Microsoft Ignite 2023: Copilot Updates Part 3

Continuing our journey with Copilot in Microsoft 365, we will delve into Copilot in Power Platform and Security. Our first article, Microsoft Ignite 2023: Copilot Updates Part 1, and our second article, Microsoft Ignite 2023: Copilot Updates Part 2, reviewed the new features for several Microsoft applications including Sales, Service, Edge for Business, the Dynamics 365 suite, Microsoft Cloud, Studio, Microsoft 365, Teams, Outlook, Loop, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and the Viva suite.

Power Platform: Power Automate

A new Copilot experience, Copilot in Microsoft Power Automate will span across API automation, robotic process automation (RPA), process mining, and orchestration. With Copilot in Microsoft Power Automate, developers and orchestrators will have the ability to discover and create UI and API automation faster. Not only will it streamline productivity but will provide insights on how they are managed and run. Developers and orchestrators can use Copilot to:

  1. Assist with Desktop Flows: integrated into the Console and the Designer of Power Automate for desktop, Copilot will assist with desktop flows (RPA). It will assist by typing questions, obtaining relevant information, and step-by-step instructions from documentation. By describing what to do, users can generate scripts and Copilot will automatically generate the code.
  2. Analyze Automation Activity: using natural language, those who have access to flow run histories can query past runs across their environment. These include admins, business users, Center of Excellence (CoE) teams and makers.

Building Copilot-Enabled Apps

There are additional features to help further accelerate the building of Copilot-enabled apps, including:

  1. Copilot for app users as sidecar: this is the easiest way to provide users with the power of generative AI and it is available for every user in the web player canvas app that is backed by Dataverse. Working automatically with the data in this app, Copilot will provide answers and insights to users. There will be no need to set up from the app makers.
  2. Copilot for app users embedded in apps: through Copilot control, makers can customize and extend Copilot for app users.
  3. AI-generated app descriptions: AI-generated app descriptions will be automatically added to existing apps that are in managed environments and do not have descriptions. For new apps, upon publication, the maker will receive the app description in draft form. It is important to remember that the app description will assist end users in finding useful apps relevant to their needs and will also assist IT admins in comprehending their app landscape.

Security Copilot

Microsoft Security Copilot will be embedded into Microsoft Purview. By embedding it into Microsoft Purview, customers will have the ability to quickly produce a comprehensive summary of information, including alerts, that will enable respond and investigate in a timely and quick manner. Customers will also be able to upskill talent by utilizing guided responses which will help them efficiently navigate through the collection of information. The use of keyword query language will be eliminated by using natural language to define eDiscovery search questions which will return more accurate information and faster. Embedded scenarios will be surfaced in eDiscovery, Communication Compliance, Insider Risk Management, and Data Loss Prevention.

Managed from within the Microsoft Intune Admin center, IT admins and security analysts will be able to use Microsoft Security Copilot. Leveraging its generative AI and customized guidance based on insights and security data and management tools, creating intelligent policy retention, troubleshooting with greater ease, and deploying faster can all be achieved.

Clients who are relying on Microsoft Entra, Intune, Sentinel, and Purview will be able to integrate Security Copilot into their workflows and routine tasks. Security Copilot will assist these clients in many ways, including:

  1. Microsoft Entra: identity management for discovery of overprivileged access, high-risk users, and suspicious sign-ins.
  2. Microsoft Intune: IT admins can configure devices based on best practices, gather device information for forensics, generate device policies, and simulate their outcomes.
  3. Microsoft Purview: data protection and compliance that will provide compliance and risk management to identify data impacted by incidents, data summary generation, analyze documents, user risk summary generation, and surface risks of collusion, fraud, and sabotage.
  4. Microsoft Defender EASM and Defender for Cloud: enable security admins to efficiently manage cloud security posture with a simple external attack surface risk assessment. Querying with natural language, security admins can not only discover potential attack paths quickly, but receive automatic notification for resource owners and receive mitigation guidance for proactive threat prevention.
  5. Microsoft Defender XDR and Microsoft Sentinel: with generative AI capabilities, solutions are accelerated for incident response. Along with this is guided investigation, aggregation of evidence that spans numerous data sources, and advanced capabilities including malware analysis.

