress and help create smoother transitions between projects, fostering a more inclusive and productive work environment.

Now is the right time to invest in AI. We are here to help.

With potential benefits like increased revenue, faster time to market, and significant ROI, Microsoft 365 Copilot can be a valuable investment for SMBs looking to thrive in a competitive market.

To find out more about the Forrester findings and learn how you can best implement Copilot for your business, please join our webinar on October 31, 2024, 9 AM PST to 10 AM PST.

To use Copilot across all your Microsoft 365 apps and work data, you can purchase Microsoft 365 Copilot as an add-on to your Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Microsoft 365 Standard, or Microsoft 365 Business Premium subscriptions. If you do not already have these core productivity offerings, you can purchase them now.

Find out more about Microsoft 365 Copilot or reach out to a Microsoft Cloud Solution Partner to learn more.

You can also learn how to make Copilot part of your everyday business activities by exploring the new Copilot Success Kit for Small and Medium-Sized Business, which provides resources on licensing, technical requirements, and AI capabilities.

Sources:

1. “New Technology: The Projected Total Economic Impact™: Of Microsoft 365 Copilot for SMB,” a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Microsoft. Results are based on Microsoft 365 Copilot customer interviews and surveys of over 200 companies with up to 300 employees across various industries, from retail to financial services.
2. Forrester modeled a range of projected low-, medium-, and high-impact outcomes based on evaluated risk. This financial analysis projects that the composite organization accrues the following three-year net present value (NPV) for each scenario by enabling Microsoft 365 Copilot: 
   • Projected high impact of a $955,000 NPV and projected ROI of 353%. 
   • Projected medium impact of a $658,000 NPV and projected ROI of 243%. 
   • Projected low impact of a $358,000 NPV and projected ROI of 132%.

The post Microsoft 365 Copilot drove up to 353% ROI for small and medium businesses—new study appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

First, we’re announcing Copilot Pages—a dynamic, persistent canvas designed for multiplayer AI collaboration. It’s the first new digital artifact for the AI age. 

Second, we’re rapidly improving Copilot in the Microsoft 365 apps. Our customers tell us Copilot in Microsoft Teams has changed meetings forever—in fact, it’s the number one place they’re seeing value. We’re excited to do the same thing for advanced data analysis in Microsoft Excel, dynamic storytelling in PowerPoint, managing your inbox in Outlook, and more. 

Third, we’re introducing Copilot agents, making it easier and faster than ever to automate and execute business processes on your behalf—enabling you to scale your team like never before.

Microsoft 365 Copilot

Get more done faster with an AI assistant in your Microsoft 365 apps, documents, and meetings.

Discover more

We’re excited to share these updates with our customers around the world. From enterprises to small businesses, they help Copilot get better every day. Nearly 1,000 customers have given us feedback on how they’re using Copilot, where it is having the biggest impact, and where it needs to be better. Based on that feedback, we have made more than 700 product updates and shipped over 150 new features this year. Now with GPT-4o and enhanced orchestration, we’ve dramatically improved performance. Copilot responses are more than two times faster on average, and response satisfaction has improved by nearly three times.¹ When you add it all up, we’ve built the world’s best AI feedback loop with Copilot. And we’ll continue to rapidly bring all the latest models to Copilot and rapidly improve the product based on your input, adding new capabilities and new models, including OpenAI o1 with advanced reasoning.

Introducing Copilot Pages—the first new digital artifact for the AI age

Copilot is the new UI for AI. And it all starts with Business Chat (BizChat), a central hub that brings together all your data—web data, work data, and line of business data—right in the flow of your work. BizChat turns all your organizational content into a rich database of information and insight, enabling you to collaborate with Copilot like a partner and turning every artifact into a reusable business asset. And we’re excited to announce Copilot Pages—a dynamic, persistent canvas designed for multiplayer AI collaboration. It’s the first step in our new design system for knowledge work.

Pages takes ephemeral AI-generated content and makes it durable, so you can edit it, add to it, and share it with others. You and your team can work collaboratively in a page with Copilot, seeing everyone’s work in real time and iterating with Copilot like a partner, adding more content from your data, files, and the web to your Page. This is an entirely new work pattern—multiplayer, human-to-AI-to-human collaboration. For Microsoft 365 Copilot customers, Pages starts rolling out today and will be generally available later in September 2024.

In the coming weeks, we’re also bringing Copilot Pages to the more than 400 million people who have access to the free Microsoft Copilot when they’re signed in with a Microsoft Entra account—offering the combination of web grounding, enterprise data protection (EDP), and Pages. Today, you can try Microsoft Copilot at Microsoft.com/copilot, and pin Copilot right in the flow of work in the Microsoft 365 app, and, soon, in Outlook and Teams.

Supercharging productivity with Microsoft 365 Copilot  

For millions of people around the world, work happens in the Microsoft 365 apps. It’s where Copilot is already becoming a daily habit, delivering personal productivity gains and time savings. And with Wave 2, we’re taking everything we’re learning from our customers and using it to make Copilot even better. 

Copilot in Excel 

When people want to work with that data and get real value from it, they turn to Microsoft Excel—it’s the front-end for all your business data. We’re excited to announce that Copilot in Excel is now generally available. Now you can work with data that hasn’t been formatted as a table. We’ve added new skills to tap into the full power of Excel with support for more formulas like XLOOKUP and SUMIF; conditional formatting; and the ability to iterate with Copilot on visualizations like charts and PivotTables to fit your needs. And Copilot in Excel can now work with text, in addition to numerical, data.  

But we’ve gone even further. We’re announcing Copilot in Excel with Python, combining the power of Python—one of the world’s most popular programming languages for working with data—with Copilot in Excel. Now, anyone can work with Copilot to conduct advanced analysis like forecasting, risk analysis, machine learning, and visualizing complex data—all using natural language, no coding required. It’s like adding a skilled data analyst to the team. Copilot in Excel with Python is in public preview.  

Copilot in PowerPoint 

No one goes from an idea to a polished presentation in a single prompt. Now generally available, Narrative builder in Microsoft PowerPoint helps you work with Copilot like a partner, iterating together to build a great first draft in minutes while keeping you in control of the creative process. Copilot uses your prompt to build an outline with topics that you can edit and refine to create a first draft of your presentation. Soon, you’ll be able to add files to the outline to ground your topics. And with Brand manager, Copilot can leverage your company’s branded template, so your presentations are enterprise-ready and on-brand. Soon, Copilot will pull in company-approved images from your SharePoint Organization Asset Library.  

Copilot in Teams 

In meetings today, there are two important conversations: the one that’s spoken, and the one happening in the chat. Copilot in Teams can now reason over both the meeting transcript and the meeting chat to give you a complete picture of what was discussed. For instance, you can ask Copilot if there were any questions that you missed in a meeting, and it will quickly scan across what was said, and what was typed in the chat, to see if anything was left unanswered. Now with Copilot in Teams, no question, idea, or contribution is left behind. This feature is generally available September 2024. 

