Microsoft 365 Copilot is becoming a daily habit for people around the world. Nearly 70% of Fortune 500 companies already use it. Dow expects Copilot to save millions of dollars on shipping operations in its first year; bee Bank of Queensland group70% of users save two and a half to five hours per week; Eaton speeds up internal documentation processes by 83%; And Accenture goes big and rolls out Copilot to 100,000 employees.

Today at Microsoft Ignite 2024we are accelerating our ambition to empower every employee with Copilot as a personal assistant and to transform every business process with agents built into Microsoft Copilot Studio.

Announcements include:

• Co-pilot actions in Microsoft 365 Copilot to help you automate repetitive daily tasks.
• New agents in Microsoft 365 to unlock SharePoint knowledge, provide real-time language interpretation in Microsoft Teams meetings, and automate employee self-service.
• The Copilot operating system to help IT professionals securely manage Copilot and agents with confidence.

These announcements build on our second wave momentum, including the new autonomous agent capabilities we announced in October 2024.

Empower every employee with a personal AI assistant

Thanks to our customers, we have the world’s best feedback loop on AI at work. We’ve dramatically improved Copilot’s performance; so are the responses twice faster on average and response satisfaction is almost three times higher¹– and added hundreds of new features. And we’re adding new value to Copilot to address the biggest pain points at work and help every employee scale their impact, from automating repetitive tasks to managing your calendar.

• New Co-pilot actions Automate everyday tasks with simple, set-it-and-forget-it commands. For example, you can automatically receive a summary of your key action items at the end of each workday, create an action to gather input from your team for a weekly newsletter you send every Thursday, or automate the preparation of customer meetings with a recurring action that summarizes your last few interactions together before your next sync. In private example.

• We’re adding new value to Copilot Pages, a dynamic, persistent canvas designed for multi-player AI collaboration rich artifacts. Now you can ask Copilot to create everything from interactive flowcharts to blocks of code (using data from Microsoft Graph) and then share them on long-lasting pages that your team can build on. Generally available early 2025.

• With Teams, a rich dialogue takes place during the call, as well as chat and screen presentations. Now Copilot in Teams can understand, summarize and answer questions based on visual content shared on screen – from PowerPoint to the web – alongside the transcript and chat. You can also use Copilot to create a quick summary of a file shared in a chat to see all the main points without having to open the file. Public preview coming in early 2025.
• Now Copilot in PowerPoint can do that with a single prompt translate entire presentations in one of 40 languages, while maintaining the overall design of each slide. It’s like having a skilled translator standing next to you. Generally available in 2025.
• Copilot in Outlook can now help you plan focus time or one-on-one with a colleague (check both calendars to find the best time) and set up a meeting agenda. Generally available from the end of November.
• And to make work more fun, we announced Copilot Themes in Outlook earlier in November 2024, so you can create a unique theme that speaks to you; it can even change as the weather changes. Generally available.

Transform any business process with agents

Copilot is where you communicate with agents, and Copilot Studio makes it easy to create, manage, and connect agents to Copilot. We’re introducing agents to Microsoft 365 that are designed to help scale individual impact and transform business processes. These new agents complement the autonomous agents we announced in October 2024 for sales, service, finance and supply chain professionals – and we’re just getting started. Over the coming year, we will create many more agents who will give customers the competitive advantage they need to future-proof their organizations.

• Organizations rely on SharePoint and create more than two million sites and uploading more than two billion files daily. We’re announcing that every SharePoint site now has an agent, so every employee can quickly tap into this massive knowledge base. You can use agents in SharePoint to quickly extract project details from a workback schedule, summarize a recent product memo, or find a document in seconds. For example, salespeople can instantly find the latest product specifications, pricing documents or customer proposals, allowing them to respond to customer queries faster and more accurately without having to search through multiple files. You can ask the agents questions about data in your files, and even create and share custom agents tailored to specific content with one click. Generally available.

