What's New in Copilot | August 2024

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Welcome to the August 2024 edition of What's New in Copilot for Microsoft 365! Every month, we highlight new features and enhancements for Copilot for Microsoft 365, to keep Microsoft 365 admins up to date with Copilot features that help your 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.



Admin and management capabilities:


End-user capabilities:




Copilot for Microsoft 365 Risk Assessment QuickStart Guide​


A new Risk Assessment QuickStart Guide is now available to assist organizations in performing a comprehensive risk assessment of Copilot for Microsoft 365. The document serves as an initial reference for risk identification, mitigation exploration, and stakeholder discussions. The guide includes:



  • An AI Risks and Mitigations Framework: This framework outlines the primary AI risk categories and how Microsoft addresses them at both company and service levels.
  • Sample Risk Assessment: This presents a set of real customer-derived questions and answers to assess the service and its risk posture.

The guide also includes links to a variety of additional resources that point you a broader, more detailed set of materials on Copilot for Microsoft 365 and AI risk management.



Additional language support for Copilot for Microsoft 365​


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



In addition, we are also introducing support for Welsh and Catalan and are making improvements to the responses Copilot can provide for specific language variants including Dutch (Belgium), German (Switzerland), English (UK), Spanish (Mexico) and French (Canada). These improvements mean your users can anticipate responses that better reflect colloquial expressions, and linguistic conventions in these countries. As always, we are continually refining Copilot’s language capabilities and encourage users to provide us with actionable feedback.



These language updates are rolling out in September.



We’re excited to help people around the world do even more with Copilot in the workplace.



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 process for Copilot surveys initiated through Viva Glint or Pulse, providing a view into employee sentiment about Copilot adoption and impact. Users can start a new Pulse survey directly from the Copilot Dashboard and view results from multiple Pulse, Glint, or admin uploaded survey results. These updates are rolling out in September. Access to Viva Glint and Viva Pulse surveys require a premium Microsoft Viva Suite, Workplace Analytics and Feedback license or Viva Glint license. Admins will continue to have the ability to manually upload survey results.



A computer screenshot of the sentiment section of the Copilot DashboardA computer screenshot of the sentiment section of the Copilot Dashboard

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Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 is empowering the public sector​


Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 GCC will be generally available October 2024, subject to US Government authorization. This AI assistant for work is designed to boost productivity and foster innovation within the public sector by integrating large language models with your organization's data and the Microsoft 365 Apps people use every day.



Additionally, Microsoft Copilot in Microsoft 365 GCC High and DOD will be generally available in Summer 2025, pending US Government authorization.



Improvements to Copilot for Microsoft 365 with Graph-grounded chat​


Several improvements to Copilot for Microsoft 365 Graph-grounded chat are coming in September.



In Outlook, Graph-grounded chat will be able to reason over a user’s archive mailbox, expanding coverage to all the email content in their primary mailbox. Users will also be able to navigate to specific folders or sub-folders to get responses that prioritize emails in those folders.



In Teams, users can ground conversations in Microsoft Teams group chats to quickly find and use relevant information when crafting prompts.



When using Graph-grounded chat, users will see significant improvements to the ability to reason over large files as a grounding source for prompts. Users will also be able to paste more content in the Copilot search area with an increase from 2,000 characters to 16,000 characters. Finally, users will be able to specify files located in a specific app, folder or site, using prompts like “Find the files in my OneDrive”, “Find files in the Marketing site”, or “Find files 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 with Copilot that enable them to quickly and easily improve their documents. When pasting content, users can use Copilot suggestions to easily re-word it, transform it into a table or list, and more. This feature is available today for web, and rolling out soon for desktop and Mac.



An image of a table pasted in poor formatting, then the user uses Copilot to paste the content into a well formatted table.An image of a table pasted in poor formatting, then the user uses Copilot to paste the content into a well formatted table.

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


With Copilot in Forms quizzes, teachers can easily generate step-by-step solutions to each question. When students turn in quizzes, if teachers give students the option to immediately view their results, students can check their scores to see what they've mastered, and further study the step-by-step solutions supported by Copilot, helping them learn from their mistakes. This feature is rolling out in August.



A quiz where the student answered a question incorrectly and is now viewing the step by step solution explainedA quiz where the student answered a question incorrectly and is now viewing the step by step solution explained

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Summarize content over a specific period of time with Copilot in Teams​


Users no longer need to manually scroll and search through extensive chat histories. Now when they activate Copilot in chat, they can use time-based phrases like "yesterday," "last month," "6 months ago," or " December 2023" in prompts. Copilot will efficiently locate and provide insights on information from the time period specified. This feature started rolling out in August. Learn more about using Copilot in Microsoft Teams chat and channels.



Copilot generated a list of action items from March, after submitting time-based promptCopilot generated a list of action items from March, after submitting time-based prompt

New prompt collections for Sales, Finance, and the Energy Sector in Copilot Lab​


New functional prompt collections tailored for sales, finance, and the energy sector are now available in Copilot Lab. This expansion of our functional prompt collection, which started releasing in May, is designed to inspire and guide users to create their own high-quality prompts specific to a role or industry.



For example, sales professionals will find prompt suggestions such as, Draft a strategic account plan template tailored for [customer name] that aligns with our sales targets and their business objectives. The plan should be written from a Sales Account Executive perspective, and it should also include a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis, key stakeholder mapping, and a timeline of engagement activities leading up to the final pitch. Please format this as a structured document with clear headings and action items.

Finance professionals will find prompt suggestions such as, Generate a comprehensive risk assessment report based on the risk evaluation data provided in this [document]. Categorize risks into financial, operational, and strategic types, and suggest mitigation strategies.

Professionals in the energy sector will find prompt suggestions such as, Provide an analysis of the development concepts that have been successful for other reservoirs in the Permian Basin. Break your analysis into manageable sections and use specific examples to illustrate your points.



This is the second set of collections, after our first set of collections started rolling out in May. New collections will continue to be added in the future. You can also explore newly added prompts across Copilot for Microsoft 365 apps including Planner, Microsoft Forms, SharePoint, and OneDrive. Visit Copilot Lab today to elevate your prompt creation journey.



A screenshot of the second tab in Copilot Lab called “Prompts to Try” with a drop down list of Job Types.A screenshot of the second tab in Copilot Lab called “Prompts to Try” with a drop down list of Job Types.







Did you know? The Microsoft 365 Roadmap is where you can get the latest updates on productivity apps and intelligent cloud services. Please note that the dates mentioned in this article are tentative and subject to change. Check back regularly to see what features are in development or coming soon.

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