Microsoft Copilot Updates & Release Notes

We’re reimagining Microsoft Copilot to enable work as it evolves and to help expand what every individual and every organization can accomplish in the flow of human ambition.

Today we’re introducing the new Copilot to connect the tools people rely on with the next generation of capabilities they’ll need to build, customize and scale AI across work.

The Copilot app now has three new capabilities: Home is your new starting point, where Chat and Cowork come together — and with Office in Copilot, the full power of Word, Excel and PowerPoint is now built into the experience. Code lets everyone build their own solutions with the tools to run them safely, and it’s powered by the same underlying technology as GitHub Copilot. And Autopilot is a persistent, proactive and personal agent that keeps working even when you’re not. Home and Code will start rolling out in our Frontier program in the coming weeks and Autopilot is expanding to private preview at the end of the month.

We’re also excited to share new FinOps for AI capabilities to help you manage spend and get the most value from Copilot and agents.

A new experience for every mode of work

Home is your new starting point in Copilot, where Chat and Cowork come together in one place. As work moves constantly between meetings, chats, documents, emails, apps and agents, Home is where you get your bearings, keeping you grounded and moving forward. You can review recent activity, get suggestions on what Copilot can help with, and pick up work right where you left off. Chat is instant and conversational — ready for quick questions, lookups, draft-creation and keeping you in the loop on every turn. Cowork is for work you delegate. You define the task and it runs end-to-end to return a completed result: an RFP response, a launch kit, a customer briefing, a financial close package or any other complex work worth iterating on. And coming soon, you won’t need to choose a mode: simply state what you need to accomplish, and Copilot will route the work to Chat, Cowork or Code — whichever capability is right for the job.

We’re also bringing the full power of Word, Excel and PowerPoint to Copilot with Office in Copilot. Now you can get to real work fast: no broken formatting, no stray versions, no rebuilding the context in another app. From Home you can ask Copilot to draft a launch brief, model a budget, build a deck, or pick up a file your team is already working on, and it creates or updates a real, editable document, workbook or presentation — live for your whole team, not just you. Refine it side by side with your conversation, or @mention a teammate and their edits show up as they make them — things stay in sync between Copilot and the Office apps, so progress travels with you wherever you work.

If you haven’t used Copilot in the Office apps lately, take another look. PowerPoint now keeps decks on-brand automatically and enables you to fine-tune slides and images or quickly apply a custom template. When Copilot or another collaborator makes edits in Excel, you can see exactly what changed and why, so you’re up to speed quickly, and Copilot recommends the best chart to visualize your data. And across Microsoft 365, Skills help bring specialized expertise directly into the apps, like financial skills in Excel and legal skills in Word, and enable organizations to scale best practices through reusable, role-specific workflows.

Code moves solution-building outside the realm of developers alone. To date, the unit of knowledge work has been the file: the document, the spreadsheet, the deck. Those aren’t going anywhere, but Code adds a fourth: small, purpose-built solutions anyone can create to get a job done. Learning to build them is becoming as basic a skill as writing a memo or modeling a budget.

Describe an app, tracker, dashboard, automation or workflow in natural language, and Copilot chooses an approach and builds it — from persistent desktop widgets for quick reference and interactive dashboards for exploring data and testing outcomes to cloud-hosted internal apps you can share with your team.

Powered by the same underlying technology as GitHub Copilot, Code runs in a sandboxed environment and can be hosted securely within your tenant. With Microsoft IQ, everything you create is grounded in the context of your work, and plugins sync automatically. Your software developers continue to use GitHub Copilot for their day-to-day work with more connectivity into the Copilot platform. Code is rolling out to Frontier at the end of the month, with broad availability in the coming weeks. It will be in preview for Microsoft 365 Premium and Pro subscribers later this year.

As it gets easier and faster than ever to build in Copilot, we’re introducing Microsoft Copilot Managed Runtime: hosting infrastructure that lets code run safely right inside your company’s Microsoft 365 environment. It’s governed by IT but easy for everyone else: share an app with teammates, connect it to live data and access it from anywhere. This same foundation enables apps built in Cowork, Code and Copilot Studio, and we’re opening it up to third-party and pro-code developers, too. Copilot Managed Runtime is now in preview and will also be accessible inside Code.

Autopilot, previously called Scout, is your digital teammate. And it works for you: Give it a name, a role and a goal, and it goes to work — watching channels, following up on threads, running recurring work and picking a project back up days later, without waiting for a prompt. It can do things like set up and manage a full supplier review process: building the schedule and workback plan, then handling prep, meetings and follow-ups on its own, right down to reaching out to stakeholders for updates. And Autopilot is cloud-hosted, so it keeps working while you sleep or your attention is elsewhere — no constant monitoring required.

Autopilot lives in your tenant with its own identity, memory, computer and workspace, and it’s built on Microsoft IQ so it understands how your organization actually works. It shows up where people already work — Teams, Outlook, chats, channels and documents — so you can @mention it like a colleague, with permissions, audit and governance behind it. You set the objective and boundaries; Autopilot handles the rest while keeping you informed and in control.

Expanding your business context

Copilot is grounded in Microsoft IQ, the unified intelligence platform for enterprise AI across your Microsoft stack, connecting how the business operates with the knowledge it holds into one real-time view for Copilot and your agents, governed and secure.

Today we are expanding the business context available to Copilot. Fabric IQ brings trusted context from your data, including the 20+ million semantic models in Power BI into Copilot. It grounds Chat and Cowork, and is generally available in both today, with Code integration coming through the Frontier program soon. Rolling out over the next month in public preview, Copilot is now grounded in data and workflows from Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. So, when a salesperson is working on a proposal, for instance, Copilot can incorporate data like deal history and support tickets right into the document, with no app-switching or distracting lookups required.

You also need a trusted way to connect Copilot to the actions and data that move your business forward. Plugins extend what Copilot can do, bringing together skills, connectors and other capabilities so users can complete more workflows without leaving the apps they use every day. Rolling out now and generally available across surfaces in the coming weeks, a new plugin registry will bring Microsoft, partner and custom-built plugins together in one unified catalog. IT can approve and manage plugins centrally, while developers and partners can publish once to extend Copilot across supported experiences. The result is a simpler way to introduce trusted capabilities at scale, with the control your organization needs.

Managing AI spend

For everyday AI — quick answers, first drafts, summaries and analysis — you want the best possible quality at a fixed cost. A user subscription license (USL) gives you exactly that: Copilot in Chat and across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams; model selection; and new capabilities and models. Auto is at the heart of the USL. Auto weighs accuracy, speed and cost on each request to route to the model best suited for the job. Agentic work requires a different type of spend, one that gives you the best quality possible with the most advanced models. Usage-based billing (UBB) lets you have full control to choose models and match cost to value. Cowork, Code, and Autopilot, new long-running agentic capabilities, and frontier models like Astra and Fable all run on UBB. As AI capabilities and the ways people use them continue to evolve, we’re evolving Copilot pricing alongside them. Read more here.

FinOps for AI is a shared discipline for managing AI spend and optimizing it for business value. We are committed to enabling organizations to make the most of their AI spend, and, today, we are introducing new capabilities across Agent 365, Insights and Microsoft Copilot to help do that. Cost management in Agent 365 is expanding beyond Cowork and Work IQ APIs to include Code and Copilot Managed Runtime, with support for agents built in Microsoft Copilot Studio planned for October. Admins can manage spending policies at scale with API access; route credit requests from end users into existing approval and automation workflows; and set which model families are available to different groups of users — those settings also shape which models Auto can select from. Business leaders and admins can understand which Cowork tasks are generating the strongest outcomes and determine where to sustain, expand or optimize usage. And finally, end users can view credit usage, remaining balances and usage history directly in Microsoft Copilot, so they can better manage their own AI usage within organizational guardrails. We are committed to investing in FinOps for AI to help organizations stay in control of spend, understand value and optimize their AI investments for impact.

A sneak peek at what’s next

These announcements are just the beginning. We’re excited to share future Copilot experiences that make Copilot more personalized and proactive, and help the team move forward together.

Coming soon in Home, Today is a proactive, personalized command center across mail, calendar, Teams threads, meetings and tasks. It shows you what you missed, what needs attention now and what can wait. Today doesn’t just surface the work, it gets work done. The draft is written and ready for you to edit; the schedule change is already proposed; and the forgotten follow-up is waiting for you to send it, complete with context so you can catch up quickly. Today enters private preview in October in Copilot, and will be coming to Outlook and Teams as well.

And now when you invoke @Copilot in Teams, your entire team gets the shared context and permissions of the channel, group chat or meeting. Ask why a product decision was made, and Copilot pulls the background from across conversations — no digging, no re-explaining. When that decision ripples into manufacturing, packaging and launch timing, Copilot goes further: it offers to prepare a cross-functional review with dependencies, owners, open questions and decisions, so everyone can see how their work connects and what still needs resolving. The team stays aligned and the project keeps moving forward. The @Copilot capability will be in private preview in Teams by the end of the month.

Get started

With the new Copilot, you now have one place to ask, delegate, build, automate and more. It’s rolling out now through the Frontier program, with new capabilities arriving continuously. Check back here for the latest.

There is so much more coming to Copilot. Join us at Microsoft Ignite — November 17–20 in San Francisco and online — to learn about the latest Copilot innovation and how it’s empowering people and organizations to reimagine work and get value from AI.

Original source

Updates released between August 26, 2026, and September 22, 2026.

Excel

• Navigate to your workbook changes directly from the Copilot chat pane response [Windows, Web, Mac]

In Copilot in Excel, the response contains links to highlight where changes are made in your workbook. Navigate directly to new sheets, tables, ranges, and objects like charts and shapes.

Details:

What changed: In the Copilot chat response, there now is a link you can click that will take you directly to changes in the workbook. Previously, you would need to locate the change in the response and navigate in the sheet on your own.

Why: We want you to understand where copilot made edits and connect you to them directly from the chat response. This will help build confidence in the changes and allow you to review while you're reading the response in the chat pane.

Try this:

1. Send a prompt to Copilot where the workbook is modified.
2. The chat response will show the changes in a different format with a highlight to indicate a link you can click for navigation. New Sheets, tables, ranges, and objects will be highlighted.

Why this matters: The feature allows quick review of document changes made by Copilot, increasing transparency of the edits.

Business impact: Teams can understand changes made while reading the response from Copilot and quickly navigate to those places for review.

Personal impact: You can review the Copilot Edits in your document.

• See Copilot usage in show changes pane [Windows, Mac, Web]

Users can now view Copilot usage details directly within the Show Changes pane in Excel.

Details:

What changed: Previously, Copilot activity was not visible in the Show Changes pane. Now, the pane includes on-card attribution showing when Copilot made edits or suggestions. This transparency helps users track AI contributions alongside manual changes.

Why: Providing clear visibility into Copilot’s actions increases user trust and accountability when reviewing workbook changes.

Try this:

1. Open an Excel workbook with Copilot edits.
2. Select Review tab, then click Show Changes.
3. Look for Copilot attribution cards indicating AI-generated changes.

Why this matters: Understanding which changes come from Copilot helps users verify and manage AI-assisted edits.

Business impact: Teams can audit AI contributions more effectively, improving collaboration and change management.

Personal impact: You gain confidence reviewing workbook edits knowing which changes Copilot made.

Microsoft 365 admin center

• New dedicated License Requests page in Microsoft 365 Admin Center [Web]

We are introducing a new dedicated License Requests page in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center to help admins more easily discover, review, and manage Microsoft 365 Copilot license requests submitted by users.

Roadmap ID: 561206

Details:

What changed: The Microsoft 365 Admin Center now includes a dedicated License Requests page for Microsoft 365 Copilot. Previously, admins had to locate license requests through multiple menus or notifications. This new page centralizes all Copilot license requests, improving visibility and management efficiency. The page supports sorting, filtering, and bulk actions on license requests, enhancing administrative control and security oversight.

Why: Admins need a streamlined way to handle Copilot license requests to reduce delays and errors in license allocation. This change enables admins to:

• Quickly identify pending license requests
• Approve or deny requests efficiently
• Maintain better control over license distribution and compliance

Try this:

• Open the Microsoft 365 Admin Center and select 'License Requests' from the navigation menu.
• Review pending Microsoft 365 Copilot license requests and use filters to sort by user or date.
• Approve or deny requests directly from the License Requests page.

Why this matters: Centralizing license requests reduces administrative overhead and speeds up user access to Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses.

Business impact: IT teams can manage Copilot license requests more efficiently, improving license compliance and reducing support tickets.

Personal impact: Admins save time reviewing and processing license requests, enabling faster user onboarding to Copilot.

Microsoft 365 Copilot

• See email attachments as pills in Copilot search results [Windows, Web]

When users search for an email in Microsoft 365 Copilot search, that email's attachments now appear as pills directly on the result, so users can spot and open attachments without opening the email.

Details:

What changed: Email results in Microsoft 365 Copilot search now display the email's attachments as inline pills within the search results. When a user's query surfaces an email, any attachments on that email are shown as clickable pills on the result, letting users navigate straight to a file. Previously, attachments were not surfaced on email results, users had to open the email to find and access them.

Why: Surfacing attachments as pills on email results improves discoverability and saves clicks. Users can now:

• At a glance, see which emails have attachments and what they are.
• Open an attachment directly from the results page without first opening the email.
• Move faster from a search to the exact file they need.