Without a doubt, Copilot is being integrated into all aspects of Microsoft products, ensuring that it is available and accessible to everyone. Copilot is more than regenerative AI. It is an assistive technology that provides and supports admins, leaders, managers, users, and customers with time management, communication clarity, security, data input, content management, and more.  Microsoft Copilot will continue to become an important thread woven into the fabric of Microsoft products and our business and personal lives.

Microsoft Ignite 2023: Copilot Updates Part 2

As we mentioned in our first article, Microsoft Ignite 2023: Copilot Updates Part 1, Microsoft is the Copilot company. Forging ahead, Microsoft is realizing its vision of providing everyone their own Copilot – their own AI assistant. This article is the second part that delves into the many new features and announcements for Copilot for Microsoft 365. Our previous article, Microsoft Ignite 2023: Copilot Updates Part 1, reviewed the announcements for Copilot in Sales, Service, the Dynamics 365 suite, Edge for Business, and Microsoft Cloud.

Let’s jump right into the exciting world of Copilot for Microsoft 365!

Microsoft Copilot Studio

This is very exciting as Microsoft Copilot Studio is a low-code tool for customizing Copilot for Microsoft 365 and for building standalone copilots. Microsoft Copilot Studio brings custom GPTs, manual topics, and generative AI plugins to create powerful conversational capabilities where it can be customized for specific scenarios for an enterprise. From building, testing, and publishing to customizing GPTs to securing and managing customizations and standalone copilots to assigning proper access, user controls, data, and analytics, Microsoft Copilot Studio provides the platform to achieve all this, and all from within the same windows experience. Additionally, Copilot Studio can be connected to other data sources, including custom or pre-built plugins and GPTS, system of record from Workday, SAP and ServiceNow or a proprietary business solution.

Copilot for Microsoft 365

Copilot for Microsoft 365 will have the foundational abilities, web grounding, and commercial data protection. Copilot for Microsoft 365 will inherit the existing Microsoft 365 identity, security, privacy, and compliance policies across an enterprise. Data is protected within the Microsoft 365 tenant, which translates to total data control for admins. For individual users, Copilot acts on their behalf which means users cannot access or see information that they have not been granted permission to. Data handling and data residency is not affected by Copilot for Microsoft 365. Copilot for Microsoft 365 has a far reach with its integration into the Microsoft 365 apps and its access to Microsoft Graph. Copilot for Microsoft 365 is accessible in Windows and Bing.

Copilot for Microsoft 365 will expand the skills and knowledge of Copilot with Microsoft Graph connectors and plugins by allowing users to install and enable plugins with internal and third-party applications that they use daily. These plugins can be installed via the app store in Teams, Microsoft365.com, and Outlook while IT can install Graph connectors from the Microsoft 365 admin center.

Copilot in Microsoft 365 bring the following additional features:

  1. New Controls in Microsoft 365 Admin Center provide the ability for admins to manage and discover plugins for Microsoft Copilot.
  2. Developers can build plugins for Microsoft Copilot by Teams message extension, thereby extending Copilot for Microsoft 365.
  3. Developer sandbox for Copilot Microsoft 365 is a space for developers to build and test plugins, as well as Graph connectors, in a non-production tenant environment.
  4. Independent software vendors (ISVs) can submit apps, including plugins for Copilot and Graph connectors for Outlook, Teams, and more for the new Microsoft 365 and Copilot program.

The many new capabilities for Copilots include:

Microsoft Copilot Dashboard

Powered by Microsoft Viva, Microsoft Copilot Dashboard will provide managers and leaders insights on how Copilot is affecting their organization and how it is changing the way their people work. With these insights, leaders and managers can ensure that their people are leveraging AI and associated tools to their full potential.

Copilot in Microsoft Teams

Combining the power of Copilot in Whiteboard and Copilot in Teams, meeting discussions can be visualized to meeting participants. Copilot in Microsoft Teams will be able to:

  1. Provide live summarization during the Teams meeting.
  2. Provide live notes during the Teams meeting.
  3. Visualize spoken points of a discussion.
  4. Organize these points in Whiteboard.
  5. Gather spoken ideas and topics from meeting participants and turn these into a visual collaboration space in Whiteboard which can then be shared across all participants of the meeting.
  6. Suggest more ideas to add to the Whiteboard whilst the meeting conversation takes place.
  7. Save captured content on Whiteboard as a Microsoft Whiteboard file. This file is accessible via Teams, Whiteboard app, and OneDrive for Business.
  8. Generate a summary of the Whiteboard that is shared as a Loop component in Word, Teams, Outlook, and more. This is only available for Copilot licensed users.
  9. Take minutes of the meeting and share with all meeting participants during the meeting.
  10. Add shared agenda items and meeting notes by users in Collaborative Notes. Collaborative Notes are Loop components, which means they will stay synced across all the places they have been shared.
  11. Take live notes within Collaborative Notes, allowing attendees to focus on the meeting. This feature must be enabled before the start of the meeting.
  12. Share these notes with attendees. Attendees will be able to ask for more specific notes, such as asking Copilot to “Capture what Beth said as a quote.”