Copilot in Outlook

We all struggle with email overload. Now, with Prioritize my inbox, Copilot in Outlook helps you quickly get to the messages that matter, analyzing your inbox based on both the content of your email and the context of your role—like who you report to and the email threads where you’ve been responsive. No more wading through lengthy messages—Copilot automatically generates a concise summary of each email, and includes why it prioritized the message along with top insights. And soon, you’ll be able to teach Copilot the specific topics, keywords, or people that are important to you, ensuring those emails are marked as high priority. These features will be in public preview starting late 2024. 

Copilot in Word 

When working in Microsoft Word, you often need to bring in content from other documents and apps. But searching for, and incorporating, the information you need can be time-consuming and disrupt your writing. Coming later September 2024, Copilot in Word will enable you to quickly reference not only web data and work data like Word, PowerPoint, PDFs, and encrypted documents but also emails and meetings. And it integrates this information right in the flow of your work, so you can get to a good first draft fast. We’ve improved Copilot in Word to be an even better writing partner. Recent updates include a new, on-canvas start experience with suggested prompts to jumpstart your creative process and the ability to collaborate with Copilot inline as you work on specific sections of your document—both generally available.

Copilot in OneDrive  

Microsoft OneDrive is a rich repository where professionals store their personal work content—but we all spend too much time trying to find the right documents or remember which document has the content we need. Copilot in OneDrive can reason over all your files quickly to find the information you need, making it easy to gain insights, summarize, and compare up to five files with a clear, easy-to-read summary of the details and differences within your files—without opening a file. Copilot in OneDrive is now rolling out and will be generally available end of September 2024.  

Scaling your team like never before with Copilot agents

Accelerating every business process with Copilot—to grow revenue and reduce costs—is the best way to gain competitive advantage in the age of AI. Introducing Copilot agents, now generally available. Agents are AI assistants designed to automate and execute business processes, working with or for humans. They range in capability from simple, prompt-and-response agents to agents that replace repetitive tasks to more advanced, fully autonomous agents. And with Copilot agents, you can do all this and more by bringing the power of agents right into the flow of your work. Copilot agents work for you in the background, fully managed and orchestrated by Copilot. Simple and secure to manage, Copilot agent interactions stay in the Microsoft 365 service boundary. You can also leverage pre-built agents like the new Visual creator agent, which helps you create AI-generated images, designs, and soon videos. 

To make it even easier to build Copilot agents, today we are announcing agent builder, a new, simplified experience powered by Copilot Studio.

Now anyone can quickly create a Copilot agent right in BizChat or SharePoint, unlocking the value of the vast knowledge repository stored in your SharePoint files. Imagine, for instance, firing up agent builder to build an agent right in the flow of your work in BizChat, quickly connecting it to SharePoint to power it with relevant business process data, and in moments you have a powerful knowledge resource you can share with your colleagues in Teams or Outlook. You can @ mention the agent as you would any other teammate, sharing new information and asking questions your agent answers in real time. If you want to build a more advanced agent from there, you can further customize it in Copilot Studio, deploying it to do things like connect to a data source or take actions on your behalf.

Copilot agents and agent builder in BizChat will be rolling out in general availability to all customers over the coming weeks. Copilot agents and agent builder in SharePoint will enter preview in early October. 

Customers experiencing the value of Copilot 

Over the past 18 months, working with Copilot has become a daily habit for people everywhere, helping them complete tasks faster, hold more purposeful meetings, collaborate more effectively, and streamline business processes. Copilot customers grew more than 60 percent quarter over quarter, while the number of people who used Copilot daily at work doubled. Just today, we announced that Vodafone invested in Copilot for 68,000 employees. Amgen uses Copilot to accelerate research on rare diseases. Customer service agents at Teladoc save up to five hours each week using Copilot to draft responses to common client questions. Marketers at Finastra use it to go from content ideation to production 75 percent faster. On average, Copilot users at Honeywell saved 92 minutes per week using Microsoft 365 Copilot, the equivalent of 74 hours over a full year of use.² 

“In the past, if we were building a major campaign like the Finance is Open campaign, it would’ve taken us three months to generate the content. We can do that now with Copilot in less than one.”

—Joerg Klueckmann, Head of Corporate Marketing and Communications, Finastra 

Looking ahead 

This is just the beginning of Wave 2 of Copilot innovation—in the next two months, we’ll be sharing more about how Copilot is supercharging productivity and accelerating business value for every customer. Stay tuned.   

Start using Copilot today—visit Microsoft365.com/copilot or download the Microsoft 365 app on your mobile device.

For the latest research insights on the future of work and generative AI, visit WorkLab. 

1. Among Copilot responses in English
2. Statistics are from an internal Honeywell survey of 5,000 employees where 611 employees responded  

The post Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2: Pages, Python in Excel, and agents appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

First, we’re announcing Copilot Pages—a dynamic, persistent canvas designed for multiplayer AI collaboration. It’s the first new digital artifact for the AI age. 

Second, we’re rapidly improving Copilot in the Microsoft 365 apps. Our customers tell us Copilot in Microsoft Teams has changed meetings forever—in fact, it’s the number one place they’re seeing value. We’re excited to do the same thing for advanced data analysis in Microsoft Excel, dynamic storytelling in PowerPoint, managing your inbox in Outlook, and more. 

Third, we’re introducing Copilot agents, making it easier and faster than ever to automate and execute business processes on your behalf—enabling you to scale your team like never before.

Microsoft 365 Copilot

Get more done faster with an AI assistant in your Microsoft 365 apps, documents, and meetings.

Discover more

We’re excited to share these updates with our customers around the world. From enterprises to small businesses, they help Copilot get better every day. Nearly 1,000 customers have given us feedback on how they’re using Copilot, where it is having the biggest impact, and where it needs to be better. Based on that feedback, we have made more than 700 product updates and shipped over 150 new features this year. Now with GPT-4o and enhanced orchestration, we’ve dramatically improved performance. Copilot responses are more than two times faster on average, and response satisfaction has improved by nearly three times.¹ When you add it all up, we’ve built the world’s best AI feedback loop with Copilot. And we’ll continue to rapidly bring all the latest models to Copilot and rapidly improve the product based on your input, adding new capabilities and new models, including OpenAI o1 with advanced reasoning.

Introducing Copilot Pages—the first new digital artifact for the AI age

Copilot is the new UI for AI. And it all starts with Business Chat (BizChat), a central hub that brings together all your data—web data, work data, and line of business data—right in the flow of your work. BizChat turns all your organizational content into a rich database of information and insight, enabling you to collaborate with Copilot like a partner and turning every artifact into a reusable business asset. And we’re excited to announce Copilot Pages—a dynamic, persistent canvas designed for multiplayer AI collaboration. It’s the first step in our new design system for knowledge work.

Pages takes ephemeral AI-generated content and makes it durable, so you can edit it, add to it, and share it with others. You and your team can work collaboratively in a page with Copilot, seeing everyone’s work in real time and iterating with Copilot like a partner, adding more content from your data, files, and the web to your Page. This is an entirely new work pattern—multiplayer, human-to-AI-to-human collaboration. For Microsoft 365 Copilot customers, Pages starts rolling out today and will be generally available later in September 2024.