Try this:

1. Open Microsoft 365 Copilot search.
2. Search for an email you know has attachments.
3. On the matching email result, look for the attachment pills.
4. Click a pill to open the attachment directly.

Why this matters: Showing attachments in line with email results removes an extra step, making it faster to find and open the files buried in your emails.

Business impact: Teams reach the files attached to key emails faster, reducing back-and-forth and speeding up collaboration and decision making.

Personal impact: You save time by spotting and opening email attachments right from your search results, without opening each email to hunt for them.

• "Sort by" filter for Outlook Mail in Copilot search [Windows, Web]

Users can now sort Outlook Mail results by date in ascending or descending order within Copilot Search.

Details:

What changed: Copilot Search now includes a "Sort by" filter for Outlook Mail results, allowing sorting by date in both ascending and descending order. Previously, search results were presented without sorting options, limiting users' ability to organize emails by date. This update improves result relevance and user control over mail searches.

Why: Sorting mail results by date helps users quickly find recent or older emails, improving efficiency in managing Outlook Mail through Copilot Search.

Try this:

1. Open Copilot Search and enter your query.
2. Select the "Sort by" filter above the Outlook Mail results.
3. Choose ascending or descending date order to reorder the emails.

Why this matters: Sorting mail results by date saves time and reduces effort when locating specific emails in large mailboxes.

Business impact: Teams can respond faster by locating relevant emails without manually scanning unsorted search results.

Personal impact: You spend less time searching through emails and more time focusing on important messages.

• New profile cards for buildings, rooms and desks [Windows]

Buildings, rooms and desks that are added to the Places directory will have new profile cards, accessible from Copilot Chat and across other Microsoft 365 entry points.

Roadmap ID: 553219

Details:

What changed: Buildings, rooms, and desks added to the Places directory now have dedicated profile cards. These cards are accessible through Copilot Chat and various Microsoft 365 interfaces, providing quick access to location details. Previously, such detailed location information was not consolidated or easily accessible within Microsoft 365. This update improves navigation and resource management without impacting security.

Why: Providing detailed profile cards for physical spaces helps users find and manage locations efficiently, improving workplace coordination and resource utilization.

Try this:

1. Open Copilot Chat in Microsoft 365.
2. Search for a building, room, or desk name.
3. View the profile card with detailed information and availability.

Why this matters: Quick access to location details reduces time spent searching for workspace resources and supports better planning.

Business impact: Facilities and teams can manage space usage more effectively, improving workplace experience and operational efficiency.

Personal impact: You quickly find and reserve appropriate workspaces, reducing delays and interruptions during your day.

• Find meetings based on topics and keywords [Android, Windows, iOS, Mac]

Copilot will be able to find meetings based on topics or keywords from relevant data like meeting body, chat, and transcription. The search for meetings based on transcript text is based on meetings in last two months.

Roadmap ID: 559110

Details:

What changed: Copilot now searches meetings using topics or keywords found in the meeting body, chat messages, and transcription text from the past two months. Previously, meeting searches were limited and did not include chat or transcript content. This change improves search accuracy and relevance across multiple data sources.

Why: Users need to locate meetings related to specific subjects quickly. Including chat and transcription data in searches provides a more comprehensive view and saves time.

Try this:

1. Open Copilot and enter a topic or keyword in the search box.
2. Review the list of meetings that include the keyword in the body, chat, or transcript.
3. Select a meeting to view details and related content.

Why this matters: This update helps users find relevant meetings more efficiently by searching all related meeting content.

Business impact: Teams can access complete meeting information faster, improving collaboration and decision-making.

Personal impact: You spend less time searching for meetings and more time preparing for relevant discussions.

• Unlocking Deeper Copilot Insights with Enhanced Power BI Filtering [Web]

Enable Global and Insights admins to turn on additional attributes as filters in Power BI reports, including reserved attributes and your organization’s custom attributes. Users who have access to Power BI reports can then use these newly enabled filters to tailor reports to their business needs.

Roadmap ID: 559995

Details:

What changed: Admins now have the option to activate more attribute filters in Workplace Analytics Power BI reports. These include reserved attributes and custom attributes defined by the organization. Previously, filtering options were limited to default attributes, restricting report customization.

Why: This update provides more granular control over report filtering, enabling more relevant and actionable insights tailored to organizational contexts.

Try this:

1. As a Global or Insights admin, go to the Workplace Analytics admin center.
2. Enable additional reserved and custom attributes as filters.
3. In Power BI, use the new filters to customize your reports.

Why this matters: Enhanced filtering improves report relevance and helps users focus on the data that matters most to their roles and goals.

Business impact: Teams gain more precise analytics capabilities, supporting better-informed decisions based on tailored data views.

Personal impact: You can create more customized reports that reflect your specific business questions, saving time on data preparation.

Additional resources:

Learn:

Enable filters for out-of-the-box reports

• Planner Agent chat [Windows, Web]

Introducing built-in Planner Agent chat with natural language Q&A, smart task discovery, and in-plan task management.

Roadmap ID: 560532

Details:

What changed: Planner integrates Planner Agent chat directly into the app, enabling users to ask questions and manage tasks using natural language. Previously, task management required manual navigation and filtering. The chat supports smart discovery of relevant tasks and allows in-plan updates through conversational commands.

Why: Adding natural language chat simplifies task management by reducing the need to navigate complex menus and filters. This speeds up task updates and improves user productivity.

Try this:

1. Open Planner and select the Copilot icon in the bottom right corner.
2. Ask a question like "Show me tasks due this week."
3. Use chat commands to update task status or filter your view.
4. Review the chat responses and task updates in your plan.

Why this matters: Natural language chat makes task management more intuitive and accessible, reducing friction in daily planning.

Business impact: Teams can manage and update tasks faster, improving project tracking and collaboration.

Personal impact: You save time by managing tasks through simple chat commands instead of manual navigation.

• Additional Outlook triage actions in Copilot [Android, Windows, iOS, Mac, Web]

Microsoft 365 Copilot now supports more natural language triage actions in Outlook, including deleting, moving, copying, categorizing messages, and managing inbox rules and folders with confirmation prompts for bulk or mailbox changes.

Details:

What changed: Building on existing triage commands like pin and flag when using Chat with work data in Outlook, users can now delete, move, copy, and categorize emails using natural language. It also supports creating, managing rules, and creating folders. Copilot requests confirmation before acting on more than five emails or making changes to inbox rules. These features work across Classic and New Outlook for Windows, Outlook on the web, Outlook for Mac, and Outlook mobile.

Why: Expanding triage actions allows users to manage their inbox more efficiently at scale, reducing manual effort and improving email organization.

Try this:

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat in Outlook, type commands such as:

• Delete all unread newsletters from last week.
• Move emails from Contoso about invoices to my Finance folder.

Why this matters: More triage options in Copilot help users maintain a cleaner, better-organized inbox with less manual work.

Business impact: Teams improve email management efficiency and reduce time spent on repetitive inbox tasks.

Personal impact: You save time and reduce inbox clutter by using natural language to perform complex email management tasks.

• People Skills - removal and deletion admin control [Web]

A new admin control in the People Skills settings lets administrators permanently remove their organization's People Skills data from the tenant. With this new control, organizations can delete their entire skills library along with all users confirmed, inferred, and imported skills data—giving them full control to offboard from People Skills in support of data governance and compliance needs. Once deletion is initiated, skills will no longer appear on user profile cards or be used across Microsoft 365 skills-based experiences such as Copilot and Viva. The control is admin-only with no automatic changes.

Roadmap ID: 565905

Details:

What changed: Administrators can now permanently remove the entire People Skills library and all associated user skills data from their tenant. Previously, there was no direct option to delete this data. Once deleted, skills no longer appear on user profiles or in Microsoft 365 experiences like Copilot and Viva. This control is admin-only and requires manual initiation.

Why: Providing a deletion control supports data governance and compliance by allowing organizations to fully offboard from People Skills and manage sensitive data responsibly.

Try this:

1. Open the Microsoft 365 admin center and navigate to People Skills settings.
2. Select the option to delete the organization's People Skills data.
3. Confirm the deletion to permanently remove all skills data from the tenant.

Why this matters: This control ensures organizations can comply with data policies by fully removing sensitive skills data when needed.

Business impact: Organizations gain full control over People Skills data lifecycle, supporting compliance and data privacy requirements.

Personal impact: Admins reduce risk by securely deleting skills data, ensuring user profiles and skills-based features reflect current organizational policies.

• GitHub Copilot AI cost dashboard in Insights [Web]

A centralized dashboard in Insights shows GitHub Copilot AI consumption, cost, and adoption metrics across your organization.

Roadmap ID: 566470

Details:

What changed: The new dashboard consolidates GitHub Copilot AI usage and cost data in one location within Workplace Analytics Insights. Previously, administrators and analysts had to gather this information from multiple sources. The dashboard supports tracking spend against budgets and provides detailed adoption metrics for managers, Insights analysts, and global admins.

Why: Organizations need clear visibility into AI-related costs to manage budgets effectively. This dashboard simplifies cost tracking and supports data-driven decisions about GitHub Copilot investments.

Try this:

1. Open Workplace Analytics and navigate to the Insights dashboard.
2. Select the GitHub Copilot AI cost dashboard from the available reports.
3. Review usage, cost, and adoption metrics to monitor spend and user engagement.

Why this matters: Centralizing AI cost and usage data helps organizations control expenses and optimize GitHub Copilot adoption.

Business impact: Teams can better manage AI budgets and align GitHub Copilot investments with organizational priorities.

Personal impact: You gain quick access to cost and usage data, reducing time spent gathering information and improving budget oversight.

Microsoft 365 Copilot app

• Add references to your Copilot Notebooks from the Quick Access section in Search on the Microsoft Copilot app [Web]

Users can quickly add references to a Copilot Notebook through the Quick Access section in Search on the Microsoft Copilot app.

Roadmap ID: 510099

Details:

What changed: Users can now add references directly to their Copilot Notebooks from the Quick Access section in Search on the Microsoft Copilot app. Previously, adding references required navigating through multiple menus within the notebook interface. This update streamlines the process by enabling users to open the context menu (…) next to an item and select Add to > Notebook to save the reference.

Why: This change reduces the steps needed to organize important information, making it faster to collect and manage references in Copilot Notebooks. It improves user efficiency by integrating notebook management into the search experience.

Try this:

1. Open the Microsoft Copilot app and go to Search.
2. In the Quick Access section, click the context menu (…) next to an item.
3. Select Add to > Notebook and choose the desired Copilot Notebook.

Why this matters: Simplifying how users add references helps them keep their notebooks organized and accessible without disrupting their workflow.

Business impact: Teams can capture and share relevant information more efficiently, improving collaboration and knowledge management.

Personal impact: You save time by adding references to notebooks directly from search results, reducing the need to switch between app sections.

• CarPlay support for the Microsoft Copilot app [iOS]

The Microsoft Copilot app is now supported on Apple CarPlay for hands-free use.

Details:

What changed: The Microsoft Copilot app now integrates with Apple CarPlay, allowing users to activate Copilot using voice commands while driving. Previously, Copilot was not accessible through CarPlay, requiring manual device interaction. This update enhances safety by enabling hands-free productivity on the go.

Why: Integrating Copilot with CarPlay supports safer driving by minimizing distractions and allows users to prepare for their day or brainstorm ideas without handling their device.

Try this:

1. Connect your iPhone to Apple CarPlay in your vehicle.
2. On your CarPlay screen, select Microsoft Copilot.
3. Say “Hey, Siri, ask Copilot" to start a chat.
4. Interact with Copilot hands-free to get information or plan tasks.

Why this matters: Hands-free Copilot access while driving improves safety and helps users stay productive during commutes, transforming otherwise idle time into valuable work moments.

Business impact: Teams can maintain productivity while commuting, enabling continuous work and idea generation safely.

Personal impact: You reduce distractions while driving and can efficiently use Copilot during travel.

• Configure organizational policy link for blocked Microsoft 365 Copilot app [Windows, Mac, Web]

If your organization blocks the Copilot Chat in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, you can provide a link to company policy or internal guidance for users who are blocked from accessing Copilot Chat in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app.

Details:

What changed: When the Microsoft 365 Copilot app is blocked by organizational policy, admins can now provide a link to company policy or internal guidance for users who are blocked from accessing Copilot Chat in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. This update improves communication by providing context and guidance through a customized policy link.

Why: Users often need clarity on access restrictions to avoid confusion and support requests. Providing a link to additional messaging help users understand organizational policies and reduce help desk inquiries.

Try this:

1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, navigate to the Copilot app access settings.
2. Add a link to your internal policy documentation.
3. Save the settings to apply the link to blocked users.

Why this matters: Clear communication about access restrictions improves user experience and reduces support workload.

Business impact: IT teams can manage user expectations and reduce help desk tickets related to Copilot app access issues.

Personal impact: Users receive clear explanations for access blocks, reducing confusion and frustration.

Additional resources:

Learn:

Manage Microsoft Copilot Chat

• Delegate complex work with Copilot Cowork [Android, Windows, iOS, Mac, Web]

Copilot Cowork helps you delegate complex work by describing the outcome you need. Cowork gathers context from your emails, meetings, chats, files, and business data, works across tools and systems, and returns completed results.

Details:

What changed: Copilot Cowork introduces a new way to get work done: delegate an outcome, not just a task. Cowork can understand your goal, gather the right context from your Microsoft 365 data combined with external sources, coordinate work across tools, and complete multi-step actions with your approval. Work remains grounded in your organization's data and governed by existing Microsoft 365 security, privacy, and compliance controls.

