Copilot will soon let businesses collaborate using AI chatbots

Microsoft 365 Copilot, the rebranded version of the enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, now has new features. The tech giant announced on Monday that it will make various improvements to Microsoft 365 applications and launch a new Copilot Page feature. The latter is a multi-person AI feature that allows different users to collaborate on a project. In addition, Copilot Agents are mini chatbots exclusively for Microsoft enterprise customers. The company also emphasized that more new features will be launched in the next two months.

Microsoft 365 Copilot gets new features

In a blog post, the company detailed new features for business-focused Copilot. Among them, Copilot Pages is a unique feature that allows enterprise users to collaborate. Users can create a shared space where both Copilot and humans can add and edit project information.

To use this feature, customers can open Copilot and run a query. The responses can be opened as a separate page that other organization users can access. Once added, they can use it as a Word page and add tables, links, text, and images. Users can also prompt Copilot to add information. Microsoft says this feature is currently available for testing by some businesses and will be generally available later this month.

In addition, various Microsoft 365 applications have also gained new AI capabilities. For example, Copilot with Python in Excel will allow users who don’t know how to code to run advanced analysis such as forecasting, risk analysis, machine learning tasks, etc. All of this can be done by inputting natural language prompts to the chatbot. It is also available in public preview.

Microsoft PowerPoint is rolling out a Narrative Builder feature that uses Copilot to generate a first draft of a presentation with a single prompt. It can generate an outline with editable topics. In addition, the company said that in the future users will be able to add files to the outline and let the AI generate a more refined draft.

Copilot in Teams can now process conversations in chat, both spoken and written text, and combine them to produce a more accurate record. Outlook is also getting a Prioritise feature that will analyze your inbox to surface emails that require urgent action from the user. In the future, users will be able to teach Copilot specific topics, keywords, or people that are important. Any email containing them will be marked as high priority. The feature will be available later this year.

Later this month, Copilot in Microsoft Word will allow users to reference emails and meetings alongside documents. Users can run a simple prompt to have AI pull context from those sources to generate a draft. OneDrive will also get an AI feature that processes all files saved on cloud servers to help users find what they’re looking for.

Finally, Copilot Agents are finally rolling out to enterprise users. These can be understood as mini chatbots that can be programmed for specific functions. Chatbots can also be customized with specific data sets to ensure that the output is accurate and relevant. They are autonomous agents that do not require users to repeatedly send prompts for them to perform tasks.