In the coming weeks, we’re also bringing Copilot Pages to the more than 400 million people who have access to the free Microsoft Copilot when they’re signed in with a Microsoft Entra account—offering the combination of web grounding, enterprise data protection (EDP), and Pages. Today, you can try Microsoft Copilot at Microsoft.com/copilot, and pin Copilot right in the flow of work in the Microsoft 365 app, and, soon, in Outlook and Teams.

Supercharging productivity with Microsoft 365 Copilot  

For millions of people around the world, work happens in the Microsoft 365 apps. It’s where Copilot is already becoming a daily habit, delivering personal productivity gains and time savings. And with Wave 2, we’re taking everything we’re learning from our customers and using it to make Copilot even better. 

Copilot in Excel 

When people want to work with that data and get real value from it, they turn to Microsoft Excel—it’s the front-end for all your business data. We’re excited to announce that Copilot in Excel is now generally available. Now you can work with data that hasn’t been formatted as a table. We’ve added new skills to tap into the full power of Excel with support for more formulas like XLOOKUP and SUMIF; conditional formatting; and the ability to iterate with Copilot on visualizations like charts and PivotTables to fit your needs. And Copilot in Excel can now work with text, in addition to numerical, data.  

But we’ve gone even further. We’re announcing Copilot in Excel with Python, combining the power of Python—one of the world’s most popular programming languages for working with data—with Copilot in Excel. Now, anyone can work with Copilot to conduct advanced analysis like forecasting, risk analysis, machine learning, and visualizing complex data—all using natural language, no coding required. It’s like adding a skilled data analyst to the team. Copilot in Excel with Python is in public preview.  

Copilot in PowerPoint 

No one goes from an idea to a polished presentation in a single prompt. Now generally available, Narrative builder in Microsoft PowerPoint helps you work with Copilot like a partner, iterating together to build a great first draft in minutes while keeping you in control of the creative process. Copilot uses your prompt to build an outline with topics that you can edit and refine to create a first draft of your presentation. Soon, you’ll be able to add files to the outline to ground your topics. And with Brand manager, Copilot can leverage your company’s branded template, so your presentations are enterprise-ready and on-brand. Soon, Copilot will pull in company-approved images from your SharePoint Organization Asset Library.  

Copilot in Teams 

In meetings today, there are two important conversations: the one that’s spoken, and the one happening in the chat. Copilot in Teams can now reason over both the meeting transcript and the meeting chat to give you a complete picture of what was discussed. For instance, you can ask Copilot if there were any questions that you missed in a meeting, and it will quickly scan across what was said, and what was typed in the chat, to see if anything was left unanswered. Now with Copilot in Teams, no question, idea, or contribution is left behind. This feature is generally available September 2024. 

Copilot in Outlook

We all struggle with email overload. Now, with Prioritize my inbox, Copilot in Outlook helps you quickly get to the messages that matter, analyzing your inbox based on both the content of your email and the context of your role—like who you report to and the email threads where you’ve been responsive. No more wading through lengthy messages—Copilot automatically generates a concise summary of each email, and includes why it prioritized the message along with top insights. And soon, you’ll be able to teach Copilot the specific topics, keywords, or people that are important to you, ensuring those emails are marked as high priority. These features will be in public preview starting late 2024. 

Copilot in Word 

When working in Microsoft Word, you often need to bring in content from other documents and apps. But searching for, and incorporating, the information you need can be time-consuming and disrupt your writing. Coming later September 2024, Copilot in Word will enable you to quickly reference not only web data and work data like Word, PowerPoint, PDFs, and encrypted documents but also emails and meetings. And it integrates this information right in the flow of your work, so you can get to a good first draft fast. We’ve improved Copilot in Word to be an even better writing partner. Recent updates include a new, on-canvas start experience with suggested prompts to jumpstart your creative process and the ability to collaborate with Copilot inline as you work on specific sections of your document—both generally available.

Copilot in OneDrive  

Microsoft OneDrive is a rich repository where professionals store their personal work content—but we all spend too much time trying to find the right documents or remember which document has the content we need. Copilot in OneDrive can reason over all your files quickly to find the information you need, making it easy to gain insights, summarize, and compare up to five files with a clear, easy-to-read summary of the details and differences within your files—without opening a file. Copilot in OneDrive is now rolling out and will be generally available end of September 2024.  

Scaling your team like never before with Copilot agents

Accelerating every business process with Copilot—to grow revenue and reduce costs—is the best way to gain competitive advantage in the age of AI. Introducing Copilot agents, now generally available. Agents are AI assistants designed to automate and execute business processes, working with or for humans. They range in capability from simple, prompt-and-response agents to agents that replace repetitive tasks to more advanced, fully autonomous agents. And with Copilot agents, you can do all this and more by bringing the power of agents right into the flow of your work. Copilot agents work for you in the background, fully managed and orchestrated by Copilot. Simple and secure to manage, Copilot agent interactions stay in the Microsoft 365 service boundary. You can also leverage pre-built agents like the new Visual creator agent, which helps you create AI-generated images, designs, and soon videos. 

To make it even easier to build Copilot agents, today we are announcing agent builder, a new, simplified experience powered by Copilot Studio.

Now anyone can quickly create a Copilot agent right in BizChat or SharePoint, unlocking the value of the vast knowledge repository stored in your SharePoint files. Imagine, for instance, firing up agent builder to build an agent right in the flow of your work in BizChat, quickly connecting it to SharePoint to power it with relevant business process data, and in moments you have a powerful knowledge resource you can share with your colleagues in Teams or Outlook. You can @ mention the agent as you would any other teammate, sharing new information and asking questions your agent answers in real time. If you want to build a more advanced agent from there, you can further customize it in Copilot Studio, deploying it to do things like connect to a data source or take actions on your behalf.

Copilot agents and agent builder in BizChat will be rolling out in general availability to all customers over the coming weeks. Copilot agents and agent builder in SharePoint will enter preview in early October. 

Customers experiencing the value of Copilot 

Over the past 18 months, working with Copilot has become a daily habit for people everywhere, helping them complete tasks faster, hold more purposeful meetings, collaborate more effectively, and streamline business processes. Copilot customers grew more than 60 percent quarter over quarter, while the number of people who used Copilot daily at work doubled. Just today, we announced that Vodafone invested in Copilot for 68,000 employees. Amgen uses Copilot to accelerate research on rare diseases. Customer service agents at Teladoc save up to five hours each week using Copilot to draft responses to common client questions. Marketers at Finastra use it to go from content ideation to production 75 percent faster. On average, Copilot users at Honeywell saved 92 minutes per week using Microsoft 365 Copilot, the equivalent of 74 hours over a full year of use.² 

“In the past, if we were building a major campaign like the Finance is Open campaign, it would’ve taken us three months to generate the content. We can do that now with Copilot in less than one.”

—Joerg Klueckmann, Head of Corporate Marketing and Communications, Finastra 

Looking ahead 

This is just the beginning of Wave 2 of Copilot innovation—in the next two months, we’ll be sharing more about how Copilot is supercharging productivity and accelerating business value for every customer. Stay tuned.   