Why: Completing complex work across multiple communication and collaboration tools involves coordinating information from multiple sources, researching context, and completing a series of interconnected steps. Copilot Cowork streamlines this by delivering meaningful outcomes while keeping you informed and in control.

Try this:

1. Switch from Chat to Cowork in the Copilot app.
2. Describe the task and outcome you want to achieve, including sources, actions, and deliverables.
3. Review the plan and progress as Cowork works on your behalf.
4. Receive completed outputs that are grounded in your organization's work data and reduce manual effort.

Why this matters: Instead of manually coordinating work across emails, meetings, documents, and applications, users can delegate complex work and focus on higher-value decisions.

Business impact: Organizations can accelerate work across teams by reducing time spent coordinating, researching, and executing multi-step processes, improving operational efficiency and consistency.

Personal impact: You save time by delegating tasks without switching between multiple apps, context gathering, and execution needed to deliver results.

Additional resources:

Learn:

Copilot Cowork overview

• Vision in Microsoft 365 Copilot can analyze content shared on desktop screen and through mobile camera [Android, Windows, iOS, Web]

Vision in Microsoft 365 Copilot helps you make faster, more informed decisions by understanding context from what you share on screen or camera. Copilot can analyze visual inputs from shared desktop screens and provide detailed insights about the content. You can also use vision on mobile during a real-time voice session to share your device camera, front or back, and ask questions about what is in front of you. Copilot analyzes the live camera feed or desktop screen in real time and provides spoken, context-aware answers grounded in work and web data.

Roadmap ID: 561037

Details:

What changed: Copilot now processes live visual data from desktop screen sharing and mobile device cameras during voice sessions. Previously, Copilot relied on text and static data inputs only. Vision interprets the live feed in real time and delivers spoken answers grounded in work and web data, enhancing decision-making.

Why: Analyzing visual context from screens and cameras accelerates understanding and supports faster, informed decisions without switching apps.

Try this:

1. Share your desktop screen in a Microsoft 365 Copilot session and ask questions about visible content.
2. During a voice session on mobile, activate the camera and point it at an object or document.
3. Ask Copilot questions about the live camera feed and listen to spoken, context-aware answers.

Why this matters: Real-time visual analysis reduces information gaps and streamlines workflows by integrating visual context into conversations.

Business impact: Teams can collaborate more effectively with instant insights from shared visual content across devices.

Personal impact: You gain the ability to quickly understand and act on visual information without manual searching or switching contexts.

• New Copilot Notebooks design in the Microsoft 365 Copilot App [Web]

The new Copilot Notebooks design in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app now lets users organize related chats, output creations, and references into a persistent AI workspace. Copilot uses the Notebook's accumulated context to ground responses, so work continues across sessions instead of starting over each time. While this is the quicker, light-weight Notebooks experience, you can still find the fuller, workspace-forward experience in OneNote.

Roadmap ID: 562662

Details:

What changed: The Microsoft 365 Copilot app introduces a new Notebooks design. In the Copilot app, users can quickly chat with Copilot, explore references, and create artifacts. The full-featured Notebooks experience remains available in OneNote, while the app offers a lighter, faster version.

Why: This change improves productivity by preserving conversation context, reducing repetitive input and enabling ongoing work across sessions. It also provides flexibility by offering both a lightweight app experience and a comprehensive OneNote workspace.

Try this:

1. Open the Microsoft 365 Copilot app.
2. Create a new Notebook to start organizing related chats and outputs.
3. Access your Notebook in the app or open it in OneNote for advanced features.

Why this matters: Maintaining AI context across sessions helps users work more efficiently without losing progress or repeating information.

Business impact: Teams can collaborate with persistent AI workspaces that improve continuity and reduce time spent reestablishing context.

Personal impact: You save time by continuing conversations seamlessly and keeping related information organized in one place.

• Copilot chat pane available in Microsoft Forms [Web]

The Copilot chat pane is now built into Microsoft Forms, helping users improve forms and quizzes, draft and send invitations, and analyze responses. Available to Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed business users through the Copilot icon in Forms.

Roadmap ID: 553136

Details:

What changed: Microsoft Forms now includes the Copilot chat pane with Forms-specific capabilities for recommending improvements, drafting invitations, and analyzing results. Previously, these tasks required manual effort without integrated Copilot support. Available to Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed business users through the Copilot icon in Forms.

Why: Integrating Copilot capabilities reduces the time and expertise needed to create, distribute, and analyze forms. This streamlines workflows and improves form quality with AI assistance.

Try this:

1. Open Microsoft Forms and click the 'Copilot' icon.
2. Ask Copilot to review and suggest improvements for your form.
3. Use Copilot to make changes to your form or to draft and send invitations to respondents.
4. Request analysis of form responses through the chat interface.

Why this matters: This integration simplifies form management by providing AI-powered help directly within Forms, reducing manual tasks.

Business impact: Teams can create higher-quality forms faster and gain insights without switching tools or requiring specialized skills.

Personal impact: You save time on form design, distribution, and analysis by using AI assistance within the familiar Forms interface.

Additional resources:

Learn:

Evolving the Copilot experience in Microsoft Forms

• Federated Copilot Connectors [Web]

Microsoft is announcing the General Availability (GA) of federated Copilot connectors for Microsoft 365 Copilot. Federated Copilot connectors enable users to securely connect Copilot to popular third-party sources and retrieve data in real time using the Model Context Protocol (MCP). These connectors do not store or index customer data in Microsoft services; access occurs in real time using the user’s identity, while administrators retain full governance and control through the Microsoft 365 admin center. With GA, federated Copilot connectors will be supported in Researcher, Microsoft 365 Chat, and when editing with Copilot in Excel, enabling users to bring external data directly into their workflows.

Roadmap ID: 501120

Details:

What changed: Federated Copilot connectors now allow Microsoft 365 Copilot users to connect securely to popular third-party data sources in real time using the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Unlike previous methods, these connectors do not store or index customer data in Microsoft services. Administrators maintain full governance and control through the Microsoft 365 admin center. These connectors are supported in Researcher, Microsoft 365 Chat, and when editing with Copilot in Excel.

Why: This change enhances data security and compliance by ensuring customer data remains within third-party environments and is accessed only with user identity and admin oversight.

Try this:

1. Open Microsoft 365 Chat, Researcher, or when editing with Copilot in Excel.
2. Select a federated Copilot connector to connect to a third-party data source.
3. Retrieve and use real-time data within your workflow.

Why this matters: Secure real-time data access without storing sensitive information in Microsoft services reduces compliance risks.

Business impact: Organizations can safely integrate external data into Microsoft 365 workflows while maintaining strict governance controls.

Personal impact: You can access up-to-date third-party data directly in Microsoft 365 apps without additional login steps or data duplication.

Additional resources:

Learn:

Federated connectors overview

Original source

Built for the complexity of finance work

There’s a pattern to how new technology reaches the world. Wave after wave, from the PC to the relational database to the cloud, new technology reaches developers first, and finance is often next. For finance professionals, a better tool is an edge and the job is to model reality a little more precisely than you could yesterday. For decades, that tool has been Excel: where the quarter gets closed and the forecast gets argued line by line, where every number traces back to a source.

So when AI enters finance, it has to clear the same bar: showing its work, using trusted data and tracing every calculation. Plenty of AI tools claim to be built for finance; Microsoft 365 Copilot in Excel is proving it in practice.

Across Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A), Accounting, Tax, Compliance, and Treasury, Microsoft Finance runs Copilot in Excel in real workflows, spending less time hunting for information and rebuilding analyses, and freeing teams to spend time applying judgement to decisions. They shape it as much as they use it, telling us where it falls short and pushing the product toward the standard their own work demands. By the time it reaches you, it has already been pressure-tested by a finance organization operating at the frontier.

Today, we’re introducing new features built for financial professionals to continue doing that with skills for repeatable workflows, new financial connectors for trusted data, and improved capabilities for traceability.

Before new Copilot capabilities ship in Excel, we evaluate them across graded levels of task complexity and benchmarks that reflect the work finance teams do every day, ensuring it can deliver multi-step workflow with a trusted and verifiable result rather than just complete a single task. For more on how we test, get an inside look at our evaluation framework, benchmarks, and domain-specific approach for finance.

Meeting the high bar of professional finance work isn’t something we’ve done alone. We’ve also partnered with Financial Modeling Institute (FMI), the global body that credentials the industry’s most demanding modelers. Its library of real-world financial modeling cases has become a foundational part of how we evaluate Copilot in Excel for finance work.

Tuned to your standards

Today, we’re introducing skills that let teams define how Copilot should complete common processes such as building a DCF, closing the books, refreshing a monthly reporting model, or preparing a variance analysis. Instead of starting from scratch each time, a skill guides Copilot through the steps, applying the right structure and formatting, and helping produce an output that is easier to review, reuse, and trust.

A library of sample finance skills is now available, and you can build your own custom skills using an open-standard markdown file. Save a SKILL.md file in your OneDrive, and Copilot will pick it up to build a three-statement model or a board package using the process you define for it. Learn more on how to create, use, and manage skills here.

Developers and partners can soon build and deploy skills through Microsoft Marketplace and Microsoft 365 Admin Center. We’ve already begun working with a first wave of partners, including finance and ERP solutions like LSEG, Ramp, Rogo, Samaya AI, Velixo, and Vena.

Copilot can also adapt to how you like to work in Excel. With Personalization, you can set preferences once and have Copilot apply them consistently, while workbook rules capture structure, naming, and formula conventions as a sheet in the workbook that follows the file.

Grounded in data you trust

Copilot in Excel connects directly to the data financial professionals rely on, bringing market data, fundamentals, and research directly into the workbook so analysis starts from the latest sources instead of manual data pulls. In addition to the LSEG and Moody’s connectors we released in May, today we’re expanding your options with more financial data connectors for bringing public and private market data into Copilot in Excel.

• CB Insights brings predictive intelligence on private companies and markets into Excel. Teams use it to source promising companies, evaluate emerging markets, and support strategy, M&A, and corporate development workflows.
• Daloopa provides audit-ready fundamentals sourced from SEC filings, investor presentations, press releases, and other public company materials. Analysts use it to update operating models, build comp tables, complex financial analysis, and reduce manual data entry from filings.
• FactSet connects Excel workflows to financial and alternative data used by investment professionals, financial institutions, and corporations. Teams use it for modeling, screening, market analysis, and research workflows that rely on trusted institutional data.
• Morningstar brings investment research and data into Excel, including analyst research, ratings, and portfolio analytics. Investment teams use it to evaluate holdings, compare funds, analyze portfolios, and support asset allocation decisions.
• PitchBook brings institutional-grade private capital market intelligence, including company profiles, deal histories, fund data, and analyst research, directly into Excel. Teams use it to build target lists, support diligence workflows, and screen investments using trusted private market data and expert analyst research.
• S&P Global – Deterministic Retrieval, developed by Kensho, provides structured, API-driven access to S&P Global data for LLMs and agent-based systems. Teams use it for company research, financial analysis, transcript intelligence, and multi-entity comparisons, with predictable, cited results and full control over orchestration and execution.

Note: Third-party connectors and data providers may require separate licensing or subscriptions from the respective provider. Learn more here. FactSet is in preview and will be generally available in July.

Unlocking finance workflows

Combined with Work IQ for grounding in work context, these features unlock real scenarios finance teams work on every day. A few example prompts you can now try with Work IQ, skills and connectors (Note: external data mentioned in the below prompts may require one or more connectors).

• Close the books: Compare last quarter’s actuals to plan using internal forecast reviews and planning decks. Identify the five largest revenue, expense, margin, and cash flow variances, explain likely drivers, and draft an executive-ready business review summary with @variance-analysis.
• Update the forecast: Roll forward the current forecast using the latest approved assumptions and budgets from my team. Incorporate market data, reconcile changes against the current operating plan, and summarize the key drivers behind the updated outlook with @model-update.
• Build the valuation model: Use @comps-analysis to build a DCF, comparable company analysis, and sensitivity model for this company. Pull financial fundamentals, analyst expectations, market benchmarks, and transaction multiples to explain key valuation drivers.
• Find the next acquisition: Use @deal-screening to help identify acquisition candidates that match our internal strategy documents and acquisition criteria. Combine company performance and market signals with funding history and investor activity to evaluate, rank, and recommend the strongest opportunities.
• Analyze portfolio performance: Use @portfolio-monitoring to assess this portfolio’s performance against investment objectives, and internal investment committee materials. Pull fund analytics and ratings alongside market performance and risk data to identify concentration risks and recommend portfolio adjustments.
• Stay ahead of earnings: Use @catalyst-calendar to analyze earnings results, estimate revisions, analyst expectations, and management commentary for the companies in this list. Pull consensus forecasts, transcript intelligence, and market data to identify sentiment shifts and summarize the developments that matter most to investors.

Controllable by design

In finance, the answer alone isn’t enough. You need to know how you got there. Whether updating a forecast, refreshing a board reporting model, or reviewing changes before quarter close, finance teams need the same things they’ve always demanded from Excel: visibility into what changed, confidence in the methodology, and a clear trail.

That’s why you can now choose to Plan with Copilot before taking action, outlining which ranges, worksheets, formulas, and assumptions it intends to update along with clarifying questions. Once changes are made, every edit remains traceable, with links back to affected cells and changes are now attributed to Copilot alongside the work of collaborators in the Show Changes pane.

