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New Features in Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2: Pages, Python in Excel, and agents

16 Oct 2024

New Features in Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2: Pages, Python in Excel, and agents 

Microsoft is now launching the second wave of Microsoft 365 Copilot, bringing together web + work + Pages as a new design system for knowledge work.  

 

The three main features are shown as following: 

1. Copilot Pages: a dynamic, persistent canvas designed for multiplayer AI collaboration. It’s the first new digital artifact for the AI age.  

2. Copilot in the Microsoft 365 Apps: further involved advanced data analysis in Microsoft Excel, dynamic storytelling in PowerPoint, managing inbox in Outlook, and more.  

3. Copilot Agents: making it easier and faster to automate and execute business processes on your behalf—enabling you to scale your team better. 

1. Copilot Pages — the first new digital artifact for the AI age [Generally Available Later in September 2024] 

Copilot Pages is a dynamic, persistent canvas in Copilot chat designed for multiplayer AI collaboration. This is an entirely new work pattern—multiplayer, human-to-AI-to-human collaboration.

Key Features:

– Persistent: Copilot Pages takes ephemeral AI-generated content and makes it durable, so you can edit it, add to it, and share it with others. 

– Shareable: Any page you create can be shared as a dynamic, collaborative element in your Teams chats and channels, Outlook emails and meetings, or in the Pages module in the Microsoft M365 app.  

– Multiplayer: 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. 

 

Here’s how you can use Copilot Pages: 

– Access Copilot at Microsoft.com/Copilot. If you have an M365 Copilot license, you can also access Copilot in Teams and Outlook.  

– Chat with Copilot as you usually would. Once you receive a response you’d like to keep, click ‘Edit in Pages’. This will create a page and open it side-by-side the chat with the response already copied and formatted, including link previews and code blocks. A reference to the page will automatically be added in the chat.  

– Add and refine. You can continue your conversation in chat. Clicking ‘Edit in Pages’ will add subsequent responses to the bottom of the page. Everything on the page is editable – just click on the page and start typing. Pro tip: type “/” to view a menu of content types that you can use.  

– Share and collaborate. When you are ready, you can share your page with others who will be able to collaborate on it with you. People you share with will have access to the page and its content, not your Copilot session. If you and your team have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, you can view the page in full screen to use Copilot directly within the page, adding to each other’s prompts and collaborating on a final output. Pro tip: Click the share icon in the upper right and select “Copy component” to surface the page in a fully interactive way when you paste it in Teams or Outlook.   

– Access your pages. Return to your page at any time by clicking the link in the chat where you first created the page or by opening the Pages tab in Microsoft365.com, where you will see all the Pages that you previously created. 

 

2. Supercharging productivity with Microsoft 365 Copilot: Copilot in the Microsoft 365 apps 

For millions of people around the world, work happens in the Microsoft 365 apps. It’s where Copilot delivers personal productivity gains and time savings.

  • Copilot in Excel [In Public Preview] 

When people want to work with that data and get real value from it, they usually turn to Microsoft Excel. With Copilot in Excel, now you can work with data that hasn’t been formatted as a table.  

– Added support for more formulas like XLOOKUP and SUMIF 

– Conditional formatting 

– Ability to iterate with Copilot on visualizations like Charts and PivotTables 

– Copilot in Excel can now work with text, in addition to numerical, data.  

In addition, Microsoft is now publishing Copilot in Excel with Pythoncombining the power of Python 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.

 

 

  • Copilot in PowerPoint

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 [Generally Available in September 2024]  

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.

 

  • Copilot in Outlook [Will in Public Preview Starting Late 2024] 

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.

 

 

  • Copilot in Word [Generally Available in Late September 2024] 

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. 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 [Generally Available at the End of September 2024] 

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. Specifically, AI-driven file comparisons make it easy to identify differences between Word and PDF files. This New AI innovation can streamline and automate processes efficiently.

3. Scaling your team with Copilot agents

  • Copilot Studio Agent Builder 

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, with specific subject-matter expertise, 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, agent builder, a new and simplified experience powered by Copilot Studio is introduced. 

 

 

 

  • Copilot Agents in SharePoint [Will Enter Preview in Early October] 

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.  

 

 

 

According to Microsoft, Copilot has become integral to daily workflows, enhancing efficiency and collaboration over the past 18 months. With over 60% growth in users each quarter, companies like Vodafone, Amgen, Teladoc, and Finastra are leveraging Copilot for significant productivity gains. Users at Honeywell save an average of 92 minutes weekly, highlighting Copilot’s impact on streamlining business processes. 

 

Just like our commitment to service excellence, our outstanding partner, Microsoft, relentlessly enhances its products to elevate user experience. 

Together, We Empower Your Work & Sustain Your Business’s Prosperity! 

 

 

 

 

Sources:

Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2: Pages, Python in Excel, and agents | Microsoft 365 Blog

Announcing Copilot Pages for multiplayer collaboration – Microsoft Community Hub 

Unlock the power of Copilot in Excel, now generally available – Microsoft Community Hub