Start using Copilot today—visit Microsoft365.com/copilot or download the Microsoft 365 app on your mobile device.

For the latest research insights on the future of work and generative AI, visit WorkLab. 

1. Among Copilot responses in English
2. Statistics are from an internal Honeywell survey of 5,000 employees where 611 employees responded  

The post Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2: Pages, Python in Excel, and agents appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

The true power of Designer is the ability to access it whenever and wherever it’s most helpful to you in your daily life to keep you in your creative flow. Designer now integrates seamlessly with Microsoft products including Word and PowerPoint through Microsoft Copilot¹ and Microsoft Photos² to keep you in your flow when inspiration strikes. Designer is now supported in more than 80 languages on the web, available as a free mobile app, and as an app in Windows.  

Microsoft Designer

Unleash your creativity—create and edit anything you can imagine with AI.

Get started today

Use Designer across many Microsoft apps and on the go wherever inspiration strikes 

Designer is now available through Copilot across some of your favorite Microsoft 365 apps on web and PC apps to help you uplevel your slides and documents.¹ With a Copilot Pro subscription, when you’re in Word and PowerPoint you can create images and designs right in the heart of your workflow. From Word or PowerPoint, click on the Copilot icon and describe an image you’d like to create. In Word, coming soon, you can even ask to create a banner for your document and a design will be generated for you based on the content of your document.   

Designer is now available as a free mobile app (iOS and Android). It’s packed with AI-powered features to unlock your creativity on the go—including creating images and designs with words and editing images to make them pop. 

We’re also bringing Designer’s generative AI editing and creation capabilities to more Microsoft apps where you edit your photos, starting with Microsoft Photos available to Windows Insiders today.² Without leaving Photos, you can edit your photos to erase objects, remove backgrounds, auto crop, make adjustments, apply filters, markup, or even add text without leaving your flow. For more details check out the Windows Insider blog. In the future, similar capabilities will be rolling out to Microsoft Edge for convenient use right from the browser. 

New Designer app features offer innovative ways to create 

Whether you use Designer in the mobile app or on the web, the experience starts with a new homepage—redesigned based on feedback we gathered from you during preview—to help you jump right into whatever you want to create or edit. We’re also introducing new ways to create and help you get even more from Designer, available now: 

• Everyone has come up against the dreaded blank page. New prompt templates help jumpstart the creative process. These templates are pre-populated with ideas, styles, and descriptions that you can experiment with and customize, helping you get the hang of how to prompt. We are now rolling out prompt templates across more features to help you create with AI. When you’re ready, you can even share templates with friends or fellow creators and build on each other’s ideas, sparking inspiration across your creative community.  

• You can share ideas, thoughts, or phrases, and Designer will create custom stickers that help you stand out on places like messaging apps and social. You can also create emojis, clip art, wallpapers, monograms, avatars, and more—all starting with a simple description.

• Make the perfect greeting card. From birthday cards to holiday cards and beyond, create custom cards with personalized messages—even when you’re at a loss for words—by describing what you want to convey. Similarly, create personalized invitations for birthdays, graduations, anniversaries, and more, simply by describing what you want to see. 

• Transform any photo into a work of art with Restyle image. Upload an image, choose from a set of styles, and write in any extra details you want to see to get a brand-new image created just for you.  

• Create custom image frames to turn your photos into shareable memories. With Frame image, upload an image and write a description or choose from a set of styles to get a personalized frame. For multiple images, bring your memories together with collages by selecting your photos, choosing from a set of styles, and adding a description to customize even more. 

We are always looking for ways to improve and empower your creativity, and will be adding more features over time. Soon, we will be rolling out Replace background in preview in select markets. We look forward to your feedback.

• Easily replace the background of your still life photos like a pro. Upload your photo, explain the vision for your background, and AI will create it for you. Perfect for showing off your craft and hobby projects in a new light. 

Today, Designer comes with 15 free daily boosts that you can use to create or edit AI-powered images and designs faster. Boosts are automatically used whenever you’re creating or editing images or designs both in the Designer app and where Designer is integrated across Microsoft apps. You can upgrade to a Copilot Pro subscription to receive 100 boosts per day.  

Stewarding responsible AI use 

At Microsoft, we are focused on building tools that harness the incredible potential of generative AI while providing a safe experience for our users. We are committed to ensuring that our systems are used in a responsible and ethical manner. We have implemented a responsible AI process and taken actions to mitigate negative outcomes and further prevent misuse, including guardrails, threat monitoring, and abuse detection, and provenance technology, and we are continuously working to strengthen our safety systems to help create a safer environment. Read more here: Making our generative AI products safer for consumers.

Get started with Microsoft Designer today to unleash your creativity and start designing and editing anything you can imagine with AI. If you can describe it, you can design it. 

¹A Copilot Pro subscription unlocks the use of Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps like Word and PowerPoint.  Those who have a separate Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscription get the added benefit of using Copilot in the more fully featured PC apps. Creating banners with Copilot in Word will be available soon. 

²Designer’s editing experience in Microsoft Photos is currently limited to Windows Insiders with language set to English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, or Portuguese (Brazil), and available in most countries. To get the latest Photos experience, update your app to version number 2024.11070.12001.0 or higher.  

The post New ways to get creative with Microsoft Designer, powered by AI appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

In our first post, we talked about why more of our customers are migrating to cloud-native endpoint management. Our second post presented a three-phase model for how customers can go cloud-native with Intune. In this final post, we’re focusing on what it really takes for organizations to make this valuable change—from the strategic leadership to the tactical execution.

Microsoft Intune

Your command center for endpoint management

Get started

A change in vision

“Copilot…frees up my time to use my expertise to create more value, and spend less time on lower-value activities, and instead focus on what drives impact and drives change for our clients.”

—Sally Penson, Head of Transforming Delivery, UK Insights

Microsoft Copilot for Security and Copilot in Intune signals a shift in the information technology and security landscape. While it is relatively easy to envision how individual tasks and routines may be changed by AI and automation, it is harder to see exactly how this will impact business in five years and beyond, but there’s little doubt it will be significant. Imagining what that impact may be is critical to understanding the opportunities and challenges ahead, and re-defining your capital “V” Vision for your enterprise is fundamental to making the most of it.

Historically, IT has been treated like an electrical utility—make sure that the information is flowing, and if it isn’t, get it back with as little disruption as possible. The future will be a very different place. As I see it, IT is at the start of a truly radical change. Routine maintenance and troubleshooting will be automated away or made easier. This leaves experienced technology experts with more time to focus. They will need to use their knowledge of your business and technology to become value-creators—this is the change in vision that will need to come from the top.

“Have a growth mindset and invest time into developing and learning the ever-evolving technology of cloud management.”

—IT administrator, Thorlabs Inc.

Setting the stage for this transformation now—by expanding your corporate vision to encompass the new tech landscape—can help with the next level of change. But successful implementation will depend on how well you can help your IT professionals align their own vision of their roles, and of themselves, to the changing technology landscape. One theme we hear over and again—especially from customers who have spent years learning and mastering the complex controls and arcana of endpoint management—is “Why would I give up the total control I have now?” or “why fix what isn’t broken?”

