(Credit: Microsoft)
Microsoft's big Copilot push has resulted in over 150 new features for its generative AI tools since they first became available, and today we got a second wave of Copilot business features.
Updates include: Copilot Pages, or documents built with AI; the new Business Chat (aka BizChat); easy-to-build Copilot Agents for automating business processes; and new generative AI features for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, and OneDrive.
"Copilot customers grew more than 60% quarter over quarter, while the number of people who used Copilot daily at work doubled," Microsoft says. And with OpenAI's GPT-4o and "enhanced orchestration," responses are more than two times faster on average, and response satisfaction has improved nearly threefold, it says, particularly in Copilot for Teams meetings.
Here's what's new for business users.
Business Chat (BizChat)
(Credit: Microsoft)Talk to Copilot like it’s a coworker. This feature brings information from company documents, presentations, email, calendars, notes, and contacts to give context to chats, which are further informed by data from the public web for something the company is calling your Microsoft Graph.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Chat requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription, which is $360 per year. Availability starts today at Microsoft365.com/Copilot. Pin Copilot to your workflow in the Microsoft 365 app, an option that's also coming soon to Outlook and Teams.
Copilot Pages
Microsoft refers to this feature as “the first digital artifact for the AI era.” You can now generate pages from a Copilot conversation, share them with colleagues, and tag people for follow-up tasks, just as you would a Word doc. Start a page from an Edit in Pages button at the bottom of the chatbot window, or ask Copilot to use an existing document as a template for a new proposal. Copilot Pages give your chats a persistent document that you can follow up on and easily refer to, unlike a Slack chat that gets lost over time and can be hard to find in search.
For Microsoft 365 Copilot customers, the Pages feature starts rolling out today. It will be generally available later this month and will also be accessible in the free Microsoft Copilot.
Copilot Agents
(Credit: Microsoft)A new simplified Copilot Studio interface works as an agent builder within Copilot chat. This lets you create agents that automate business processes based on your business’s data in SharePoint. Microsoft365 Copilot now includes a Build Copilot Agent button to get you started. The new features will roll out to all customers through October.
Copilot in Excel
(Credit: Microsoft)Excel is one of the more popular business analysis tools around, but it can be complicated to figure out how to get it to do what you need. Copilot in Excel can suggest and generate formulas, summarize your spreadsheet using pivot tables and charts, apply formatting, and answer general questions about the application.
(Credit: Microsoft)Another new tool in Excel is Copilot in Excel with Python, which lets you create code via natural language for deeper analysis. You can use it to do things like forecasting revenue for the next two years. The Python code itself is accessible right from the formula bar.
Copilot in PowerPoint
Microsoft announced two new tools for its presentation software: Narrative Builder and Brand Manager. The first lets you interactively draft a presentation based on text prompt, with the ability to reference your own files coming later. The second makes use of your company’s branded templates and later will let you draw from a repository of your approved images.
Copilot in Teams, Outlook, Word, and OneDrive
Microsoft also has other announcements for its Microsoft 365 productivity suite.
- Copilot in Word can already summarize, correct, and suggest rewrites of your text, but it will be able to use information from your emails and meetings.
- Copilot in OneDrive is rolling out now and can help you find and summarize information on your files in cloud storage.
- Copilot in Teams now lets you ask, for example, whether there were any unanswered questions in a meeting, scanning both the meeting video and the chat.
- A new feature in Outlook, Prioritize My Inbox, will let you enter keywords to tell the email client what topics are important to you. It also generates brief summaries of long emails.