What’s New in Copilot | August 2024

Welcome to what’s new in Copilot for Microsoft 365 in August 2024! Each month, we’ll highlight new and improved features in Copilot for Microsoft 365 to help Microsoft 365 admins stay up to date with Copilot’s capabilities that help users be more productive and efficient in the apps they use every day.

Let’s take a closer look at what’s new this month.

Management and administration features:

End User Features:

Copilot for Microsoft 365 Risk Assessment Quick Start Guide

new Risk Assessment Quick Start Guide Now, we have a document to help organizations perform a comprehensive risk assessment for Copilot for Microsoft 365. This document serves as an initial reference for risk identification, mitigation exploration, and stakeholder discussions. This guide includes:

• AI Risk and Mitigation Framework: This framework outlines key AI risk categories and how Microsoft addresses them at the company and service level.
• Sample Risk Assessment: This presents a series of questions and answers taken from real customers to assess your service and risk posture.

This guide also includes links to a variety of additional resources for more extensive and detailed material on Copilot for Microsoft 365 and AI risk management.

Additional language support for Copilot for Microsoft 365

Copilot for Microsoft 365 will soon support 12 more languages: Bulgarian, Croatian, Estonian, Greek, Indonesian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Serbian (Latin), Slovak, Slovenian, and Vietnamese.

We’re also introducing support for Welsh and Catalan, and improving the responses Copilot can provide for specific language variants, including Dutch (Belgium), German (Switzerland), English (UK), Spanish (Mexico), and French (Canada). These improvements should help users expect responses that better reflect the colloquialisms and linguistic conventions of these countries. As always, we’re continually improving Copilot’s language capabilities and encourage users to provide actionable feedback.

This language update includes: Released in September.

We’re excited to help people around the world get more done using Copilot at work.

Microsoft Copilot dashboard integrated with sentiment survey data from Viva Glint and Viva Pulse

Copilot survey results from Viva Glint or Viva Pulse will soon be integrated directly into the Microsoft Copilot dashboard. This new integration streamlines the Copilot survey process initiated through Viva Glint or Pulse, providing visibility into employee sentiment on Copilot adoption and impact. Users can start new Pulse surveys directly from the Copilot dashboard and view results from multiple Pulse, Glint, or administrator-uploaded surveys. These updates include: It will be released in September. Access to Viva Glint and Viva Pulse surveys requires a premium Microsoft Viva Suite, Workplace Analytics and Feedback license, or a Viva Glint license. Administrators can still manually upload survey results.

Computer screenshot of the Emotions section of the Copilot dashboard

Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 empowers the public sector.

Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 GCC It is expected to be generally available in October 2024.Pursuant to U.S. government approval, this business AI assistant is designed to increase productivity and foster innovation in the public sector by integrating large-scale language models with an organization’s data and the Microsoft 365 apps people use every day.

also, Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 GCC High and DOD is expected to be generally available in summer 2025.Awaiting US government approval.

Copilot for Microsoft 365 Improvements with Graph-Based Chat

In September, we’re bringing several improvements to Copilot for Microsoft 365 Graph-based chat.

In Outlook, Graph-grounded chat can infer a user’s archive mailbox and extend its reach to all email content in the primary mailbox. Users can also navigate to specific folders or subfolders to receive responses that prioritize emails in those folders.

In Teams, users can quickly find and use relevant information when writing prompts based on conversations in Microsoft Teams group chats.

With Graph-grounded chat, users will see a significant improvement in their ability to infer large files as a source of evidence for their prompts. Users will also be able to paste more content into the Copilot search area, increasing from 2,000 characters to 16,000 characters. Finally, users will be able to specify files in specific apps, folders, or sites, using prompts such as “Find a file in my OneDrive,” “Find a file on the Marketing site,” or “Find a file in the Documents folder.”

Pasting content becomes easier with Copilot in Word.

Now when users paste content into Word, they will see expanded paste options in Copilot, making it quick and easy to improve their documents. When pasting content, users can easily use Copilot suggestions to replace words, convert to tables or lists, and do more. This feature is available today on the web, and will be available soon on desktop and Mac.

There is a table image pasted in a bad format, and the user uses Copilot to paste the content into a properly formatted table.

Support student learning with solutions to quiz questions using Copilot in Forms

Copilot in Forms quizzes allow teachers to easily create step-by-step solutions for each question. When students submit a quiz, teachers can give students the option to view their results immediately, allowing students to check their scores to see what they have learned and to study the step-by-step solutions provided by Copilot to help them learn from their mistakes. This feature will be released in August..

A quiz where the student answered the question incorrectly and is now looking at a step-by-step solution explanation.

Use Copilot in Teams to summarize content over a specific period of time

Users no longer need to manually scroll through and search through vast chat histories. Now, when you enable Copilot in your chat, you can use time-based phrases like “yesterday,” “last month,” “6 months ago,” or “December 2023” in the prompt. Copilot efficiently finds information from a specified time period and provides insights. This feature started rolling out in August.. Learn more about using Copilot in Microsoft Teams chats and channels..

Copilot generated a list of action items starting in March after submitting time-based prompts.

A new collection of prompts for sales, finance and energy from Copilot Lab

A new collection of functional prompts tailored for the sales, finance, and energy sectors is now available in Copilot Labs. This expansion of the functional prompt collection, which launched in May, is designed to inspire and guide users to create their own high-quality prompts tailored to their role or industry.

For example, a sales professional might receive an immediate offer like this: Draft a customized strategic account plan template. [customer name] A plan that aligns with our sales goals and their business objectives. This plan should be written from the perspective of a sales account executive and should include a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis, mapping of key stakeholders, and a timeline of engagement activities leading up to the final pitch. Format it as a structured document with clear titles and action items.

Financial professionals can provide immediate suggestions, including: Generate a comprehensive risk assessment report based on the risk assessment data provided in this document. [document]Categorizes risks into financial, operational, and strategic types and suggests mitigation strategies.

Professionals in the energy sector can get immediate suggestions: Provide an analysis of development concepts that have been successful in other reservoirs in the Permian Basin. Break your analysis down into manageable sections and illustrate your points with specific examples.

This is our second collection set after our first collection set was launched. Released in May. New collections will continue to be added in the future. You can also explore newly added prompts in Copilot for Microsoft 365 apps, including Planner, Microsoft Forms, SharePoint, and OneDrive. Visit Pilot’s Lab Take your instant creation journey to the next level today.

Screenshot of the second tab in Copilot Lab, “Prompts to Try.” There is a drop-down list of action types.

Did you know? Microsoft 365 Roadmap Your place to get the latest updates on productivity apps and intelligent cloud services. The dates mentioned in this article are tentative dates and are subject to change. Check back regularly to see what’s currently in development or coming soon.