These questions and concerns are common to those who have built and mastered their craft in the utility model: This is a complex system that I understand and manage expertly, and it enables the flow of information exactly as we need. This is a model that prioritizes knowledge of and experience with processes and tools. Experts should rightly be proud of their abilities, and some systems and processes simply can’t be updated. The challenge is that for the systems that can be updated, the processes, tools, maintenance, and the complexity of systems will be vastly different. In a world with Copilot and AI-aided automation, process will be secondary to data. The knowledge and experience of problem-solving and of how to harness technology to improve your business will become more valuable than the knowledge of tools. Instead of merely keeping the information flowing, IT teams will need to tap into that flow to find new efficiencies and business opportunities.

And while I am confident in the impacts we will see, I don’t want to leap too far into the future.

Changing the vision of the role of IT administrator isn’t going to happen overnight. The first change that can lay the groundwork for the new mindset the future will require is to prepare your organization to take advantage of the AI and automation that’s already here. That means going cloud-native and moving endpoint management to Intune. Less radical than the changes to come, but no less jarring—this move eliminates the need for a lot of specialized equipment and specialized knowledge of the tools that run it all. It also requires a re-imagining of security, policies, and approaches to endpoint management. Faced with having to start fresh in creating these policies, many choose the status quo. But as we talked about in our first post in this series, moving endpoints to the cloud grants access to the value-add of cloud management and the next generation of technologies. So a fresh mindset is needed, along with a fresh look at device configuration and compliance policies.

I make no assertions that such change is easily accomplished. In fact, we have customers with the directive to change the vision at the top who are stymied at the point of implementation. The human element, the vision an IT admin has for their own future, must be given consideration—and a plan.

A change in process

“It’s time to leave behind the old mindset and start from the beginning.”

—IT administrator, Multinational Chemical Company

We have found that the combination of inertia and inherent complexity in making a change to endpoint management solutions causes a lot of hesitation. No one wants to be the one who pushes the button to make the information stop flowing—even if you assure them no such button exists. Customers who have had successful migrations to Intune overcome this hesitation by creating smaller pilot programs, rolling out changes incrementally, and identifying and organizing “champions”—stakeholders committed to the project who advocate for its adoption. Hewlett Packard Enterprise even shared their advice with us for this case study.

With this approach, potential negative outcomes are limited. Small wins can be quantified, and champions help with communicating clearly what’s happening to other stakeholders at every step, building trust and easing minds.

A change in our process

We have heard from customers that the power and flexibility of the Intune platform presents an array of options and configurations that can be daunting. It isn’t possible for our experts to embed with every customer every day—though the FastTrack and Customer Acceleration Teams provide great support and can consult on particularly complex scenarios. What those teams hear over and over is “just tell us what to do.” So we at Intune have decided to change our process a bit, to help our customers to change theirs.

As part of this new approach, we’ve created what we call “one-size-fits-most” guidance to help configure the basic settings companies need to get endpoints more secure and productive with Intune. We’ve also streamlined the Microsoft Intune documentation hub, highlighting this guidance and making the path to implementation a little clearer. Our hope is that the IT administrators tasked with actually making Intune “go” will have the confidence to do just that.

We have also cultivated a robust community around Intune, full of fellow IT administrators and support professionals—which can be a great resource when that “one-size” approach doesn’t quite fit. Find the Intune Tech Community, and engage our Intune customer success team on X or their Tech Community page.

For those whose job entails proving the return on investment (ROI) of Intune we’ve even published a new tool that helps you calculate your ROI with Intune.

Learn more about Microsoft Intune

• Read case studies from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Petrobras, and AUDI AG.
• Read the Microsoft 365 change guide.
• Read the Microsoft Intune blog.
• Join the conversation on X at @MSIntune and LinkedIn.

The post How to achieve cloud-native endpoint management with Microsoft Intune appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

In our first post, we talked about why more of our customers are migrating to cloud-native endpoint management. Our second post presented a three-phase model for how customers can go cloud-native with Intune. In this final post, we’re focusing on what it really takes for organizations to make this valuable change—from the strategic leadership to the tactical execution.

Microsoft Intune

Your command center for endpoint management

Get started

A change in vision

“Copilot…frees up my time to use my expertise to create more value, and spend less time on lower-value activities, and instead focus on what drives impact and drives change for our clients.”

—Sally Penson, Head of Transforming Delivery, UK Insights

Microsoft Copilot for Security and Copilot in Intune signals a shift in the information technology and security landscape. While it is relatively easy to envision how individual tasks and routines may be changed by AI and automation, it is harder to see exactly how this will impact business in five years and beyond, but there’s little doubt it will be significant. Imagining what that impact may be is critical to understanding the opportunities and challenges ahead, and re-defining your capital “V” Vision for your enterprise is fundamental to making the most of it.

Historically, IT has been treated like an electrical utility—make sure that the information is flowing, and if it isn’t, get it back with as little disruption as possible. The future will be a very different place. As I see it, IT is at the start of a truly radical change. Routine maintenance and troubleshooting will be automated away or made easier. This leaves experienced technology experts with more time to focus. They will need to use their knowledge of your business and technology to become value-creators—this is the change in vision that will need to come from the top.

“Have a growth mindset and invest time into developing and learning the ever-evolving technology of cloud management.”

—IT administrator, Thorlabs Inc.

Setting the stage for this transformation now—by expanding your corporate vision to encompass the new tech landscape—can help with the next level of change. But successful implementation will depend on how well you can help your IT professionals align their own vision of their roles, and of themselves, to the changing technology landscape. One theme we hear over and again—especially from customers who have spent years learning and mastering the complex controls and arcana of endpoint management—is “Why would I give up the total control I have now?” or “why fix what isn’t broken?”

These questions and concerns are common to those who have built and mastered their craft in the utility model: This is a complex system that I understand and manage expertly, and it enables the flow of information exactly as we need. This is a model that prioritizes knowledge of and experience with processes and tools. Experts should rightly be proud of their abilities, and some systems and processes simply can’t be updated. The challenge is that for the systems that can be updated, the processes, tools, maintenance, and the complexity of systems will be vastly different. In a world with Copilot and AI-aided automation, process will be secondary to data. The knowledge and experience of problem-solving and of how to harness technology to improve your business will become more valuable than the knowledge of tools. Instead of merely keeping the information flowing, IT teams will need to tap into that flow to find new efficiencies and business opportunities.

And while I am confident in the impacts we will see, I don’t want to leap too far into the future.

Changing the vision of the role of IT administrator isn’t going to happen overnight. The first change that can lay the groundwork for the new mindset the future will require is to prepare your organization to take advantage of the AI and automation that’s already here. That means going cloud-native and moving endpoint management to Intune. Less radical than the changes to come, but no less jarring—this move eliminates the need for a lot of specialized equipment and specialized knowledge of the tools that run it all. It also requires a re-imagining of security, policies, and approaches to endpoint management. Faced with having to start fresh in creating these policies, many choose the status quo. But as we talked about in our first post in this series, moving endpoints to the cloud grants access to the value-add of cloud management and the next generation of technologies. So a fresh mindset is needed, along with a fresh look at device configuration and compliance policies.