The result is a Copilot that works more like a trusted analyst: proposing a path forward, explaining its approach, and making every change transparent and reviewable.

Availability

Personalization, workbook rules, pre-built skills, federated Copilot connectors, Plan with Copilot, and Copilot attribution in Show Changes are generally available for Microsoft 365 Copilot customers across Excel for Web, Windows, and Mac.

Custom skills are available today via the Insiders channel for Windows and Mac, and rolling out to general availability across Excel for Web, Windows, and Mac next month.

Partner-built skills are coming in Q3 2026. Learn more here about building and deploying skills.

The features described in this post are rolling out progressively to Microsoft 365 Copilot customers. Specific availability, supported regions, and licensing requirements may vary.

Original source

Today we’re announcing the general availability of Copilot Cowork worldwide.

After three months of preview in Frontier, more than half of the Fortune 500 is using Copilot Cowork, along with companies like Accenture, Avanade, Advance Local, Capital Group, Koch, LTM, Ooredoo Qatar, and Zurich Insurance.

We have been impressed by your creativity and what you have all built with it. One engineering team taught Cowork how to safely edit batch‑job spreadsheets and generate dependency flow charts after every change, automating work that previously required careful manual intervention. One team compared nearly four thousand files across two product versions, work that would have taken weeks. One sales lead pointed Cowork at a stalled pipeline and got back a ranked list of at-risk opportunities with the exact follow-up that had gone cold on each, collapsing a week of manual review into a single morning.

Cowork is the fastest growing feature in the history of our Frontier program, and Cowork has among the highest user satisfaction of any Copilot or agent experience we have shipped. We learned from what we saw, engaged with you along the way, and used everything we heard to improve quality and add new features, including model choice, extensibility through plugins, and new cost management controls. Read more below and watch the full demo.

What makes Copilot Cowork different

Copilot Cowork executes complex, long-running, multi-tool tasks. You define the work and Cowork runs it end-to-end and returns a completed result, not just a draft or a recommendation. Cowork is designed to be more accurate, more secure, and lower cost than other offerings. Five things make that true:

1. Cloud hosting means files are not stored locally, security is strongly enforced, and your tasks keep running even when your laptop is off.
2. Native Work IQ support grounds every task in the systems your business already runs on, so the work reflects real context.
3. Enterprise-grade security and compliance ensure Cowork operates within your Microsoft 365 trust boundary, with protections that align to your organization’s existing policies and controls.
4. Multi-model design lets you run the models a task needs, so capability scales with the work as more models become available.
5. Lower cost from a runtime that efficiently finds the right information and tools, model choice that matches the right model to each task, and billing that charges you only for what you use.

When comparing the cost per prompt between Copilot Cowork and Claude Cowork with their Microsoft 365 connector, testing showed that Copilot Cowork on average was 30-40% cheaper.

Our newest model, Cowork 1, will be a secure, fine-tuned model releasing in the coming weeks, post-trained to handle tasks at a substantially lower cost. You are not locked into one model with Copilot—you can use the most efficient model or frontier models.

Pricing model

Copilot Cowork requires the Microsoft 365 Copilot User Subscription License (USL). Users are then billed for Cowork on a usage-based basis, with charges determined by the tasks they run.

The Microsoft 365 Copilot USL includes a complete AI productivity experience: Copilot Chat; Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams, the Work IQ context engine; a multi-model system offering frontier intelligence; pre-built agents like Researcher and Analyst; and custom agents built with Agent Builder. All of that for a predictable per user per month fee.

Copilot Cowork adds a whole new way of working: an agentic system designed for complex, long-running, multi-tool tasks. You are billed on a usage basis, denominated in Copilot Credits, and the price for each task is calculated from four inputs: model use, context retrieval, tool calls, and runtime.

In my customer meetings over the last few months, the most frequent question I’ve heard is how to budget for Cowork given its variable pricing model. From usage during the Frontier program, we observed three common task patterns: light, medium, and heavy tasks.

Light tasks use a small number of knowledge sources, apply limited reasoning, and produce one or fewer outputs. Medium tasks draw on multiple sources, apply structured reasoning, and generate two or more outputs. Heavy tasks aggregate broadly, apply deep reasoning, and produce many outputs.

We also identified four user personas with distinct usage patterns across these task types.

When you combine users by persona with their mix of light, medium, and heavy tasks—and apply a price per prompt—you get a flexible cost model that can help you create a cost estimate you can refine over time. At its core, the model multiplies the number of users in each segment by their expected prompt volume across light, medium, and heavy tasks, applies the cost per prompt type, and sums the total.

If you want to model this yourself, you can download a simple spreadsheet here. These estimates assume Anthropic Opus 4.8.

At general availability, Copilot Cowork runs on Anthropic models, including Opus 4.8 and Sonnet 4.6. In Frontier, customers can use GPT 5.5, with Cowork 1 coming soon.

Cowork 1 will deliver optimal cost, quality, and enterprise-grade use, including removing model bias. It’s designed to handle everyday Copilot tasks at a substantially lower cost, making it a strong option for cost-sensitive workloads.

For more detail on the pricing model, refer to this Microsoft Learn article.

Cost management

Usage-based billing makes it critical to track the value and ROI you get from AI. Long-running, agentic work can create a lot of value for your business but also requires significant compute resources. Three factors will continue to reduce cost over time: models will get cheaper, Cowork will get better at matching models to tasks, and both context retrieval and tool use will become more efficient.

In the meantime, cost management is one of the most important new capability areas in the general availability of Cowork, and we’re shipping features across three themes: control, visibility, and efficiency.

Control: Customers decide when Cowork turns on, who gets access, and how much can be spent.

• Cowork is off by default. Admins decide when to enable Cowork in their tenant and who gets access.
• Spending limits at the tenant, group, and user levels. Admins create scoped billing policies and define budgets, including user-level caps set inside group policies.
• Customizable usage alerts. Admins set the thresholds that matter for their organization and groups, and choose who gets notified when spend crosses them.
• User-initiated credit requests. When a user needs additional credits to complete a task, they can request them from inside Cowork.

Visibility: Customers see what’s being used, and what each task costs.

• Usage reporting at the tenant, group, and user levels. Admins see usage broken down by user, group, and feature, with clear accountability across the organization.
• User-level pricing for each task, in credits. Users see what each task costs as they run it.

Efficiency: Customers have options to manage cost.

• Two payment options: PayGo and P3. Customers choose pay-as-you-go for flexibility, or P3 to commit to a usage volume in advance in exchange for a discount. PayGo is priced at $0.01 per Copilot Credit.
• Model choice in Frontier. Where multiple models are available, customers can use the model picker to manage cost-per-task.

Billing for Copilot Cowork begins today. Before usage ramps, admins can set spending limits and allocate budgets using the cost management controls described above. Tenants that had at least one user in the Frontier program (March 30 to June 16) who used Cowork during that period get a grace period on Cowork usage and will not be billed until July 1, 2026, to support the transition.

For additional details on our cost management features, please see this Microsoft Learn article.

What’s new in Copilot Cowork

The Microsoft 365 Copilot app now includes a toggle that takes you into Cowork’s full experience so you can move from chat to action faster than ever before.

• Plugins. Nine new partner plugins available now, eight plugins are coming soon and the Dynamics 365 suite. Available now: Enosix, Harvey, LSEG, Miro, monday.com, Moodys, Morningstar, S&P Global Energy, and TeamsMaestro. Coming soon: Adobe, Atlassian, Box, Canva, CB Insights, Databricks, MoneyForward, and Templafy. Fabric and Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service, and ERP apps are also now GA.
• Browser use via Edge. In Frontier, Cowork can browse the web through a local Edge browser following the enterprise policies in place for your users today.
• New security and compliance capabilities. Cowork prompts, responses, and generated artifacts flow through your existing Microsoft 365 controls and are governed, discoverable, and retained securely. Sensitivity labels are inherited and displayed end-to-end. The protected surface is here at GA: audit log, Data Security Posture Management (DSPM), eDiscovery, Insider Risk Management, Data Lifecycle Management (GA June 22), and Communication Compliance policies. Coming soon: Data Loss Prevention (DLP).

For the full feature list, see the Copilot Cowork product blog.

Get started with Copilot Cowork

Copilot Cowork is generally available to Microsoft 365 Copilot customers worldwide today.

Get everything you need to successfully adopt Copilot Cowork on the Microsoft Adoption site. For more information about Copilot Credits and cost management, see this Microsoft Learn article.

This analysis was conducted by internal Microsoft teams. The analysis compared 125 test runs across a total of 12 light, medium, and heavy work data prompts in Copilot Cowork and Claude Cowork with their Microsoft 365 connector, both using model Opus 4.8. For Copilot Cowork, the costs were calculated using variable rates based on relevant models, context, tools, and runtime from our internal logs. For Claude Cowork, the costs were calculated using publicly available API rates based on token usage and Microsoft 365 connector usage. We used these costs to get a total price per run and compared the prices across light, medium, and heavy prompt sets between Copilot Cowork and Claude Cowork with their Microsoft 365 connector. Cost savings results based on tests conducted in June 2026. Actual costs and potential savings may vary depending on usage, configuration, time, and other factors.

Original source

Work doesn’t just happen at your desk—bringing Cowork to iOS and Android mobile

A key part of our Copilot vision is bringing AI into the flow of work, wherever that work happens.

Cowork already runs in the cloud, so you don’t have to worry about closing your laptop or if your PC is running. Now, we’re introducing Cowork on iOS and Android so you can delegate work the moment you think of it—on your commute, between meetings, or away from your desk—and come back to a finished outcome. Instead of completing those tasks, you can hand them off and keep going while the work progresses in the background.

Turning work into reusable intelligence with Cowork Skills

A lot of work follows repeatable structures and that’s where skills come in. A skill is a reusable set of instructions that guides Cowork on how to complete a task or workflow. Instead of starting from scratch each time, you can capture how you want something done—your structure, your tone, and your process—and ask Cowork to apply it consistently.

We’re introducing built-in skills across Microsoft 365 to help with common workflows like creating documents, coordinating meetings, and conducting research. You can also create your own custom skills, whether you’re standardizing a team process or automating recurring work.

Over time, these skills become a shared layer of intelligence that helps teams scale how work gets done.

Connecting work across your tools with Cowork plugins

We also know that work doesn’t live in a single place. It spans documents, data, and line-of-business systems. To meet that reality, Cowork is connecting more deeply to the tools your organization already relies on so it can operate across systems.

We’re introducing new native integrations across Microsoft products, including Fabric IQ with Power BI, so you can bring your data directly into Cowork workflows. We’re also expanding integrations with Dynamics 365 across sales, customer service, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications to support scenarios like pipeline reviews, case resolution, and order approvals.

Available now, we’ll be releasing connectors to popular third-party solutions such as LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group), Miro, monday.com, and S&P Global Energy, with more to come.

Organizations can also build custom plugins to extend Cowork to their unique systems and processes. Learn how to add, create, and manage plugins in Copilot Cowork and start building yours today.

Try Copilot Cowork

We’re still early and moving fast. Over the last few weeks, we’ve been continuously expanding what Cowork can do and you’ll continue to see rapid improvements as we build alongside how customers are using it.

Copilot Cowork is available through the Frontier program, with new capabilities rolling out continuously. Learn more about the latest updates on the Microsoft Technical Community and get started using Cowork in your own workflows today.

Original source

AI has made it dramatically easier to generate insights, but getting real work done still means switching tabs, opening apps, and re‑creating context across tools. A marketer drafts a campaign in Copilot, then needs to jump into a design app to create the asset. A seller summarizes an opportunity, only to open their CRM to log it. A manager reviews a request in one window but approves it in a different one.

The insight lives in one place. The action belongs somewhere else. Microsoft 365 Copilot agents change that. They bring business apps directly into the flow of conversation, so intent becomes execution without ever leaving Copilot chat.

Interruptions are a steady drag on the flow of work, and the cognitive cost of re-establishing context after every interruption and with every tool switch can hold businesses back from achieving the productivity gains they are working hard to capture. Moreover, employees want to bring rich content and data from services they use every day into their work with Copilot.

Apps designed for the way teams actually work

Microsoft 365 Copilot can now bring your business apps directly into the conversation, which closes the gap between AI-powered insight and real, in-app action, allowing you to visualize content and do real work right from the chat, narrowing this fragmentation.

Agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot, connected to content-rich apps like Adobe Express, Figma, Optimizely, or Dynamics 365, can now surface visually rich, interactive experiences right inside Copilot, so marketing teams can turn briefs into assets, operations teams can update records, and project teams can iterate on documents, all within the conversation.

The control stays with you throughout. Interact directly with the app’s in-chat interface or prompt the agent with your directions and let it perform the task under your supervision. Either way, the result is the same: work can move faster within a single conversation, with reduced context-switching and fewer interruptions.

What’s available today in the Microsoft 365 Agent Store

Partners are already showing what’s possible when apps are in the Copilot experience. Until now, integrating a third-party tool into your workflow meant navigating between applications, each of which has its own context and interface. Now that equation has changed, and tools can be surfaced within the conversation.

Here’s a snapshot of what you can find today in the Microsoft 365 Agent Store.

Adobe Express

Adobe embeds creative and document workflows from Adobe Express, and soon Acrobat, natively into Copilot, enabling users to generate, review, and refine content without context switching. Users can preview Adobe assets in an interactive widget and apply real-time layered edits—like refining text, adjusting text and colors, and adding animations—directly within the Copilot experience, including Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files.

