Microsoft 365 streamlines work in Outlook or Excel with Copilot and makes it easy to create custom agents for businesses

Microsoft 365 has announced that its AI-powered assistant Copilot optimizes workflows in services such as PowerPoint, Outlook and Excel and has commented that it is now possible for companies to create their own specialized agents according to their needs.

The company has discussed the next phase of innovation for its assistant for Microsoft 365 at an online event attended by its CEO, Satya Nadella, and Microsoft’s corporate vice president of AI at Work, Jared Spataro.

First, the firm has insisted that the next wave of Microsoft 365 Copilot debuts a completely new design system for work, with functionalities such as Business Chat, which turns the organization’s content into a database of information and knowledge, allowing users to collaborate with Copilot as a partner.

He has also insisted that he seeks to “transform” Copilot in all the applications of its ecosystem, with new functions such as advanced data analysis in Excel, dynamic narration in PowerPoint or inbox management in Outlook.

He explained that since Copilot was made available to the general public, it has implemented more than 150 new features and capabilities. Con GPT4oPerformance has also improved, with Copilot’s responses now more than twice as fast on average.

Thus, it has announced the integration of Copilot en Excel with Python programming language, to make forecasts, risk analysis or visualize complex data with natural language and without the need for coding.

The assistant has also joined a PowerPoint, so you can draft a presentation with a specific brief, as well as incorporate company-approved images from your SharePoint organization’s asset library.

Later this month, Copilot in Teams You can review a conference conversation or what was written in a chat to see if anything was left unanswered; while in Outlook, the assistant can prioritize the most relevant messages depending on the context, as well as generate summaries of these communications.

In the case of Word, Microsoft said that later this month, AI will allow users to integrate information such as emails into their workflow and enhance writing with suggestions and prompts “to boost the creative process.”

Copilot is coming to OneDrive sooner, as it has already begun rolling out and will be generally available this month. This solution can scan all files to find the information a user requests and compare up to five files with an easy-to-read, detailed summary.

This presentation also highlighted Copilot Pages, a system in BizChat designed for collaboration in organizations, powered by AI and that converts all the organization’s data into persistent and accessible information.

Pages, then, collects all the ephemeral AI-generated content and makes it durable so it can be edited and shared with others. It will be available in the coming weeks for free Copilot account users who log in with Microsoft Enter.

CUSTOM COPILOT AGENTS FOR COMPANIES

Power Platform’s general manager of marketing, Richard Riley, has been in charge of Introducing Custom Copilot Agents and built with Microsoft Copilot Studio, which provides a comprehensive platform for managing and deploying them.

First, he recalled that an agent is an AI assistant designed to automate and execute business processes, so that it can generate capabilities for each individual, team and organization, from Sales to Marketing and Customer Service.

These agents come in all shapes and sizes, and can be used to retrieve information from basic system data, reason about it, summarize it, or answer questions. They can thus replace repetitive tasks and have greater autonomy.

In addition, it has announced two new features for Copilot Studio, the platform that allows companies to create AI agents using Agent Builder and publish them on all types of channels, including Microsoft Teams or their website.

In this regard, he said that agents created in Copilot Studio can now be published directly in Microsoft 365 Copilot and appear directly in the user’s workflow.a new experience This service allows users of any skill level to create agents directly from Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Chat and Microsoft Sharepoint.

It is worth noting that these people can tell Copilot Studio what they want their agent to do using natural language and choose which knowledge sources they want to integrate from their organizations’ data, whether specific documents or entire databases.

REAL CASES

The company has finally indicated some customer data and use cases for Copilot in Microsoft 365, mentioning companies such as Vodafone, that with this assistant they are now able to draw up contracts in one hour less than usual, while 60 percent of employees say that the quality of their work has improved with it.

The workers of the industrial company Honeywell They responded in an internal survey that they saved 92 minutes per week using Microsoft 365 with Copilot, which would be equivalent to 74 hours over a full year.

finastra, In their case, they used Microsoft’s AI assistant for a branding campaign, transcribing content from interviews with 60 stakeholders to generate eight e-books, 10 whitepapers, and 10 web pages in seven weeks. The same work would have previously taken them