Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2 Announcement

Big announcements were made this week on what is being termed as Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2.  There are three major capabilities with this release:

1. Copilot Pages
2. Copilot Microsoft 365 Apps
3. Copilot Agents

1) Copilot Pages

Copilot Pages are a new immersive and collaborative experience that begins with you engaging with Copilot to obtain information.  From there, an interactive experience starts that allows you to take information you obtain from Copilot, extract it, share and then collaborate with that data in real-time with your colleagues.  It allows quickly transition information you obtain from Copilot to create persistent work products.

If you are wondering what a Copilot Page is, it is essentially an integrated experience with Loop.  Loop files are created and stored for the user.  Loop files are managed just like any other Office file stored in SharePoint Online.  The Copilot Page is stored in a new user owned SharePoint Embedded container designated for user.  Copilot Pages can be managed from an enterprise perspective just like any other piece of content in SharePoint Online.

2) Copilot Microsoft 365 Apps

There are new experiences being delivered with Copilot with each of the Microsoft 365 Apps.

Copilot in Excel: Provides new capabilities to assist users with formatting and analyzing data in spreadsheets.  Copilot knows how to reason over the data and assist with tasks with formatting and preparing data to make decisions.  Applying formulas, formatting, are just pieces of this.  You now can ask Copilot questions about the data.  Copilot can make recommendations on visual formats for the best chart to represent the data you have in Excel.  If you need to do some advanced analysis, you can leverage Copilot to generate Python code in your spreadsheet to create complex operations such as building visualizations, data refinement, machine learning and predictive analytics.  There are also new capabilities where Copilot can reason over data in a spreadsheet and generate summarized natural language responses about the data that can be used in other business products you are creating.

Copilot in PowerPoint: There are new Copilot features that assist with the creation of slides and content.  Narrative Builder is a new feature where Copilot assists you with creating an outline and then generates slides based on that outline.  You have the ability to tell Copilot the type of information you and to bring into the presentation, it will query your corporate data and then pull the data into the outline for you to review.  There is also a new feature called Brand Manager that will bring in your corporate brand and apply it to the presentation.

Copilot in Teams: There is a new feature that brings together the meeting transcript with chat data provide a complete picture of what was discussed in the meeting.

Copilot in Outlook: There is new capability that will assist you with Prioritizing your inbox.  Copilot will quickly review the messages that matter, and generate a summary of each email including why it was prioritized.

Copilot in Word: Today, Copilot already assists the user with bringing in and referencing data from the web and files you have access to.  This is going to be expanded to other locations such as your email and meetings.

Copilot in OneDrive: With Copilot, you now do not have to remember where that content was stored, especially if you have amassed a large volume of content of the years.  All this information is accessible to Copilot.

3) Copilot Agents

This is an extremely exciting new capability.  Agents are basically AI assistants that are designed to automate and execute business processes.  They can be very simple in nature that automate simple tasks or be more complex to replace repetitive tasks.  To create an agent there is a new agent builder tool that is built to be simple for an information worker.  An agent can be created based on a defined set of data, and then users can interact with that agent to obtain data.  More advanced agents can operate autonomously and independently execute and perform planned activities.

There is a new lightweight Copilot Studio tool that assists users with the creation of an Agent.  You have the ability to tell Copilot Studio, in natural language, what you like it to be.  You can identify knowledge sources and data across the enterprise to be leveraged by the Agent.  From there the Agent and be deployed to the enterprise.

References

• Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2: Pages, Python in Excel, and agents | Microsoft 365 Blog
• Announcing Copilot Pages for multiplayer collaboration - Microsoft Community Hub
• Copilot pages for IT Admins - Sep 2024 update - Microsoft Community Hub
• Unlock the power of Copilot in Excel, now generally available - Microsoft Community Hub
• Supercharge your business with agents built with Microsoft Copilot Studio | Microsoft Copilot Blog

Microsoft Copilot is coming to the US Government Clouds

Microsoft Copilot is coming to the US Government Clouds.  Here is some basic information you should know.

GCC Cloud

Current roadmap it to release Copilot in two waves to the GCC cloud.  Wave 1 will land in October 2024.  This first wave will comprise of such features as Copilot Graph-ground chat, Copilot with the major apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams chat) and Intelligent Meeting Recap.  This first set of capability is strategically aligned with supporting user experiences with the primary collaboration clients that user interact with daily.

Wave 2 is planned for March 2025.  In this release additional Office collaboration scenarios will be supported: Teams Meeting Copilot, OneNote, Stream, Planner, OneDrive for Business and Loop.

GCCH/DoD Clouds

Targeted for Summer of 2025.  

References

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/public-sector-blog/microsoft-copilot-for-microsoft-365-gcc-ga-update-empowering/ba-p/4222952

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/public-sector-blog/azure-openai-service-is-fedramp-high-and-copilot-for-microsoft/ba-p/4222955

Microsoft 365 Backup GA

A new solution called Microsoft 365 Backup and Backup Storage recently went GA.

This is a really cool new capacity that assists organizations in protecting themselves from disaster recovery and security scenarios when you need to recover your data.  Microsoft 365 has tons of data protection services built natively into the service.  Microsoft 365 Backup helps protect you against ransomware attacks and gives you the ability to have self-service recovery capabilities.