Box

The Copilot integration allows Box AI Agent users to streamline previewing Box files right in the conversation, while also unlocking richer model context protocol (MCP)-powered workflows beyond search—with capabilities like Box Hubs creation and data extraction coming soon.

Coursera

As teams take on new tools and new ways of working, the ability to build skills quickly becomes a competitive advantage. With Coursera in Microsoft 365 Copilot, employees can access trusted, job‑relevant learning in the flow of work—building critical skills connected to real work and organizational priorities, helping teams turn learning into impact.

Figma

With the Figma app in Copilot, you can turn conversations into AI-generated FigJam diagrams to take ideas further. By connecting Figma with your favorite tools, it’s easier than ever to visualize, iterate, and collaborate with your entire team.

Miro

Your team can now create Miro boards—diagrams, flowcharts, timelines, sticky notes and more—directly from a Copilot conversation. No tab switching, no copy-pasting. Just prompt, visualize, and keep moving.

monday.com

monday.com’s app in Copilot brings your boards and items into an interactive in-chat experience. With monday.com visual components surfaced directly in Copilot, employees can quickly grasp project status, act in context, and use AI to keep work moving.

Optimizely

Optimizely in Copilot allows users to create and manage campaigns, generate and edit images, analyze experiment results, and execute AI agents, without having to leave chat.

Wix

Wix Harmony in Copilot enables users to create and manage their website using natural language, directly from a Copilot conversation.

Base44

Base44 in Copilot enables users to create and build their application using natural language, directly from a Copilot conversation.

Accelerate work in the flow of conversation with Copilot

Once the apps your teams depend on are part of the conversation, the flow of work doesn’t have to stop at insight. Marketing teams can turn briefs into assets. Operations teams can update records. Project leads can approve requests, all without leaving Copilot or losing context along the way.

You can get started today by exploring what’s available in the Microsoft 365 Agent Store, and adding your organization’s approved apps directly into Copilot. For integrations that don’t exist yet, MCP Apps and Apps SDK provide a flexible path for development teams to build agents that connect Copilot to the tools and workflows unique to your business.

At the same time, IT administrators can deploy and manage these experiences confidently through the Microsoft 365 admin center, which provides the visibility and controls to scale agents securely across the organization.

AI shouldn’t just help you understand what to do next, it should help you do it. With Microsoft 365 Copilot, the same conversation that surfaces an idea can now carry it forward into action. The place where work begins is now the place where work gets done, bringing your apps into the flow of work and closing the gap between inspiration and outcome.

Next steps

• Find apps in agents within the Microsoft 365 Agent Store
• Learn how dev teams build with MCP Apps and Apps SDK

Create, customize, and launch AI agents easily Microsoft Copilot Studio

Original source

Copilot Cowork is now generally available

Learn how to get started.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is your AI for work. It’s built on a multi‑model advantage—bringing the best AI innovation from across the industry into your tenant, grounded in the knowledge of Work IQ and protected with Enterprise Data Protection. Copilot is a system for work that puts that intelligence directly into the apps and workflows where work already happens, enabling you to put AI to use—from simple tasks to full, multi‑step workflows. This is a pattern that will only become more powerful as new models and new ways of working continue to emerge. Today, we are excited to announce new innovation that moves us forward on this Frontier Transformation.

See how Copilot Cowork works.

We recently shared that we’re bringing the technology platform that powers Claude Cowork into Microsoft 365 Copilot. Today, Copilot Cowork—designed for long-running, multi-step work in Microsoft 365—is available via the Frontier program. Join Frontier to get early access to Microsoft’s latest AI innovations and learn more about Copilot Cowork here.

Copilot Cowork makes it easy to delegate and complete work. Describe the outcome you want, and Copilot Cowork creates a plan, reasons across your tools and files, and carries work forward with visible progress and opportunities to steer. With skills from Claude and Microsoft built in, such as calendar management and daily briefing, Copilot Cowork can handle everything from one-off tasks to repeatable workflows like a monthly budget review. Organizations like Capital Group had early access to Copilot Cowork and report already seeing its value—from planning, scheduling, and creating deliverables to preparing for executive reviews.

"We have been using Copilot since its launch in 2024, and the new capabilities in Cowork will help us automate and scale the Copilot ecosystem. This isn’t about generating content or answers. It’s about taking real action—connecting steps, coordinating tasks, and following through across everyday workflows. Because Cowork operates on our enterprise data and within our security and risk boundaries, we can experiment, learn, and scale with confidence. That allows us to move faster and focus AI in places where it actually delivers value." Barton Warner, SVP of Enterprise Technology at Capital Group.

We are also excited to announce new features in Researcher built on multi-model intelligence. Today, Researcher helps you tackle your most complex questions by synthesizing information across sources, generating comprehensive analysis, and delivering cited, well-reasoned responses you can act on with confidence.

Researcher’s new Critique feature takes this even further, using a combination of models from Frontier labs including Anthropic and OpenAI to separate generation from evaluation. One model plans the task and creates an initial draft, while a second model focuses on refinement, acting as an expert reviewer before the final report is produced.

The results are measurable—Researcher now scores 13.8% higher on the Deep Research Accuracy, Completeness, and Objectivity, or DRACO benchmark, the industry standard for deep research quality.

And with Researcher’s new model Council, you can compare responses from different models side by side, instantly seeing where they agree, where they diverge, and what each uniquely brings to the table. It’s like having multiple researchers at your fingertips. Learn more here.

Get started today

All of this innovation is part of Wave 3 of Microsoft 365 Copilot, which marks a turning point in how AI shows up at work: intelligence that understands the context of work, and trust that allows AI to scale safely across the workforce. When intelligence and trust move together, AI stops being an experiment and starts becoming how work gets done. Visit Microsoft365.com/copilot or download the Microsoft 365 app on your mobile device to get started.

Get started with the Frontier program

Original source

In yesterday’s earnings call, we shared that Microsoft 365 Copilot has surpassed 30 million paid seats, with net seat adds more than doubling quarter over quarter.1 This is an important milestone, but it’s also a signal that points to a much broader shift: Across every industry, AI is moving from assistant to active participant, becoming an essential part of how work gets done, rather than just a tool people use. Organizations are redesigning workflows around it. And employees are directing agents to take on tasks, projects, and processes, expanding their agency and increasing their impact.

The first phase of enterprise AI was defined by adoption—deployments, licenses, and hours saved—real gains that will continue to compound. The next phase will be defined by transformation. At Microsoft, it is our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, and we are excited by the growing opportunity to fulfill that mission as humans and agents collaborate to build what was previously impossible.

New data from Microsoft 365 Copilot telemetry signals, along with examples from our customers around the world and teams inside Microsoft, demonstrate this transformation in action. It shows up in three ways: in how deeply and broadly people now use AI, in what AI makes possible—from faster work to net-new capabilities—and in how organizations tailor it to specific roles. Let’s take a closer look, starting with the technology itself.

A step change in innovation

In the past few months, a new kind of AI product has emerged: a model wrapped in an agentic harness that can close its own feedback loop—planning, executing, testing, and correcting its work to deliver a finished result. This approach enabled Copilot Cowork, which became generally available in June. Cowork can take on multi-step work: you define the task, and it runs it end to end and returns a completed result. Its multi-model design lets you run the models a task needs, so capability scales with the work as more models become available. And testing shows that Cowork was 30% to 40% cheaper2 compared to a single model option. We also introduced our first autopilot agent, Microsoft Scout, which stays active in the background, with its own identity and permissions, to keep work moving even when your attention is elsewhere. All of the outputs are grounded in Work IQ to understand the context that shapes work inside your organization, including people’s roles, projects, priorities, and institutional knowledge—so they are uniquely relevant to your business.

We’ve seen a step change not just in the products we deliver to customers, but also in the way our engineering teams build them. While many employees have contributed to Cowork, the core team remains intentionally small—growing from three engineers at the start to just nine when the product became generally available. And yet the speed-to-market was remarkable, with Cowork moving from inception to preview to being used by half the Fortune 500 all within the space of six months. The breakthrough came from rebuilding the software development process around agents, allowing a tiny team to achieve levels of speed, scale, and automation that would have been impossible with traditional engineering workflows.

Microsoft Scout also started with a small group of people working alongside autonomous agents with shared context, evaluations, and clear specifications, and again moved from an initial concept to a working product in a matter of weeks rather than months. “In the past, I spent a lot of time helping teams scale: aligning large groups, coordinating work, and making sure everything moved forward together,” says Omar Shahine, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Scout. “Now it’s more about creating the conditions for expert teams to move quickly, experiment safely, and continuously capture what they learn so every project starts further ahead than the last.” Frontier teams like these—nimble, focused, and defined by human-agent collaboration—provide a strong signal for how knowledge work will transform in the months and years to come.

Depth and breadth of use

As AI products and the approach to building them mature, Copilot usage across organizations is also deepening and broadening. In the past year alone, the number of conversations per user has nearly doubled,3 while the number of users engaging with multiple Copilot features grew by triple digits.4 And the fact that average weekly engagement with Copilot is now on par with Outlook and Teams5 speaks to the speed at which AI is becoming a part of everyday work.

When we look at what people ask Copilot Cowork to do most in a given week, we’re seeing a rise in requests that span multiple steps, like analyzing a set of data and drafting the email that explains it or researching a problem and writing the code to solve it. When we account for these multi-step workflows, analysis-related work accounts for 49% of all tasks, up from 29% when analysis is performed as a standalone task.6 In other words, the data suggests AI is moving beyond helping people complete tasks to helping them complete entire workflows.

Zooming out, early adopters like manufacturing, banking, and software/technology remain among the industries with the highest number of active agents in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. But what’s surprising is that industries like automotive and healthcare are emerging as some of the fastest-growing agent adopters,7 signaling that agent value is spreading well beyond the early leaders.

The clearest sign of this momentum may be how quickly organizations are scaling Copilot across their workforces. The number of our customers with more than 50,000 seats has increased more than 7x year over year. Meanwhile, the number of enterprise customers deploying Copilot to the majority of their information workers grew nearly 75% quarter over quarter, a signal of how central Copilot has become to their operations. And the time it takes to reach high usage, meaning monthly active usage above 80% across a customers’ user base, has fallen from months to just days over the past year.8 Taken together, these shifts indicate that organizations are increasingly embedding AI and agents into the flow of everyday work.

What AI makes possible

At its most basic, AI-enabled speed creates efficiencies. But the organizations that are getting this right are moving beyond efficiency for efficiency’s sake and starting to see how AI changes the work itself—and can even expand what an organization is capable of doing.

For example, Microsoft’s own Cloud Supply Chain team took a “lean before agents” approach. It first mapped and simplified six end-to-end workflows and built a shared data foundation, then deployed more than 70 purpose-built agents across planning, sourcing, fulfillment, and logistics. The result was a 75% reduction in cycle time across selected workflows, with the lesson baked in: simplify the work itself before you automate rather than layering agents onto a broken process.

Cycle time is one measure of progress. The quality of the decisions underneath it is another. At intelligent power management company Eaton, root cause analysis had long relied on time-intensive investigations. To lighten the load, the company has begun to use an AI-powered quality agent that’s helping experts review reports on manufacturing quality issues to quickly surface potential root causes, trends, and supplier insights. Applied across approximately 5,000 reports so far, it has accelerated analysis, strengthened data-driven decision making, and enabled earlier risk identification and prevention actions while keeping Eaton’s expert team at the center of every decision.

Other organizations are discovering what’s possible by empowering those closest to the problem to build the solutions. Premera Blue Cross set out to let employees create their own AI agents to take repetitive, manual work off their plates and tackle growing backlogs and manual workflows. The health plan, which serves members across Washington and Alaska, started with putting Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio into the tools their people already used every day, backed by training and clear guardrails so employees could experiment without putting member trust at risk. The team has since built more than 900 agents and counting, including a contract exhibit agent whose intelligent document processing cut a manual workflow from 30 to 45 minutes down to about three—freeing up employees to focus on members who need access to care or answers to critical questions.

Further along the spectrum, AI can unlock the ability to do work that previously couldn’t be done at all. At Levi Strauss & Co., where AI is being woven across the business from consumer insight to human resources (HR), an agent analyzed 1,100 finance standard operating procedures and cataloged 18,000 individual tasks in a day, creating a detailed view of work that wouldn’t have surfaced otherwise. “The agent sized an opportunity I’d assumed was impossible to quantify,” said Lisa Sterling, Vice President of Finance at Levi’s.

And at global consulting organization EY, an Autonomous Sourcing Agent (ASA) automates low-cost, low-risk transactions across the procurement process, from requisition and negotiation to purchase order creation. It can negotiate with one or many suppliers at once across cost, delivery timelines, and warranty terms while keeping humans in the loop for validation and escalation. Since its October 2025 pilot, the ASA has supported more than 200 transactions and is expected to handle 1,500 over the next year. The result is a faster, more efficient procurement process that helps teams get more value from suppliers while ensuring important judgement calls remain with people.

Specialization at scale

The difference between the organizations seeing changes like these and those still waiting isn’t how widely they’ve deployed AI—it’s how well they’ve tailored it to the work. Yet the most common deployment pattern is still a general-purpose one: give everyone the same tool and let them figure it out. The organizations creating the most distinct value are doing something different—starting with how specific roles actually work, then building AI around those patterns.