Meeting notes will be viewable and editable as long as there is one participant who has the license to Copilot. Only one participant is required to have the license for all attendees to have access to view and edit meeting notes.

In instances where it is not necessary or undesired to have Copilot in Teams retaining a transcription of the meeting, the admin can assign a policy in the Teams admin center to either enable or disable transcription. With this policy, meeting organizers will have the ability to set their preferences prior to the start of a meeting.

Even with Copilot disabled for transcription during a meeting, meeting attendees can still ask Copilot questions during the meeting. The difference is that at the end of the meeting, there will be no intelligent recap, and no transcript, and Copilot will not be available after the meeting has ended.

Copilot in Microsoft Teams channels will provide users the ability to synthesize key discussion points from past conversations in an organized summary, including citations.

In Teams Chat and Channels, the Copilot compose box acts as a writing assistant where it can help edit messages, re-write messages, modify the length of the message, and adapt the tone of the message to the writer. This can all be completed before the message is sent.

Users who make calls with Teams Phone will now receive real-time summarizations and insights during calls thanks to Copilot in Teams Phone. From the Calls apps in Teams, users can request a post-call summary of the conversation, generate action items, or pose specific questions about the call. Post-call experiences with Copilot will be supported for both PSTN and VoIP calls.

Copilot in Microsoft Outlook

Copilot in Microsoft Outlook will assist users to do more in less time while staying on top of important tasks. Copilot in Microsoft Outlook will have features that will:

  1. Prepare for Meetings: based on related emails, invites, and attached files, Copilot will generate a detailed summary of upcoming meetings.
  2. Schedule Meetings: scheduling a meeting, whether a new meeting or a follow-up meeting, is simple with Copilot. There are two methods to scheduling a meeting. From the email summary, simply click the suggested action or chat with Copilot to schedule a meeting. From there, Copilot can create the meeting agenda, a title for the meeting, provide the context of the meeting, and generate a list of attendees. Best of all, it can find the best available times for all attendees.

Copilot in Microsoft Loop

Copilot in Microsoft Loop can generate even more relevant responses by using information from a document linked in the prompt. Copilot in Microsoft Loop intelligently adapts Loop pages from previous models to new projects, resulting in the creation of new custom templates.

Copilot in Microsoft Word

Copilot in Microsoft Word will provide users with the ability to ask questions to gain a better understanding of what was revised in the document by all users who accessed it with the catchup and comments. Copilot in Microsoft Word will leverage information from Microsoft Graph which in turn provides a more personalized experience based on user interests, preferences, and other information. Copilot in Microsoft Word can:

  1. analyze a document for specific details
  2. generate a new understanding by using new prompts on an existing file
  3. polish writing with high-level editing
  4. surface key insights by summarizing a document
  5. generate a client brief with a simple prompt

Copilot in PowerPoint

Leveraging Microsoft Designer, users can ask Copilot in PowerPoint to reimagine brand assets and library images. Embracing AI intelligence, the generated visuals are newly designed and composed without the need for a photo shoot. Copilot in PowerPoint can:

  1. identify key takeaway points from a presentation deck
  2. maximize storytelling impact by organizing the presentation into sections
  3. create, in seconds, a new presentation that is based on your inputs and files
  4. produce consistency across your entire deck, whether it be a font or an image.

Copilot in Excel

With simple prompts, Copilot in Excel can instantly review, edit, filter, format, and sort data. With a single prompt, conditional formatting and sheet-wide updates can be attained. From a large data set, visualize key insights by adding them to a grid. Using data from an existing file, produce engaging and professional charts.