I make no assertions that such change is easily accomplished. In fact, we have customers with the directive to change the vision at the top who are stymied at the point of implementation. The human element, the vision an IT admin has for their own future, must be given consideration—and a plan.

A change in process

“It’s time to leave behind the old mindset and start from the beginning.”

—IT administrator, Multinational Chemical Company

We have found that the combination of inertia and inherent complexity in making a change to endpoint management solutions causes a lot of hesitation. No one wants to be the one who pushes the button to make the information stop flowing—even if you assure them no such button exists. Customers who have had successful migrations to Intune overcome this hesitation by creating smaller pilot programs, rolling out changes incrementally, and identifying and organizing “champions”—stakeholders committed to the project who advocate for its adoption. Hewlett Packard Enterprise even shared their advice with us for this case study.

With this approach, potential negative outcomes are limited. Small wins can be quantified, and champions help with communicating clearly what’s happening to other stakeholders at every step, building trust and easing minds.

A change in our process

We have heard from customers that the power and flexibility of the Intune platform presents an array of options and configurations that can be daunting. It isn’t possible for our experts to embed with every customer every day—though the FastTrack and Customer Acceleration Teams provide great support and can consult on particularly complex scenarios. What those teams hear over and over is “just tell us what to do.” So we at Intune have decided to change our process a bit, to help our customers to change theirs.

As part of this new approach, we’ve created what we call “one-size-fits-most” guidance to help configure the basic settings companies need to get endpoints more secure and productive with Intune. We’ve also streamlined the Microsoft Intune documentation hub, highlighting this guidance and making the path to implementation a little clearer. Our hope is that the IT administrators tasked with actually making Intune “go” will have the confidence to do just that.

We have also cultivated a robust community around Intune, full of fellow IT administrators and support professionals—which can be a great resource when that “one-size” approach doesn’t quite fit. Find the Intune Tech Community, and engage our Intune customer success team on X or their Tech Community page.

For those whose job entails proving the return on investment (ROI) of Intune we’ve even published a new tool that helps you calculate your ROI with Intune.

Learn more about Microsoft Intune

• Read case studies from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Petrobras, and AUDI AG.
• Read the Microsoft 365 change guide.
• Read the Microsoft Intune blog.
• Join the conversation on X at @MSIntune and LinkedIn.

The post How to achieve cloud-native endpoint management with Microsoft Intune appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 

Focus on what matters most with Copilot for Microsoft 365 and the power of AI. 

Discover more

Leaders need to catch up with AI implementation

Many SMB workers around the world are already using AI tools. But while SMB leaders agree AI adoption is critical to remain competitive, 61% also say their company lacks a vision and a plan to implement AI. SMB employees are taking things into their own hands and keeping AI use in the workplace under wraps with 80% of SMB employees bringing their own AI tools to work. And yet, 49% are reluctant to admit using AI on their most important tasks. This gap between vision and reality highlights an opportunity for business leaders to build a comprehensive AI strategy for their business—one that results in more time to focus on customers, products, and services. 

Small and medium-sized businesses see AI as a competitive advantage  

SMB leaders are seeking individuals proficient in AI to fill roles within their companies with over 60% saying they wouldn’t hire someone without AI skills. 79% of SMB employees believe that AI skills will provide them with more job opportunities; providing training and driving AI adoption is key to keeping employees and attracting new talent. Employees and leaders agree—upskilling on AI is key. 

Copilot at work: How AI is helping Joos

AI can be a game-changer by helping you and your team save time so you can focus on what matters most to you and your business. An example of AI’s impact in an SMB organization is Joos, a supplier of mobile charging stations based in the UK but with a growing international presence despite its relatively small team. Because Joos’ leaders implemented Copilot for Microsoft 365 and made it available to the entire organization, it quickly helped streamline operational tasks freeing its people up to focus more closely on customers. 

“Since integrating Copilot, our customers have benefitted from faster email responses and more personalized interactions, as Copilot enables us to better understand and anticipate our customers’ needs.”

—Jeannette Ikonga, Head of Client Success and Customer Experience at Joos

The path forward for SMB and AI

The opportunity for SMB leaders is to channel employee enthusiasm for AI into business transformation. This plan will look different for each business, but here’s how to get started:  

Begin by identifying a business problem and then apply AI. There are efficiency gains to be had across functions—the key is to pick the right process. To make this easier, identify employees who are enthusiastic about AI, form them into a small group, and use them as your AI champions. Once you’ve chosen a process, make sure you can track its impact. For example, if you’re applying it to customer service, track how much faster calls are handled and how that success affects other parts of your operation.  

Integrate AI tools across your organization. Use AI within your existing infrastructure to enable it to deliver personalized, relevant, and actionable responses. To best manage policies and practices for data protection and privacy, choose AI tools that can be easily used with existing security measures in your business’ infrastructure. And do a quick privacy audit before rollout begins to make sure your data is labeled properly so only those who should have eyes on a file get access.

Take a top-down, bottom-up approach. Going from experimentation to transformation requires engagement throughout the organization. Because SMB employees tend to have a closer relationship with their leadership, you need to ensure that your plan aligns with the vision you’ve already promoted. It should contain a clear, guided process that everyone can follow to activate AI for their teams and in their everyday work. Your AI champions can be an invaluable help here, promoting your plan, ensuring that deployments go smoothly, and encouraging employees to develop their AI aptitude so they can eventually use AI more creatively. You’ll want to widely deploy AI across functions and various roles so employees can share insights and learn from each other. 

Lastly, prioritize training. Even AI power users can’t do it on their own—they need to receive ongoing training, both on universal tasks and on uses more tailored to their role and function. There are plenty of AI training and implementation resources readily available online that can help SMBs work successfully with AI. For instance, the AI courses in LinkedIn Learning and the Copilot Scenario Library, which contains guided examples on how to use AI in specific workflows. But online training is only half the battle. Group training is also essential. SMBs have an advantage here because these discussions can cover AI’s effects across large swaths of the business. They will also help you identify those enthusiastic employees you’ll be turning into your AI champions.  

Get started with AI

• Check out a list of AI resources that Microsoft provides to help you build a foundation of knowledge about AI and help you formulate the right plan for your business. 
• If you are not already using Microsoft 365, explore how Microsoft could help you with your business and find out how Copilot for Microsoft 365 can help you transform everyday work life. 
• Connect with a Microsoft Cloud Solution Partner to discuss best practices for adopting AI. 
• Join the Microsoft Small and Medium-Sized Business Community to network with other professionals about AI implementation and innovations. 
• For the latest research insights on the future of work and generative AI, visit WorkLab. 

The post Workers worldwide are embracing AI, especially in small and medium-size businesses appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

• Team Copilot expands Copilot beyond a personal assistant to work on behalf of a team, improving collaboration and project management. 

• Agents: custom copilots enable customers to orchestrate and automate business processes. 

• Copilot extensions and Copilot connectors make it easy to tailor and extend Copilot to meet unique business needs. 