One example: S&P Global is showing how AI can make deep, specialized expertise accessible to more people by bringing trusted intelligence directly into the flow of work. As demand for AI-ready data grew, the company used Microsoft Copilot Agent Builder and Microsoft Graph connectors to create a Copilot agent in Microsoft Teams, giving customers a simpler way to access and interact with its commodities research and market insights. By delivering 95% faster data extraction and 98% faster comparative analysis, the solution helps customers turn vast amounts of information into actionable intelligence more quickly, empowering faster, more informed decisions across global energy and commodities markets.

Microsoft’s sales team mapped distinct seller personas to dedicated AI agents—Researcher, Analyst Agent, Sales Agent, Deal Agent, and MSXi Copilot (a sales intelligence and reporting agent)—each designed to fit specific moments in how sellers spend their time. With agents taking on more administrative and coordination tasks, seller time dedicated to customer-facing activities doubled, from 25% to 50%. The pilot group saw 9.4% more revenue per head and 20% faster deal closure, and in a survey reported a 3x increase in adoption of priority use cases.9

Kantar took a ground-up approach. At the marketing data and analytics firm, a “people agent” for HR queries (really a system of about 10 agents with 60 topics and related flows working together) is being built and expanded through collaboration by people that actually handle and support these requests across its People team. It already resolves a growing share without human intervention: an employment verification letter that once took three days is now returned in 120 seconds. Kantar reports the share of HR queries handled this way has risen from zero in February to about 40%, against a year-end target of 95%.

Microsoft’s People Operations team runs more than a million employee interactions a year across more than 100 systems, doing work that carries real weight for people. They are using Frontier Tuning to scale HR expertise across their processes and employee moments rather than improving one task at a time, capturing the expertise of practitioners as tasks, skills, and rubrics that define quality standards. The result is an AI-powered system that can take on operational work with the context, standards, and institutional knowledge necessary for success, transforming their practitioner know-how into organizational capability. The team can see how the agent performs on real work and tune the levers—tools, context, skills, and the model itself—to ensure consistent performance. The agent developed with Frontier Tuning is now live in People Operations, delivering 5x improvement in successful task completion compared to a baseline general-purpose model.10 As routine activities are increasingly handled by AI, Microsoft HR’s People Operations experts can focus on the complex employee interactions, nuanced decisions, and strategic work where human insight matters most.

What’s next

As AI technology advances and organizations everywhere begin to see real value emerge, the measures that matter are changing as well. We’ll see increased focus on depth of use, measurable change in the work itself, the growth and governance of agents, the redesign of roles and workflows, and the emergence of capabilities that didn’t previously exist. The organizations building durable advantage are the ones where technology, operating models, and human agency are evolving together. That is the Frontier Firm taking shape.

Footnotes

1 Microsoft Q4 Earnings call.
2 This analysis was conducted by internal Microsoft teams. The analysis compared 125 test runs across a total of 12 light, medium, and heavy work data prompts in Copilot Cowork and Claude Cowork with their Microsoft 365 connector, both using model Opus 4.8. For Copilot Cowork, the costs were calculated using variable rates based on relevant models, context, tools, and runtime from our internal logs. For Claude Cowork, the costs were calculated using publicly available API rates based on token usage and Microsoft 365 connector usage. We used these costs to get a total price per run and compared the prices across light, medium, and heavy prompt sets between Copilot Cowork and Claude Cowork with their Microsoft 365 connector. Cost savings results based on tests conducted in June 2026. Actual costs and potential savings may vary depending on usage, configuration, time, and other factors.
3 Microsoft Q4 Earnings call.
4 Based on anonymized, aggregated Microsoft 365 Copilot productivity signals, count of monthly-active M365 Copilot users who use 2 or more unique Copilot-based features over a 28-day period. Includes all countries and enterprise customers in June 2025 and June 2026.
5 Microsoft Q4 Earnings call.
6 Based on anonymized, aggregated Microsoft 365 Copilot productivity signals, Cowork telemetry from July 19, 2026 to July 26, 2026, analyzing the most common tasks customers delegated to Copilot Cowork during the reporting period.
7 Based on anonymized, aggregated Microsoft 365 Copilot productivity signals, Monthly Active Agents measures the count of unique active agents observed through telemetry across Declarative Agents, Custom Engine Agents, and SharePoint Agents. The metric is calculated over a rolling 28-day window. An agent is counted as “active” if, within that 28-day period, it meets at least one of two criteria: (1) it has at least one day of user-initiated usage, or (2) it completes at least one autonomous run. Each qualifying agent is counted once regardless of how many times it was used, ensuring a de-duplicated measure of the active agent base. Growth is assessed over a 12-month period spanning June 2025 through June 2026, comparing the active agent count at the start and end of the period.
8 Microsoft Q4 Earnings call.
9 Internal Microsoft sales team data based on 687 sellers of Microsoft 365 Copilot from January to June 2024, as compared with sellers with low usage of Copilot.
10 Success was defined as a “perfect run”: the task achieved a 100/100 score against human-defined evaluation criteria. Tasks were evaluated across multiple executions to account for variability in completion paths, task sequencing, and tool selection, with only consistently perfect outcomes counted as successful.

Original source

Work is moving forward in new ways, with the rhythm shifting from single exchanges to something more continuous. Most systems still stop at answering the question. The real unlock is in the follow-through, where systems hold your priorities and act on them for you, under your control.

A new category of agents

Today we are introducing a new category of agents called Autopilots. Autopilots are always-on agents that work autonomously, with their own identity, and act on your behalf.

Autopilots stay active in the background, understand how work gets done across your apps and systems, and take action without needing to be prompted each time. Because they operate with their own identity, they can carry out tasks within the permissions and policies you and your organization set. This creates a more durable way to keep work in motion so it continues even when your attention is elsewhere.

Introducing Microsoft Scout

We are also introducing Microsoft Scout, our first Autopilot agent.

Microsoft Scout is integrated across the Microsoft 365 apps you use every day, keeping it grounded in your flow of work. It operates across cloud, desktop, and web, connecting to Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, and SharePoint, and to the data that powers your day, including chats, email, calendar, and contacts. You interact with it in Teams, and extend its reach through the desktop app to your browser, local resources, and model context protocol servers.

Microsoft Scout is built with enterprise-grade security and controls so it can be trusted in your organization from day one. It is powered by OpenClaw open-source technology, reflecting our commitment to building with the community while extending capabilities to meet enterprise needs.

Microsoft Scout reduces the coordination work that builds throughout the day. It can proactively schedule and coordinate meeting times across time zones, flag important meetings, and generate the materials you need to prepare while keeping you in the loop. It identifies upcoming deliverables, then automatically blocks time on your calendar to help you stay on track. It can also spot risks, like stalled decisions, so you can address them before they become blockers.

Over time, Microsoft Scout builds context powered by Work IQ, learning how you work, what you care about, and what needs to happen next. Work IQ carries work forward, becoming more useful, relevant, and aligned to your priorities.

Contributing back to the open-source community

We are contributing policy conformance directly upstream to OpenClaw.

Organizations running OpenClaw will be able to validate whether their environment is configured within their security and compliance requirements, operating securely, and get a verifiable, audit-ready answer.

Making Microsoft Scout ready for enterprises

Microsoft Scout adds the enterprise solution built on Microsoft 365: the identity, credential, and access controls that turn open-source capability into something you can safely run across your organization. Every agent operates under its own governed Entra identity, not a shared, anonymous service account, so the work it does is attributable to a known actor your directory already understands.

The credentials behind that identity are protected end to end: scoped to the task at hand, redacted from logs or diagnostics, and managed with the same rigor you expect from any first-party Microsoft service. When Microsoft Scout acts on your behalf, you know precisely whose authority it carried and that nothing sensitive leaked along the way.

Identity tells you who is acting; access control determines what they can do. With Microsoft Scout, agents can only reach the resources and destinations you’ve approved. Sensitive actions can require a human to sign off before they proceed, and data protection policies from Microsoft Purview, including sensitivity labels and loss prevention, are enforced in the moment, before anything is sent or written. Microsoft Scout doesn’t bypass these controls; it operates within them, adhering to the protections your organization has already configured.

Getting started with Microsoft Scout

Microsoft employees have already been using an early Microsoft Scout desktop experience. We built this to learn how always-on agents show up in real work, and we are seeing it take on coordination, surface risks earlier, and keep work moving without constant prompting.

We are now extending that early experience to a select group of customers in private preview and to Frontier organizations. Microsoft Scout is available as an experimental release through Frontier, giving customers a chance to explore how Microsoft Scout can fit into their own workflows.

Access requires Frontier enrollment, Intune policy configuration, and an opt-in attestation. Users with a GitHub Copilot license can then download and install the experience. Full setup instructions are available.

Microsoft Build brings together innovations across our platforms, many of which are now showing up in Microsoft 365 Copilot:

• Announcing the new Work IQ APIs
• Work IQ: Production-ready intelligence for every agent
• Build collaborative agents where work happens
• Frontier Tuning: Teaching AI to work the way you do

Original source

Today, I am excited to share that agentic capabilities in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are now generally available. Copilot can take multi-step, app-native actions directly in your documents, worksheets, and presentations—helping you move from first draft to final output faster, while you stay in control.

This new default experience is already proving more useful in real work. Early customer feedback shows stronger engagement and higher satisfaction, reinforcing the value of Copilot as a true collaborator that helps get work done.

What we learned along the way

When we first shipped Copilot, foundation models were not powerful enough to use Copilot to command the applications. This meant Copilot was a passive partner in documents: it could answer questions but missed the mark when it was asked to take action on the canvas directly. Over the past year, models have made meaningful leaps in instruction following, reasoning, and overall quality, and are now better at handling multi-step edits reliably without losing your intent.

All of these advances have enabled Copilot to fully engage with each application as a true collaborator: understanding the richness of a pivot table in Excel, the use of animations in PowerPoint, or the precision of citations in Word. This agentic evolution of Copilot within Word, Excel, and PowerPoint feels magical, as it can now take on high-level tasks and execute them like a human would.

We’ve built this new functionality in close partnership with customers and researchers across Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and a few themes stood out:

• Taking action matters. Copilot creates the most value when it performs the work—formatting, restructuring, building visuals, and transforming data—rather than just suggesting steps.
• Control is non-negotiable. People need to be able to review changes, keep what they want, and stay confident that their preferences about structure, style, and brand are respected.
• Better context improves output. Work IQ grounds Copilot in your work signals, so it understands intent faster and produces higher quality content and analysis.
• Multi-model matters. Different models deliver unique value. Copilot brings the best innovation from across the industry, tuned for work and tailored to your business needs, so you can pick the right model for the job, regardless of who built it.
• Consistency across apps builds confidence. As you move between Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, the entry point and interaction model need to feel familiar, while still honoring what makes each app unique.

Over the last month, our data already shows increased engagement, retention, and satisfaction:

Application | Change in Engagement (tries/user per week) | Change in new user retention (% increase) | Change in Satisfaction (thumbs up rate)
Word | +52% | +11% | +21%
Excel | +67% | +50% | +65%
PowerPoint | +11% | +36% | +25%

Copilot in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in action

Word

In Word, Copilot helps you go from a blank page to a polished document faster—drafting, rewriting, restructuring, and applying the right tone for your audience.

Excel

In Excel, Copilot helps you explore data, build and explain analysis, and make changes directly in your workbook—from formulas to tables to visuals—so you can move from questions to decisions.

PowerPoint

In PowerPoint, Copilot helps you create polished presentations—updating existing decks with the latest talking points, and data to tell an up-to-date narrative, respecting your company’s templates.

What’s next

As always, we are committed to continuously improving Copilot in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Next, we’re focused on three things:

• Deeper, more reliable editing for complex workflows. Expanding the set of native actions Copilot can take while continuously improving quality and correctness—especially for complex, high-stakes work like finance spreadsheets and legal documents.
• More transparency and control. Making it easier to preview changes, understand what was changed and why, and fine-tune outcomes without losing your place.
• A more seamless Copilot system. Bringing together entry points, suggestions, and in-app workflows so Copilot feels consistent and integrated across Word, Excel, and PowerPoint—and increasingly proactive in helping you move work forward.

These latest Copilot features are now generally available and the default experience for customers with Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft 365 Premium subscriptions. They are also available to users with Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans.

Visit Microsoft365.com/copilot or download the Microsoft 365 app on your mobile device to get started.

Original source

The next evolution of Microsoft 365 for government brings productivity, AI, agents, security, identity, compliance, and governance together for organizations operating in Government Community Cloud (GCC) environments.

Across government, leaders are being asked to modernize services, address evolving cybersecurity needs, and help their teams meet growing demands simultaneously. AI tools can play an important role, but technology alone is not enough. Agencies need intelligence grounded in how they work, agents that extend that intelligence, and a control plane to help govern AI adoption securely. Innovation and trust must advance together.

Today, we are announcing the launch of Microsoft 365 G7, the Frontier Suite for government, to Government Community Cloud (GCC) environments. G7 extends the Intelligence + Trust vision introduced with Microsoft 365 E7 to government agencies, bringing together productivity, AI, agents, security, identity, compliance, and governance to support government organizations as they help accelerate mission outcomes and further mature their governed approach to adopting AI at organizational scale.

Both Microsoft 365 G7 and Agent 365 will be available for GCC customers to purchase on October 1, with capabilities expanding in phases. Customers can begin licensing, planning, and adopting available experiences at launch, with additional workloads rolling out as they complete required GCC authorization milestones. This phased approach advances innovation with the rigor government missions demand.