Microsoft 365 Backup is currently scoped to OneDrive, SharePoint and Exchange data.  With Microsoft 365 Backup you have the ability to mass backups and recovery points for your most critical business data.

For more information, read here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-backup-blog/microsoft-announces-general-availability-of-microsoft-365-backup/ba-p/4205300

New SharePoint Online Coauthoring Web Pages

Pretty cool, SharePoint Online is now rolling out the ability to do coauthoring of SharePoint Pages.  This allows multiple users to do real-time editing of web pages, web parts, etc.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-sharepoint-blog/introducing-coauthoring-for-sharepoint-pages-and-news/ba-p/4192161

Microsoft 365 Organizational Messages

A new interesting feature called Organizational Messages for Microsoft 365 will be in Public Preview.  This new interesting feature will assist you with communications with your users outside of email.  Users will receive communications through Windows 11 or Microsoft 365 apps.  

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/introducing-organizational-messages-preview-in-the-microsoft-365/ba-p/4123890

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/misc/organizational-messages-microsoft-365?view=o365-worldwide#setup-requirements

Public Preview Microsoft Teams VDI

The new Microsoft Teams client will be starting a public preview with significant new optimizations for VDI.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/the-future-of-microsoft-teams-in-vdi/ba-p/4175859

Microsoft Teams Live Events

Microsoft Teams Live Events has been planned to retire in Sept 2024, however this timeline has been extended.  Customers are still encouraged to transition to Teams Town Hall.

Reference: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/updates-for-town-hall-in-microsoft-teams-and-teams-live-events/ba-p/4148352

Microsoft 365 Multi-tenant organizations (MTO)

Probably one of the more anticipated feature releases I have been talking about has gone GA.  Multi-tenant organizations (MTO is allows tenants to have richer user and management collaboration experiences across tenants.  It is commonplace that organizations require multiple tenants, for instance merger, acquisition, divestitures, regulatory, etc.  In these cases, organizations are seeking to allow their users to have streamlined user experiences across these tenants plus organizations need streamlined management experiences too.

Some features that you will have access to are:

• Cross tenant people search
• Streamlined workforce collaboration (default access to content, bypass meeting lobby, etc.)
• Cross tenant communications
• Manage incidents and tickets centrally
• Centrally manage tenant configurations

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/multi-tenant-organization-capabilities-now-available-in/ba-p/4122812

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-entra-blog/collaborate-across-m365-tenants-with-entra-id-multi-tenant/ba-p/4120309

Microsoft 365 GCCH FedRAMP and DFAR Compliance

Good updated articles on Microsoft 365 GCCH and how to meet DFAR requirements.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/public-sector-blog/support-for-dfars-in-microsoft-365-government-gcc-high/ba-p/4076348

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/public-sector-blog/support-for-fedramp-in-microsoft-365-government-gcc-high/ba-p/4112262

Microsoft Copilot Dashboard

Microsoft Copilot Dashboard is now Generally Available (GA).  This dashboard is powered by Viva Insights and will help organizations have insights into how Microsoft Copilot is being leveraged, adopted and utilized by their users.  Here is a quick break down:

• Readiness: tells you where you have Copilot activated, and will see how many people have access to Copilot capabilities.
• Adoption: tells you which apps people are leveraging Copilot.
• Impact: tells you how many assisted hours Copilot provides to users.  You will have visibility to the assist actions, and see performance differences between users who leverage Copilot and those who do not.  Additionally, feedback information provided by users about Copilot is available by the experience you are reviewing.

Any organization serious about driving adoption of Copilot can leverage this information to understand how they train the users and evangelize Copilot capabilities.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/viva-insights-blog/microsoft-copilot-dashboard-now-generally-available/ba-p/4097742

Microsoft Intune Copilot Public Preview

I found this article about how Microsoft Copilot will be integrated with Microsoft Intune will be going into Preview 4/1/2024.  There are definitely some interesting user experiences where AI will:

• Assist the Intune administrator troubleshooting issues.
• Summarize information about configurations and settings so that the administrator does not have to click through tons of screens to understand the current configurations.
• Make recommendations based on best practices to resolve issues that are being investigated.
• Etc.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-intune-blog/microsoft-introduces-a-preview-of-copilot-in-intune/ba-p/4083276 

UAL Logging Updates for Office 365

 New logging capabilities are coming for Office 365 customers.  Much of this was driven by our engagement with the US Government to help them obtaining more logs and telemetry data.  Specifically, 

• Unified Audit Log (UAL) Ingestion Size has been expanded to increase the amount of data flowing to SIEMs.
• Retention has been increased to 180 days.

There is additional important information in the announcement that you should be considering.

Reference - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/public-sector-blog/cisa-omb-oncd-and-microsoft-collaborate-on-new-logging-playbook/ba-p/4063661

New Teams Capabilities in 2024

Microsoft published an overview of what they plan to achieve with new meeting experiences in calendar year 2024.  Good read.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/new-year-new-meeting-enhancements-in-microsoft-teams/ba-p/4034799