Copilot for Microsoft 365: Enhanced with Microsoft Viva

Copilot will enhance the Microsoft Viva suite:

  1. Copilot in Microsoft Viva Insights: using natural language prompts, leaders and delegates can have dynamic, personalized reports generated that provide answers to questions regarding their teams and organization.
  2. Copilot in Microsoft Viva Goals: leveraging conversational AI and procuring relevant information from existing strategy documents, users can easily generate and refine their goals whilst summarizing their goal progression that can be shared with their teams.
  3. Copilot in Microsoft Viva Engage: engaging users and leaders, AI-created prompts and images will create conversation starters. By doing so, it will prompt leaders and users to post their responses. Through engagement, trust can be built between users and leaders and provide a thermometer reading concerning employee sentiments.
  4. Copilot in Microsoft Viva Learning: leveraging conversational AI, users can find the appropriate learning resources, summarize learning content, and create structured learning collections.
  5. Copilot in Microsoft Viva Glint: using natural language to ask questions in employee engagement surveys, leaders will be able to analyze thousands of comments and then summarize the findings.

Our journey will continue with our third article, Microsoft Ignite 2023: Copilot Updates Part 3 where we will review Power Platform including Power Automate and Power Apps, and how Security Copilot will assist compliance admins with their heavy workflows.

Microsoft Ignite 2023: Copilot Updates Part 1

Microsoft is the Copilot company, and on November 1, 2023, Copilot for Microsoft 365 became generally available for enterprises.  In its quest to provide every single person with their own Copilot, Microsoft introduced many new features and apps that will be able to utilize Copilot at this year’s Microsoft Ignite. This is Part 1 of the many new features and announcements this month. Our next article, Microsoft Ignite 2023: Copilot Updates Part 2, will delve into the announcements revolving around Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365.

Copilot, Bing Chat, and Bing Enterprise

Once again, Microsoft is changing the name and face of one of its well-known apps. Going forward, Bing Chat and Bing Enterprise will now be known as Copilot. Copilot will continue to have the foundational abilities to answer questions, reason over data, create content, and continue to have access to the latest information on the web due to its web grounding. Commercial data protection for users who sign in with their Entra ID is free, and better yet for the user, chat data isn’t saved. Microsoft does not have eyes-on access to chat data and this data is not used to train the models.

Copilot for Sales

Licenses for Copilot for Microsoft 365 will be included with Copilot for Sales, which will allow sellers to leverage the power of generative AI across Microsoft 365 apps, CRM systems of record, and other third-party data sources with Power Platform connectors. 

Leveraging the power of both Copilots, sellers will benefit from the power of generative AI across productivity and workflows, including Microsoft Teams and Word. This new integration will:

  1. Teams Meeting Recaps: combining insights from Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Microsoft 365, task creation, action items, and conversation KPIs will be surfaced.
  2. Meeting Brief: Copilot for Sales will be able to gather and pull information including the summary of the account and opportunities, titles and names of participants in the meeting, open tasks related to the opportunities, relevant highlights from recent meetings, relevant email threads, and more. Copilot for Sales will then utilize this information to formulate a meeting preparation brief in Microsoft Word.

Copilot for Service

Employing generative AI to boost agent productivity, Microsoft Copilot for Service will integrate with third party CRM and contact centre solutions. Microsoft Copilot for Service will include Copilot for Microsoft 365. AI-powered conversations will be quickly unlocked as enterprises will be able to point to their data such as knowledge base articles, trusted websites, files, files, and data sources from their existing contact center. Straight-out-of-the-box integrations will be available for Salesforce, Zendesk, ServiceNow, and with more than 1,000 pre-built and custom connectors, it can be extended to other systems.

During the interaction between a service agent and a customer, agents will be able to ask Copilot for Service questions in their natural language. Copilot for Service will then pull relevant information from customer and product data that is sourced from knowledge repositories. By doing so, cases can be quickly resolved, resulting in better interaction for both customers and agents. As Copilot for Service includes Copilot for Microsoft 365, agents will receive the productive resources in familiar formats including Teams and Outlook, as well as Salesforce, Zendesk, ServiceNow, and other third-party applications.

Copilot and Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365 Field Service assists businesses in transforming service operations and improving customer experiences by utilizing the Internet of Things (IoT), mixed reality, and AI. New Copilot capabilities and integrations include:

  1. Next-Generation AI and Improved Technician Productivity: within Microsoft Teams, frontline workers can ask Copilot in natural language what they need to receive specific information related to work orders. They will be able to access key work order information including status updates, instructions to complete the job, and parts needed.