Built on the trusted foundation of Microsoft 365 for government

Microsoft 365 G7 extends the Microsoft 365 foundation agencies know, starting with Microsoft 365 G5 solutions that bring together productivity and collaboration with information protection, security, and compliance capabilities. Microsoft Entra Suite builds on this with advanced identity, access governance, and network security capabilities for users and agents.

G7 is designed to support Frontier Transformation across the U.S. public sector by providing capabilities that agencies can use as they move from isolated AI experimentation toward governed adoption at organizational scale. It connects intelligence to the flow of everyday work, gives agencies a foundation for creating and using mission-focused agents, and provides the controls that IT and security leaders need to manage people, agents, data, and access with confidence.

AI embedded in the flow of work

AI should make everyday work simpler, not create another destination. G7 brings Microsoft Copilot and AI-powered Microsoft 365 experiences into the applications government employees already use. Work IQ grounds these experiences in organizational data, context, and tools with governance capabilities designed to operate in accordance with applicable permissions, so Copilot can provide assistance informed by an agency’s work context and help users complete mission-related work.

At general availability, G7 will bring the value of Microsoft Copilot into a unified offering designed for government. Government teams can use Copilot to support research and analysis, find and synthesize organizational knowledge, and draft, refine, and collaborate on content in the Microsoft 365 apps and experiences they use every day.

In the months following GA, G7 will also benefit from a surge of new capabilities rolling out in Microsoft Copilot across our US Government clouds, including the latest commercially available GPT models, Work IQ memory and personalization, Edit with Copilot across Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and Copilot Cowork for longer-running, multi-step work. To learn more about how these advances can help public servants navigate complex work and support their organizations’ mission priorities, read our companion announcement on the Microsoft Public Sector blog.

Agents at the mission’s edge

Agents can support specialized government work, from research and policy analysis to case management, grants, inspections, and constituent service. G7 provides an agentic foundation for government, with mission-focused agents grounded in Work IQ, and operating in accredited government clouds with policy-governed access for connecting to approved agency systems and data.

Agencies can start with Microsoft agents available in GCC, including Researcher and Analyst, and use Agent Builder to create experiences closer to the work. For specialized missions, teams can build custom agents with Microsoft Copilot Studio. Microsoft 365 Copilot Connectors bring agency knowledge from other systems within reach, while managed connections provide secure access to approved data and line-of-business applications. Natural-language creation broadens who can build, while organizational controls keep deployment aligned to agency standards.

Agent 365: The control plane for AI adoption

The speed of agent adoption creates enormous opportunity, but without the right controls it can also create new blind spots. Leaders need to know which agents exist, who owns them, what they can access, and whether they are operating as intended. Agent 365 provides the control plane for agents in G7, helping organizations discover, register, and manage agents and take governance actions such as deploying, blocking, or removing them.

At general availability, Agent 365 will give organizations a unified foundation to discover, identify, and govern agents, with core controls to manage how they are deployed and used. Over time, we expect Agent 365 capabilities to evolve across security, risk management, and lifecycle governance. For detailed information about GCC feature availability, customers can refer to the Microsoft Agent 365 service description. As additional services complete required GCC authorization and readiness milestones, their status will be updated there.

Advancing the mission with confidence

AI creates tremendous opportunity for government teams to build capacity, strengthen resilience, and respond more effectively to the people they serve. Realizing that opportunity requires leadership, workforce readiness, responsible governance, and technology that unites intelligence and trust.

Microsoft 365 G7 advances Frontier Transformation for government, giving agencies a path to empower employees, scale agents and adopt AI securely as capabilities expand. By combining AI in the flow of work, mission-focused agents, and a unified control plane, agencies can advance modernization with controls designed to support the stringent trust, security, and governance needs of public service and national missions.

Public sector transformation is about more than technology. It is about helping people serve communities and advance the mission. With G7, Microsoft builds on its longstanding government partnership to help public servants apply AI with the intelligence to support the mission and the controls to move forward with confidence.

Read our companion announcement on the Microsoft Public Sector blog

Original source

AI is changing who can build software. People who could never write code can now describe an idea and generate a working application in minutes, using any number of agentic coding solutions.

But generating an application is only part of the equation. To solve real business problems, applications need to connect to enterprise data and systems, operate securely, and fit within the processes people rely on every day. And as more people become app builders, IT needs the governance and controls to confidently bring those solutions into the enterprise.

That’s why we’re introducing natural language app building in Copilot Cowork and Copilot Studio, bringing agentic app creation into the same trusted, connected enterprise platform you already rely on. In Copilot Cowork, build apps with the new /app skill now available via the Microsoft Frontier program. In Copilot Studio, build apps alongside agents and workflows to turn ideas into complete business process solutions, rolling out in public preview over the next week.

Whether you start in Copilot Cowork or Copilot Studio, the same capabilities empower you to start with the outcome you want, shape it through natural conversation, connect it to organizational data, and publish an enterprise-ready, governed solution.

Build an app by describing what you need

App building starts with a conversation. Choose App (Preview) from the Copilot Studio home screen or invoke the /app skill in your Copilot Cowork chat. Then, simply describe the business outcome, users, data, and actions you need. Copilot Studio uses agentic coding to turn your intent into a working app scaffold.

From there, you can continue to iterate in natural language, inspect the app in preview, and review the underlying code. The experience is designed to serve a broad spectrum of builders: information workers can stay focused on the solution, while advanced makers and developers can go deeper into the app’s structure and code when they need more control.

Connect apps to your business data

Apps built with Copilot Cowork and Copilot Studio use connectors to work with your business data, including using Work IQ to access organizational context. This allows makers to turn organizational information into usable, connected experiences—not just surfacing information, but taking action and writing results back to the systems within your Microsoft 365 tenant boundary where work happens.

For example, an onboarding app can use connectors to show progress from a business data source, surface learning resources, and update onboarding records. As another example, a field service app can retrieve product technical context from a third-party system, present guided steps, and write results back to connected systems. The result is a structured app experience that’s grounded in the data and services people use to get work done.

Build enterprise apps with open standards and centralized control

Apps created in Copilot Cowork and Copilot Studio are full-stack apps built using open standards. They can use Git-backed source control, deployment stages, and version isolation so teams can continue improving the next version without disrupting the live experience.

By default, identity with Microsoft Entra, as well as organizational data and connector policies, are respected. IT administrators have centralized visibility in the Microsoft 365 admin center, which shows an inventory of published apps and operational controls to help govern, secure, and manage them throughout their lifecycle. Makers can focus on building and sharing solutions, while IT maintains the oversight needed to run them confidently across the organization.

Start building apps with Copilot Studio

You can start building apps today by joining the Frontier program and using the /app skill in Copilot Cowork. Access to app building natively within Copilot Studio is rolling out in public preview over the next week. When available in your environments, you’ll be able to open Copilot Studio, click the apps tile, and describe what you want to build using natural language. App building and running follows the usage-based billing model.

When published, apps appear in the Microsoft 365 admin center, giving administrators centralized visibility and controls to help govern them from the start. Users will be able to discover and use shared, enterprise-ready applications at managedapps.cloud.microsoft.com.

With apps alongside agents and workflows in Copilot Studio, teams can create complete, interactive business experiences and move from an idea to an enterprise-ready solution. We will continue improving the experience as we learn from customers.

We look forward to seeing what you build.

From idea to app

Create full-stack business apps through conversation with Copilot Cowork and Copilot Studio.

Build your first app: From idea to app

Original source

Updates released between August 11, 2026, and August 25, 2026.

Excel

• Use Python when Editing with Copilot in Excel [Windows, Mac, Web]

Edit with Copilot helps you work with Python in Excel by executing Python code for advanced analysis, automation, and data transformation with results outputted directly in your workbook.

Details:

What changed: You can now use Edit with Copilot to perform advanced data analysis (statistics, simulations, advanced visualizations etc.) with your workbook data. Existing security and execution controls continue to help manage how code runs.

Why: Python is widely used for data analysis, visualization, and automation. Bringing Copilot-assisted Python editing into Excel helps users move from intent to working analysis faster without switching tools.

Try this:

1. Open an Excel workbook with data you want to analyze.
2. Open Edit with Copilot.
3. Ask Copilot to complete a task like summarizing trends, cleaning data, or creating a visualization with Python.
4. Review the output and inspect the results in Excel.

Why this matters: This makes advanced analysis more approachable by pairing Python’s flexibility with Copilot’s assistance and Excel’s familiar workspace.

Business impact: Teams can accelerate reporting, analysis, and repeatable data workflows in Excel, helping reduce manual effort and improve consistency.

Personal impact: You can complete more advanced data tasks in Excel with Copilot’s help.

Microsoft 365 admin center

• Organizational Messages now supports Hybrid-joined Devices [Web]

Organizational Messages now supports Hybrid-joined Devices.

Roadmap ID: 503564

Details:

What changed: Previously, Organizational Messages were limited to devices fully joined to Azure Active Directory or on-premises Active Directory. Now, hybrid Azure AD joined devices can receive Organizational Messages, expanding device coverage. This update improves message delivery consistency across device management environments.

Why: Supporting hybrid-joined devices ensures that organizations using both on-premises and cloud identity management can communicate important messages uniformly. This reduces gaps in message reach and improves compliance.

Try this:

1. Open the Microsoft 365 admin center.
2. Navigate to the Organizational Messages section.
3. Create or update a message and target hybrid Azure AD joined devices to verify delivery.

Why this matters: This change ensures all managed devices receive critical organizational communications regardless of their join type.

Business impact: IT teams can now rely on Organizational Messages to reach hybrid device fleets without additional configuration or tools.

Personal impact: Users on hybrid-joined devices receive timely organizational updates, reducing confusion and support requests.

Microsoft 365 Copilot

• Viva Engage private content in Microsoft 365 Copilot [Web]

Viva Engage content from private communities and events will be used as grounding source for Microsoft 365 Copilot. When a user queries in Microsoft 365 Copilot, they will only be able to see content they are privileged to access.

Roadmap ID: 515144

Details:

What changed: Microsoft 365 Copilot includes private Engage community and event content when responding to queries. Previously, Copilot did not incorporate private community data. Users only see content they have permission to access, maintaining security and privacy.

Why: Including private community content ensures Copilot provides more relevant and comprehensive answers while respecting access controls.

Try this:

1. Open Microsoft 365 Copilot.
2. Ask a question related to your private Engage communities or events.
3. Review the response that includes content you are authorized to view.

Why this matters: This change enhances Copilot’s relevance by incorporating private organizational knowledge securely.

Business impact: Teams gain improved insights from private discussions without compromising data security.

Personal impact: You receive more accurate answers that include your private community knowledge, improving productivity.

• Updated Copilot Notebooks UX [Web]

Users will find an updated, streamlined UX flow within Copilot Notebooks.

Roadmap ID: 516042

Details:

What changed: The Copilot Notebooks user experience has been revamped with a streamlined flow for opening items and navigating the product. Previously, users faced a more complex and less cohesive interface. The new design simplifies common tasks and enhances consistency across the product.

Why: Simplifying the user interface reduces friction and helps users work more efficiently within Copilot Notebooks.

Try this:

1. Open Copilot Notebooks from the Microsoft 365 app launcher.
2. Use the updated navigation pane to browse notebooks and sections.
3. Open and edit notebook items with the new streamlined controls.

Why this matters: A simpler, more cohesive interface helps users focus on content creation and reduces time spent on navigation.

Business impact: Teams experience smoother collaboration and faster access to notebook content, improving productivity.

Personal impact: You spend less time navigating and more time working on your notebooks.

• Copilot Chat available when using Copilot Search [Windows, Web]

Copilot Chat will be available for Microsoft 365 Copilot users from the side pane on the right-hand side when using Copilot Search in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. This allows users to engage with Copilot while browsing universal search without switching pages or losing context.

Roadmap ID: 537281

Details:

What changed: Copilot chat is now accessible from the right-hand side pane during Copilot Search for users with the AI SKU. Previously, users had to switch pages to use Copilot chat, interrupting their workflow.

Why: Integrating chat in the side pane keeps Copilot accessible alongside search results, improving multitasking and reducing context switching.

Try this:

1. Open Copilot Search in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app.
2. Engage with your search results or ask questions in the search box to open Copilot chat.
3. Interact with Copilot chat while browsing search results.

Why this matters: This integration helps users maintain focus by combining search and chat in one view.

Business impact: Teams can work more efficiently by accessing AI assistance without disrupting their search workflows.

Personal impact: You save time by getting AI help without switching screens or losing your search context.

• Open Outlook emails within Copilot Chat [Windows, Mac, Web]

You can now open Outlook emails directly within any full-app Microsoft 365 Copilot experience for faster browsing and reference.

Details:

What changed: When clicking on an email reference or source in Microsoft 365 Copilot apps, the email opens alongside Chat instead of requiring a separate Outlook window. Previously, users had to switch apps to view email content. This integration streamlines access to email information within the Copilot environment.

Why: This change reduces context switching and speeds up information retrieval by keeping emails accessible within the Copilot workspace.

Try this:

1. In a Microsoft 365 Copilot app, locate an email reference.
2. Click the email link to open it in Chat.
3. Browse the email content alongside your chat or tasks.

Why this matters: Quick access to emails within Copilot improves productivity and decision making by keeping relevant information in one place.

Business impact: Teams can collaborate more efficiently by referencing emails without leaving the Copilot interface.

Personal impact: You save time by avoiding app switching and can respond to emails faster within your workflow.