Microsoft Copilot

Work smarter, be more productive, boost creativity, and stay connected to the people and things in your life with Copilot.

Try it for free

Team Copilot—a valuable new member of the team  

Team Copilot expands Copilot beyond a personal assistant to act as a valuable team member—participating and contributing along with the team. And of course, you’re always in control—assigning tasks or responsibilities to Copilot so the whole team can be more productive, collaborative, and creative, together. It’s available where you collaborate—in Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Loop, Microsoft Planner, and more: 

• Meeting facilitator: Copilot enables a more productive discussion in meetings by managing the agenda and taking notes anyone in the meeting can coauthor. 

• Group collaborator: Copilot helps everyone get more out of chats, surfacing the most important information, tracking actions items, and addressing unresolved issues.  

• Project manager: Copilot ensures every project runs smoothly by creating and assigning tasks, tracking deadlines, and notifying team members when their input is needed. 

These capabilities will be available in preview later in 2024 for customers with a Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 license. 

Agents: New custom copilots that automate business process

There are efficiencies to be gained and new value to unlock across every business process—and no two are the same. We’re announcing new capabilities in Microsoft Copilot Studio to build custom copilots that act as agents that work independently under your direction to:  

• Automate long-running business processes.

• Reason over actions and user inputs.

• Leverage memory to bring in context. 

• Learn based on user feedback.

• Record exception requests and ask for help.

While we’re just getting started, we’re optimistic about the potential for these copilots to drive efficiencies and cost savings across every function. For example, an “order taker” copilot can handle the end-to-end order fulfillment process—from taking the order, to processing the order and making intelligent recommendations and substitutions for out-of-stock items, to shipping it to the customer. 

These capabilities in Copilot Studio are available for customers in a limited private preview. It’s early days, and we look forward to learning alongside our customers before wider availability later in 2024.  

We’re also making it easy to create custom copilots grounded in your SharePoint and OneDrive data—where so much of your organizational knowledge lives. With just a few clicks, custom copilots created from SharePoint can help your team get information they need from files in seconds and can be further edited and enhanced using Copilot Studio. This new capability is now available in a limited private preview, and will be available in preview later in 2024. 

Copilot extensions and connectors: New capabilities to enrich Copilot

With new Copilot extensions, we’re making it easy for anyone to customize Copilot actions and extend Copilot to their data and line of business systems. Developers can build these extensions using either Copilot Studio or Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio. We’re also introducing Copilot connectors in Copilot Studio to make it easier and faster for developers to create Copilot extensions. Learn more about these and other updates for Copilot Studio.

Copilot Studio

Powerful, connected copilots—built by you.

Explore the capabilities

Learn more and get started with Copilot

Learn more about the announcements at Microsoft Build on the Official Microsoft Blog, and be sure to watch the opening Microsoft Build keynote presented by Satya Nadella, Rajesh Jha, and Kevin Scott.  

Additional resources:   

• Developers can join the more than 100 customers and partners already building Copilot extensions with Copilot Studio and Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio. Read our ecosystem blog to learn more and get started. 
• Read about the Microsoft Power Platform announcements that are enabling new innovations with agent capabilities and more. 
• Visit the Microsoft 365 Dev Center, Microsoft Graph Developer Center, and Windows Developer Center to access documents, blogs, tools, and more to start building apps. 

For the latest research insights on the future of work and generative AI, visit WorkLab.

The post New agent capabilities in Microsoft Copilot unlock business value appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

• Team Copilot expands Copilot beyond a personal assistant to work on behalf of a team, improving collaboration and project management. 

• Agents: custom copilots enable customers to orchestrate and automate business processes. 

• Copilot extensions and Copilot connectors make it easy to tailor and extend Copilot to meet unique business needs. 

Microsoft Copilot

Work smarter, be more productive, boost creativity, and stay connected to the people and things in your life with Copilot.

Try it for free

Team Copilot—a valuable new member of the team  

Team Copilot expands Copilot beyond a personal assistant to act as a valuable team member—participating and contributing along with the team. And of course, you’re always in control—assigning tasks or responsibilities to Copilot so the whole team can be more productive, collaborative, and creative, together. It’s available where you collaborate—in Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Loop, Microsoft Planner, and more: 

• Meeting facilitator: Copilot enables a more productive discussion in meetings by managing the agenda and taking notes anyone in the meeting can coauthor. 

• Group collaborator: Copilot helps everyone get more out of chats, surfacing the most important information, tracking actions items, and addressing unresolved issues.  

• Project manager: Copilot ensures every project runs smoothly by creating and assigning tasks, tracking deadlines, and notifying team members when their input is needed. 

These capabilities will be available in preview later in 2024 for customers with a Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 license. 

Agents: New custom copilots that automate business process

There are efficiencies to be gained and new value to unlock across every business process—and no two are the same. We’re announcing new capabilities in Microsoft Copilot Studio to build custom copilots that act as agents that work independently under your direction to:  

• Automate long-running business processes.

• Reason over actions and user inputs.

• Leverage memory to bring in context. 

• Learn based on user feedback.

• Record exception requests and ask for help.

While we’re just getting started, we’re optimistic about the potential for these copilots to drive efficiencies and cost savings across every function. For example, an “order taker” copilot can handle the end-to-end order fulfillment process—from taking the order, to processing the order and making intelligent recommendations and substitutions for out-of-stock items, to shipping it to the customer. 

These capabilities in Copilot Studio are available for customers in a limited private preview. It’s early days, and we look forward to learning alongside our customers before wider availability later in 2024.  

We’re also making it easy to create custom copilots grounded in your SharePoint and OneDrive data—where so much of your organizational knowledge lives. With just a few clicks, custom copilots created from SharePoint can help your team get information they need from files in seconds and can be further edited and enhanced using Copilot Studio. This new capability is now available in a limited private preview, and will be available in preview later in 2024. 

Copilot extensions and connectors: New capabilities to enrich Copilot

With new Copilot extensions, we’re making it easy for anyone to customize Copilot actions and extend Copilot to their data and line of business systems. Developers can build these extensions using either Copilot Studio or Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio. We’re also introducing Copilot connectors in Copilot Studio to make it easier and faster for developers to create Copilot extensions. Learn more about these and other updates for Copilot Studio.

Copilot Studio

Powerful, connected copilots—built by you.

Explore the capabilities

Learn more and get started with Copilot

Learn more about the announcements at Microsoft Build on the Official Microsoft Blog, and be sure to watch the opening Microsoft Build keynote presented by Satya Nadella, Rajesh Jha, and Kevin Scott.  

Additional resources:   

• Developers can join the more than 100 customers and partners already building Copilot extensions with Copilot Studio and Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio. Read our ecosystem blog to learn more and get started. 
• Read about the Microsoft Power Platform announcements that are enabling new innovations with agent capabilities and more. 
• Visit the Microsoft 365 Dev Center, Microsoft Graph Developer Center, and Windows Developer Center to access documents, blogs, tools, and more to start building apps. 

For the latest research insights on the future of work and generative AI, visit WorkLab.

