The past year has seen Microsoft’s 365 Copilot take centre stage, showcasing and leveraging the capabilities of GPT technology. This powerful tool serves as an intuitive virtual assistant, offering a seamless blend of automation and generative AI to revolutionise business processes. However, Microsoft are only just getting started – their commitment to Copilot's continuous development signals promising news for any business eager to thrive in the new AI age.
Recently, Microsoft announced several new updates and innovations that are part of Wave 2, aiming 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 for Copilot since its launch, so knowing what’s included is vital. In this blog, we’ll discuss the latest innovations and how you can take advantage of them.
Copilot Pages
Microsoft's newly announced Copilot Pages tool transforms how teams collaborate using Microsoft 365. Pages is a Copilot chat ‘canvas’ which allows multiple users to work together in real-time, developing ideas through flexible AI-generated content.
This integration enhances productivity by letting users easily add to, edit, and share content instantly, drawing from company data, files, and web information. Copilot Pages stands out by automating routine tasks and offering intelligent suggestions, helping to streamline workflows and elevate the content creation process.
Copilot Pages give employees a whole new way to work together, an entirely collaborative experience, with several minds prompting Copilot’s AI to enhance the scope of AI generation and collaboration in the workplace.
Copilot in Microsoft 365
In addition to Copilot Pages, Wave 2 also sees the release of several Copilot upgrades across Microsoft 365 applications, further empowering employees to enhance their productivity. With improvements ranging from Excel's enhanced data handling to Outlook’s prioritisation capabilities, Microsoft continues to elevate Copilot's value for businesses.
Key features of this update:
Microsoft Excel
Copilot can now interpret unformatted data, enhancing its use with advanced formula support, conditional formatting, and visualisations like charts, making data management more intuitive.
Excel with Python
Alongside this major boost, Microsoft has gone even further by integrating Python capabilities, enabling users to conduct sophisticated data analysis using natural language, merging the power of programming with AI.
Microsoft PowerPoint
With the new Narrative Builder feature, developing presentations in PowerPoint is effortless. With just a simple prompt, Copilot can transform a draft into a polished presentation in just a few minutes.
Microsoft Teams
Now, Copilot can scan over the meeting chat and instantly transcribe it, providing quick summaries and prompt responses, improving meeting productivity.
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 now allows you to quickly reference data from the internet or company data without disturbing your workflow. It will suggest prompts on a fresh document and inline as you work, assisting 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 business leaders worldwide are recognising its importance for gaining a competitive advantage. Copilot Agents are a key part of this - these agents work for you in the background and can automate a multitude of tasks throughout your business.
Creating an Agent is easy to do within BizChat or SharePoint, and you can instantly empower it with organisational data to be able to ensure immediate productivity. 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, allowing you to connect it to data sources or even take actions on your behalf, providing enhanced flexibility and functionality.
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 Copilot is one of the most readily available artificial intelligence implementations and is now being updated to be even more powerful than ever before. The age of Copilot is here, and Microsoft is just getting started.
OneAdvanced's relationship with Microsoft goes back over 30 years, over which our Modern Workplace experts have helped numerous organisations digitally transform and embrace a better way of working. If you'd like to discuss ensuring your business is ready to implement Copilot and boost productivity, reach out to us today.