• Outlook Emails in Copilot Notebooks [Windows, Web]

Outlook Emails as References in Copilot Notebooks bring email content into the notebook experience, enabling users to ground Copilot in the conversations, decisions, and context that drive their work. By adding emails as knowledge sources, users can connect context from their emails directly to their projects, enriching notebooks beyond files alone and improving downstream outputs like presentations and briefs. Available in Copilot Notebooks across Microsoft 365.

Roadmap ID: 564910

Details:

What changed: Users can now add Outlook emails as knowledge sources within Copilot Notebooks across Microsoft 365. Previously, notebooks included only files and other documents. This update enables Copilot to use email content to provide richer context for outputs like presentations and briefs.

Why: Integrating emails into notebooks grounds Copilot in the full context of work conversations and decisions, improving the relevance and accuracy of generated content.

Try this:

1. Open a Copilot Notebook in Microsoft 365.
2. Select Add content and choose Outlook emails.
3. Pick relevant emails to include as references in your notebook.

Why this matters: Including emails enriches project context, helping users create more informed and connected work outputs.

Business impact: Teams can leverage email conversations directly in collaborative notebooks, enhancing project alignment and knowledge sharing.

Personal impact: You gain a streamlined way to incorporate important email context into your work, saving time and improving output quality.

• Unified web and work chat experience with dedicated Work IQ button [Windows, Web]

Use a new Work IQ button located in the top left of the Chat UI to switch access to work data on/off without leaving the chat experience.

Details:

What changed: Web and work chats are now unified into a single chat interface that now has a dedicated Work IQ button to control access to work data. Previously, users switched between separate web and work chat tabs, increasing cognitive load and inconsistency. This change unifies the chat experience and simplifies how users control access to work data when using chat.

Why: Combining chats into one interface with a toggle reduces confusion and streamlines user workflows by providing quick control over access to work data.

Try this:

1. Open Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat.
2. Locate the Work IQ button in the top left of the Chat interface.
3. Work date is on by default; enable or disable work data access as needed by selecting the button.

Why this matters: A unified chat interface reduces switching and helps users focus on their tasks with clearer data context.

Business impact: Teams benefit from a consistent chat experience that improves productivity and reduces user errors.

Personal impact: You spend less time navigating tabs and more time interacting with relevant data.

Microsoft 365 Copilot app

• Page steering and auto-triggering of pages on mobile [Android, iOS]

Users can now steer, refine, and edit pages using Copilot commands like "Shorten this page." They can also prompt Copilot to auto-create pages from chat, such as "Create a new page for XYZ."

Details:

What changed: Copilot now supports page steering on mobile devices, allowing users to modify page content with natural language commands. Previously, users had to manually edit pages without AI assistance. Additionally, Copilot can auto-trigger new page creation from chat prompts, streamlining content generation.

Why: These changes simplify content management on mobile by reducing manual editing and speeding up page creation, improving user productivity and content accuracy.

Try this:

1. Open a page on your mobile device and say, "Shorten this page."
2. In chat, type "Create a new page for [topic]."
3. Review and edit the generated page content as needed.

Why this matters: This update reduces friction in mobile content editing and creation, enabling faster and more precise page management.

Business impact: Teams can produce and refine content more efficiently on mobile, supporting faster collaboration and information sharing.

Personal impact: You save time editing pages and can quickly generate new content without switching devices or apps.

• Simplified design for the Microsoft 365 Copilot app [Windows, Mac, Web]

A refreshed design for the Microsoft 365 Copilot web and desktop app simplifies the user experience to drive engagement with Copilot. This includes updates to the chat home screen, chat response layout, and navigation pane.

Roadmap ID: 561488

Details:

What changed: The Microsoft 365 Copilot app now features an updated chat home screen, a streamlined chat response layout, and a redesigned navigation pane. The new design helps users more easily navigate the app and stay focused across web and desktop platforms.

Why: Simplifying the app interface helps users engage more easily with Copilot, reducing the time needed to find features and improving overall usability.

Try this:

1. Open the Microsoft 365 Copilot app on web or desktop.
2. Explore the updated chat home screen to quickly access recent conversations.
3. Use the new navigation pane to switch between chats and tools more efficiently.

Why this matters: A clearer interface helps users interact with Copilot faster and more intuitively, increasing productivity.

Business impact: Teams experience smoother collaboration with fewer interruptions caused by navigation or layout confusion.

Personal impact: You spend less time navigating the app and more time focusing on your tasks.

• Generate and edit images in Copilot Cowork [Android, Windows, iOS, Mac, Web]

Create and modify images in Copilot Cowork using OpenAI's ChatGPT Images 2.0 model for enhanced visual content generation.

Details:

What changed: Copilot Cowork integrates OpenAI's ChatGPT Images 2.0 model to generate and edit image artifacts. Previously, image creation required external tools. This update enables in-app image generation and editing, streamlining creative workflows.

Why: Embedding image generation within Copilot Cowork reduces context switching and accelerates content creation.

Try this:

1. Open Copilot Cowork.
2. Enter a description to create an image using ChatGPT Images 2.0.
3. Use editing tools to refine the image within Cowork.

Why this matters: Integrated image generation enhances creativity and productivity by keeping visual content creation within the collaboration environment.

Business impact: Teams can produce visual assets in their workflow without relying on separate design software.

Personal impact: You save time by generating and editing images directly in your collaboration workspace.

Original source

Updates released between July 28, 2026, and August 11, 2026.

Microsoft 365 Copilot extensibility

• Parallel content and identity crawl improves content freshness [Web]
  Copilot connectors now run content crawl and identity crawl in parallel, making ingested content available to users faster than before.

  Details:
  What changed: Previously, content crawl and identity crawl executed sequentially, causing delays before content became accessible in Copilot. Now, both crawls run in parallel, reducing total processing time. This change improves content freshness and availability without compromising security or permission accuracy.
  Why: Sequential crawling delayed content availability, impacting user productivity.
  Parallel execution enables:

  • Faster ingestion of new and updated content
  • Quicker reflection of identity and permission changes

  Try this:

  • Add or update content in your connected data source.
  • Observe that content appears in Copilot results sooner than before.
  • Check that permissions and identity information remain accurate.

  Why this matters: Faster content availability helps users access the latest information promptly, supporting timely decision-making.
  Business impact: Teams benefit from reduced latency in content updates, improving collaboration and information flow.
  Personal impact: You spend less time waiting for new content to appear, increasing efficiency in your work.

• ServiceNow connectors support role-based permissions [Web]
  ServiceNow Knowledge and Catalog connectors now enforce access permissions based on user roles such as admin, knowledge manager, and knowledge admin.

  Details:
  What changed: Earlier, permissions in ServiceNow Knowledge and Catalog connectors were determined only by user criteria without considering roles. Now, the connectors evaluate access based on the user's assigned roles in ServiceNow, enabling more granular and accurate permission enforcement for knowledge articles and catalog items. This enhances security by aligning access with organizational role definitions.
  Why: Role-based access control aligns permissions with organizational policies and reduces unauthorized access.
  This update allows:

  • More precise permission management
  • Better compliance with ServiceNow role assignments

  Try this:

  • Assign roles like admin or knowledge manager to users in ServiceNow.
  • Access knowledge articles or catalog items through Copilot connectors.
  • Verify that access matches the assigned roles.

  Why this matters: Role-based permissions ensure users see only the content they are authorized to access, improving data security.
  Business impact: Organizations can enforce ServiceNow role policies consistently across Copilot connectors, reducing risk of permission errors.
  Personal impact: You access relevant knowledge and catalog items securely based on your assigned roles without unnecessary restrictions or exposure.

Microsoft 365 SharePoint

• SharePoint: Authoritative Sites [Windows, Web]
  Authoritative Sites feature empowers administrators to designate specific SharePoint sites as official, trusted sources of information. By classifying these sites as authoritative, high quality and credible content such as company news, policies, and updates are prioritized across Copilot Search experiences.
  Roadmap ID: 561323

  Details:
  What changed: The Authoritative Sites feature allows administrators to classify certain SharePoint sites as authoritative. Previously, content ranking in Copilot Search did not distinguish official sources. Now, high-quality content like company news and policies from these sites is prioritized, improving information reliability and security.
  Why: This change helps users access trusted and accurate information quickly, reducing the risk of misinformation and improving content relevance in Copilot experiences.

  Try this:

  1. Open the SharePoint admin center.
  2. Select a site and choose 'Mark as authoritative site.'
  3. Use Copilot Search to see prioritized content from these sites.

  Why this matters: Prioritizing trusted content ensures users receive accurate and official information, enhancing decision-making and compliance.
  Business impact: Teams benefit from consistent access to verified company information, improving communication and reducing errors.
  Personal impact: You save time by finding reliable content faster and avoid confusion from unofficial sources.

Learn: SharePoint authoritative sites in Copilot Search

Original source

Updates released between July 15, 2026, and July 29, 2026.

Microsoft 365 Copilot

• Surface rich images inline within responses [Windows, Web]

Copilot now displays rich images from files and meetings directly within responses to improve comprehension.

Details:

What changed: Previously, Copilot responses included text only. Now, it surfaces relevant images inline from files and meetings to provide visual context. This enhancement supports richer content formats while maintaining data security and compliance with Microsoft 365 policies.

Why: Visual information helps users understand complex content faster and reduces the need to switch between apps or documents.

Try this:

1. Ask Copilot a question related to your meeting notes or documents.
2. Review the inline images that appear alongside the text response.
3. Click images to open the source file or meeting content for more details.

Why this matters: Including images directly in responses helps users grasp information quickly and reduces context switching.

Business impact: Teams can collaborate more effectively by accessing visual content without leaving the Copilot interface.

Personal impact: You save time by seeing relevant images immediately, improving comprehension and decision-making.

OneNote

• Redesign Overview experience in Copilot notebooks in OneNote [Windows, Mac, Web]

The Copilot Notebooks Overview now provides a redesigned experience for crisper AI-generated summaries, key insights, and one-click artifacts to move work forward in the notebook.

Details:

What changed: The Notebook Overview experience has been redesigned with a better layout and direct visibility of meaningful artifacts users can create in the notebook in one click.

Why: This redesign helps users quickly grasp notebook context and take relevant actions without spending time on manual content review.

Try this:

1. Open a Copilot Notebook and navigate to the Overview Page.
2. Review the AI-generated summary and key insights.
3. Use the one-click artifact creation option to create content focused on the context and content of the notebook.

Why this matters: Reduce time spent getting a quick summary and key insights of the notebook content, easily see and use one-click artifacts that help move your work forward in the notebook.

Business impact: Teams can collaborate more effectively by accessing summarized notebook information, actionable insights, creating new artifacts quickly.

Personal impact: You save time understanding notebook content and can act faster on relevant information.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat

• Lists in Context IQ [Web]

Users will be able to search for and select SharePoint Lists through the Context IQ menu to help ground their prompts when using Copilot Chat.

Details:

What changed: Previously, users could not directly access SharePoint Lists within Context IQ when composing prompts in Copilot Chat. Now, users can search for and select specific SharePoint Lists to ground their prompts, improving relevance and accuracy. This integration supports Microsoft 365 security and compliance policies for data access.

Why: This change helps users target their Copilot Chat prompts to specific SharePoint Lists, reducing irrelevant results and improving productivity when working with list data.

Try this:

1. Open Copilot Chat and click the Context IQ menu.
2. Search for a SharePoint List by name.
3. Select the desired list to scope your prompt before entering your query.

Why this matters: Scoping prompts to SharePoint Lists helps users get more precise and useful responses from Copilot Chat.

Business impact: Teams can collaborate more effectively by referencing exact SharePoint Lists in their Copilot Chat interactions.

Personal impact: You save time by quickly narrowing Copilot Chat responses to relevant list data without manual filtering.

• List email attachments in Microsoft 365 Copilot [Android, Windows, iOS, Mac, Web]

Users will be able to list the file attachments that they received or sent over email in Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Details:

What changed: Microsoft 365 Copilot now provides a list of email file attachments from messages you sent or received. Previously, users had to manually search emails to find attachments. This update improves visibility and access to files directly through Copilot chat.

Why: Finding email attachments quickly is essential for efficient communication and file management. This change reduces time spent searching and improves workflow.

Try this:

1. Open Microsoft 365 Copilot chat.
2. Ask to list email attachments from a specific sender or date.
3. Review the generated list of files attached to those emails.

Why this matters: Quick access to email attachments saves time and reduces the risk of missing important files.

Business impact: Teams can retrieve shared documents faster, improving collaboration and reducing delays.

Personal impact: You spend less time searching emails and more time focusing on tasks that require those attachments.

• Take Screenshot in Copilot [Windows]

Give users a fast, built‑in way to capture screenshots and include them in Copilot prompts, helping them communicate visual context more easily and receive more accurate, actionable assistance.

Details:

What changed: Copilot now includes a built-in screenshot capture tool that lets users add images directly to their prompts. Previously, users had to capture and upload screenshots manually outside Copilot. This integration improves prompt clarity and response relevance without exposing sensitive data externally.

Why: Visual context helps Copilot understand user requests better, leading to more precise and actionable responses.

Try this:

1. In Copilot chat, select the screenshot capture button.
2. Capture the desired screen area.
3. Include the screenshot in your prompt and submit for assistance.

Why this matters: Adding screenshots reduces miscommunication and speeds up problem resolution with Copilot.

Business impact: Users get a simpler UX to include visuals when using Copilot to help reduce confusion and support interactions.

Personal impact: You save time explaining problems and get more accurate help by sharing visual information instantly.

Original source