• Imagine being able to sound just like you in another language. The Interpreter agent in Teams provides real-time speech-to-speech interpretation during meetings, and you can choose to have your speaking voice simulated for a more personalized and engaging experience. Public preview coming in early 2025.
• The Self-service agent employee in Business Chat quickly answers common policy questions and makes it easy to accomplish important tasks, starting with HR and IT. For example, it can help employees understand their employment conditions or request a new laptop. And it can be customized in Copilot Studio to meet the unique needs of your organization. In private example.
• Other agents include Facilitatorwhich takes real-time notes during Teams meetings and chats, and Project managerthat automates plan creation and even completes tasks in Microsoft Planner. In public preview.
• In the coming months, partners will like it ServiceNow, Working dayAnd Coherencewill – along with dozens of others – add their agents to Copilot, bringing their unique, mission-critical knowledge directly into the workflow to HR, finance and sales organizations. S&P Global, CB Insights and more introduce new connectors, allowing Copilot to reference more types of business data.

Equipping IT to lead the AI ​​transformation

Chief Information Officers and IT professionals are at the epicenter of the AI ​​transformation. To empower any IT team to lead at scale, we’re introducing the Copilot operating system—designed so IT can confidently adopt and accelerate the business value of Copilot and agents.

• Data protection enables an intelligent foundation for business data while respecting your organization’s controls. To give IT even more control, we are announcing this SharePoint Advanced Management will be included at no additional cost to Copilot customers to accelerate adoption and address oversharing with built-in content governance reporting and controls. Generally available early 2025.
• Management controls Enable IT to manage access and use of Copilot and agents, including control over which users can use Copilot and agents, along with visibility into agent status and lifecycle. And we announce that Copilot in Microsoft 365 admin centers will be available to all Copilot customers to automate time-consuming IT tasks, provide personalized insights to improve tenant management, and answer administrator questions. In private example; generally available early 2025.
• Measuring and reporting enable IT and business leaders to track adoption patterns and determine return on investment from using Copilot and agents. We are announcing that Microsoft Viva Insights will be included in Copilot at no additional cost as part of the new Copilot analysis. Copilot Analytics provides out-of-the-box experiences to measure Copilot adoption and business impact, customizable reporting for deeper analytics, and the new Copilot Business Impact Report to analyze Copilot usage against key business performance indicators in sales, finance, marketing and more. The Copilot Business Impact Report is in public preview; Copilot Analytics generally available early 2025.

Enabling every employee to be safe and productive with Windows

In today’s digital landscape, protecting your organization’s data from emerging threats and ensuring system integrity is of paramount importance. We push the boundaries to continue making Windows the most secure and high-performance platform for you and your organization.

• We introduce the Windows Resiliency Initiativeunder which Fast machine repair– a new solution to help customers recover from unexpected outages, allowing administrators to perform targeted Windows Update repairs on PCs even if they can’t boot. Coming to the Windows Insider program in early 2025.
• We are also excited to announce this Windows 365 linkthe first Cloud PC device purpose-built by Microsoft to connect directly to Windows 365 in seconds. With Windows 365 Link, desktop users can work securely on a familiar Windows desktop in the Microsoft Cloud with responsive, high-fidelity experiences. Now in public preview; generally available for $349 in select markets from April 2025.

Microsoft 365 Copilot

Save time, increase productivity and move your business forward faster.

Other news

• In Microsoft Places we added Location insights based on AI in Teams and Outlook with Copilot, so you can optimize your office days for better personal connections. Key features include Copilot recommendations on when to go to the office, based on colleagues’ shared work plans with target construction locations. Generally available.

Start using Copilot today to empower every employee with Copilot as a personal assistant and transform every business process with agents built into Copilot Studio. Visit Microsoft365.com/copilot or download the Microsoft 365 app on your mobile device.

Sources:

¹ Conducted blind, side-by-side human intelligence tasks on behalf of Microsoft in July and August 2024, each with 9 participants (judges) to compare user satisfaction with responses to questions from Microsoft Copilot and a competitor. Copilot won 16% of comparisons in July and 46% in August.

² Prices are correct as of November 2024.