The post New agent capabilities in Microsoft Copilot unlock business value appeared first on Microsoft AI Blogs.

Microsoft Viva

Empower and engage your workforce with next-generation AI and insights in Microsoft Viva.

Discover more

Microsoft Copilot Dashboard is now generally available

The Microsoft Copilot Dashboard is an out of the box report designed for business leaders to easily understand the impact of Copilot for Microsoft 365 by providing privacy-protected insights across every stage of your AI transformation journey. Building on the initial release at Microsoft Ignite, which included readiness and usage data across Microsoft 365 apps, this release offers additional pivots that combine Copilot usage metrics with organizational context and collaboration data, enabling deeper views of adoption and impact. Copilot customers will have the flexibility to filter by attributes like department, teams, or roles, understand differences between groups, and compare those same measures between users and non-users. Viva Insights customers can use analyst workbench capabilities to dive deeper with custom reports, including incorporating data from other relevant sources. And for a limited time only, Copilot for Microsoft 365 customers will be eligible to access Viva Insights at no additional cost.  

We are also excited to announce that starting in 2024 Q3, the Copilot Dashboard will be available to all Copilot for Microsoft 365 customers at no additional cost and will not require a Viva license. You can access the dashboard in the Viva Insights app in Microsoft Teams or via the web app. Select the “Copilot Dashboard” option from the left navigation menu and start exploring results from your organization. Additionally, Copilot for Microsoft 365 customers will be eligible for a promotional offer that will provide access to all of Viva Insights, including Copilot Dashboard, as well as access to advanced insights and manager and leader insights. Contact your account team to learn more about how you can take advantage of this offer. 

In addition to having the right data-driven insights, successful AI reinvention often requires a change management strategy that includes arming employees with the right knowledge, developing clear and consistent communications, and understanding employee feedback to address any gaps or challenges. Microsoft Viva helps you develop employee skills, drive awareness, foster champions, and dig deeper into the impact of Copilot across your organization.  

Enable employees with AI knowledge and skills 

Our Work Trend Index showed that 82% of leaders said their employees will need new skills to be prepared for the growth of AI. I’m excited to announce the general availability of Microsoft Copilot Academy, where we’ve centralized those learning experiences for your organization to supercharge their Copilot skills. Copilot Academy is available in Viva Learning and starting in 2024 Q3, it will be available to all Copilot for Microsoft 365 customers at no additional cost and will not require a Viva license. 

The Copilot Academy includes curated learning paths designed by Microsoft experts to help your employees discover, learn about, and use Copilot experiences effectively. The initial release features a combination of standard generative-AI learning content (such as “Intro to prompts”) and a series of learning paths specific to Copilot for Microsoft 365 (such as “Summarize email threads with Copilot in Outlook”). We will continue to enhance Copilot Academy in the coming months, including hands-on experiences hosted by Copilot Lab in our next release.  

Copilot Academy is available in Viva Learning, your central hub for learning, so it’s easy for users to access, discover, and share within the Microsoft 365 tools they’re already using. It is preloaded and requires no admin setup or configuration, so your Microsoft 365 admins can focus on helping drive Copilot adoption. Check out our setup documentation to get started, and stay tuned for updates on content, experience, and feature enhancements coming soon. Additionally, to help our customers develop a skillset related to AI tool usage—like prompt engineering—we’ve developed a set of learning content available on Copilot Lab and Microsoft Learn that you can access today. 

Build excitement and momentum around Copilot

Getting the word out, often and early, about new technologies like AI is key to successful change management. With Viva Amplify, an internal communications platform, you can elevate your Copilot messaging and energize employees by reaching them in the channels they use most often—email, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and Viva Engage. And we’ve designed the new Copilot Deployment Kit in Viva Amplify specifically to help you launch Copilot campaigns with ease. Your corporate communications team, your change team, or your early champions can use pre-built campaign templates to drive awareness, and help employees learn what it can do for them. It comes with pre-drafted content, videos, guides, and publications that can easily be customized and sent to help users learn about Copilot. And in the reporting tab, you have rich campaign analytics to understand engagement and where to make improvements.  

Grow the Copilot conversation through community

Fostering leadership communications and AI champions in your organization can also help accelerate Copilot adoption. Viva Engage can enable leaders and community champions to share strategy, learnings, and experiences broadly with their organization. In the coming weeks, Viva Engage will add built-in capabilities to help you accelerate adoption, where admins can enable a new custom-made Copilot community with one click that launches an onboarding checklist, recommends pre-seeded content and conversation starters, and supports dynamic community membership based your organization’s existing Copilot licensing allotment.  

Corporate communicators or community managers can build campaigns for Copilot based on what people are talking about, so the conversation remains relevant and reaches the right people. As people post comments, Copilot can help draft responses and provide analytics around engagement, trending topics, reach, and sentiment. And people can use Answers in Viva to ask questions and find Copilot knowledge and resources around the organization. The new Intelligent Importer—now generally available—makes it easy to generate and add your own question-and-answer for this community to support commonly asked questions.  

And lastly, new network analytics include detailed engagement metrics and theme extraction to show what’s trending and what’s top of mind for employees across all communities. 

Gain a deeper understanding of AI readiness, adoption, and impact

Innovative companies and early adopters keep up with their Copilot deployment by engaging employees through the journey, that includes continuously seeking employee feedback and making the right adjustments to manage a successful rollout. In addition to using Viva to measure organizational-wide employee engagement on your AI transformation strategy, we’re introducing new research-backed Microsoft Copilot Impact survey templates in Viva Glint and Viva Pulse designed to gauge sentiment on how Copilot is impacting employees while benchmarking those insights against industry research. The survey results will integrate directly with the Copilot Dashboard so that talent and business leaders can see the data in a unified view. Questions will include:

• Quality: Copilot helps improve the quality of my work or output.
• Effort: Using Copilot helps me spend less mental effort or mundane or repetitive steps.
• Speed: Copilot allows me to complete tasks faster.
• Productivity: When using Copilot, I am more productive.

By combining workplace collaboration and behavioral insights with employee survey data, Microsoft customer, dentsu, one of the top creative media companies in the world, was able to see the direct value and productivity impact of Copilot on its workforce.

“Our recent analysis shows employees are saving at least 15 minutes, if not 30 minutes a day by using Copilot. We are seeing a noticeable shift in how they are using the technology, spending less on meetings, emails, calls, or chats, using the time they get back to focus on deep work without interruptions and to invest in their teams.”

—Kate Slade, Director of Emerging Technology Enablement at dentsu

Start using Microsoft Viva to help you drive Copilot adoption today

We invite you to discover the full capabilities of Microsoft Viva and the Copilot Dashboard as we prepare for the future of work together. Reach out to your Microsoft account team to get started today. 

To learn more about Microsoft Viva and how it can help you on our AI transformation journey, download our Copilot Success Kit, which includes a detailed overview on how to use each Viva app to accelerate Copilot adoption and engagement. Also, sign up for our upcoming webinar series to hear how our customers are using Viva to drive Copilot adoption and measurement.  

For the latest research insights on the future of work and generative AI, visit WorkLab.

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