    Frontline workers, in the flow of work in Teams, will be able to edit and view their work orders. For frontline managers, Copilot will assist in scheduling the right worker for the job thereby streamlining and saving time with work order scheduling.

    Frontline technicians will no longer have to tab their way through a work order, instead, Copilot will provide a summary of key points in the work order. Frontline technicians will be able to provide progress updates easily and quickly by speaking and providing a description of work done directly to Copilot. Technicians can then focus on providing better customer service with faster data entry as Copilot provides suggestions to efficiently check off service tasks, update product quantities, update status, and add notes.  
  2. Next-Generation AI and Streamlined Manager Workflows:

    Work order creation for managers will become more streamlined, efficient, and faster with Copilot’s Outlook add-in. Relevant details in work orders will be pre-populated from data harnessed from emails while technician scheduling will be optimized by data-driven recommendations that are based on skillset, availability, and travel time. Surfaced within the same app, managers can review relevant work orders to create new work orders while easily rescheduling or updating customer requirements as needed.
  3. More Integrated Offerings for Greater Efficiency

    Real-time price and cost information from work orders will be synced, automatically updating inventory data and financial data as work orders are executed. This seamless inventory and financial data flow between Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management and Dynamics 365 Field Service will ensure that the frontline and the back offices remain in syn, in real time.

    Dynamics 365 Field Service clients will also have access to Dynamics 365 Guides and Dynamics 365 Remote Assist at no extra cost. Written by the users, technicians can be provided step-by-step instructions for key tasks and if additional assistance is needed, remote express via HoloLens 2 devices or mobile will ensure real-time collaboration in the field.

With two Copilots in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, sellers using natural language will be able to interact with their data. They will be able to:

  1. Obtain contextual insights and recommendations for opportunities and leads with the use of natural language or with pre-built prompts.
  2. Quickly gain an understanding of customers, meetings, deals, forecasts and more by using natural language or pre-built prompts.
  3. Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) who have the capability to leverage Power Platform Connectors can now integrate in with the Opportunity Summary View in Outlook.

Dynamics 365 Customer Insights provides marketers with insights to help them understand their customers while creating personalized experiences, which are possible because of the implementation of next-generation AI and real-time data. By being able to qualify leads based on metrics such as engagement scores, marketers can hand off to their sellers, ensuring the marketing and sales teams maximize the rate of return as well as the opportunity.

An AI-generated summary of customer profiles from their customer data platform application will benefit sellers, providing them the ability to quickly understand their customer. These summaries will include the key components of their customer’s profile such as demographics, behavioral and analytics data, and transactional data.

Copilot and Edge for Business

Copilot for Edge Management Services will be delivered through Copilot for Microsoft 365 in the admin center. By delivering it through the Microsoft 365 admin center, it will provide a shared experience across other Microsoft 365 admin centers including Teams, SharePoint, and more. For IT admins, this will create a cohesive Copilot experience across Microsoft 365 management services.

Copilot and Industry Cloud: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides

Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides is bringing the future to field service technicians and operators in the service and manufacturing industries. Combining the powers of generative AI, mixed reality, and Microsoft Cloud, Copilot will provide them with the ability to converse with AI in natural language. In turn, AI will gather information that is garnered from curated documentation and provide the user with relevant information that they have inquired about. The information could include step-by-step guides, service work history, suggestions for troubleshooting, detailed information, current device readings, or completed work order forms.  With mixed reality, holographic overlays will provide technicians and operators with the ability to complete tasks seamlessly with a continuous workflow.

Copilot in Dynamics 365 Guides will allow organizations to improve operational efficiencies, accelerate onboarding, seamlessly capture, integrate, and democratize institutional knowledge, and enable frontline workers to update and access forms and systems of records.

Microsoft is advancing with its vision of a Copilot for everyone. Weaving and integrating Copilot into Sales, Service, the Dynamics 365 suite, Edge for Business, and Microsoft 365, Copilot will become, if not already, a major AI assistant that will not only improve our abilities to provide customer support and service but will allow us to streamline our processes and workflows.

In our next article, Microsoft Ignite 2023: Copilot Updates Part 2, we will delve into how Microsoft Copilot is being integrated, implemented, and leveraged as the ultimate AI assistant in Microsoft 365. You can also jump to our third article, Microsoft Ignite 2023: Copilot Updates Part 3, for its integration into the Power Platform and Security.