More than a week has passed since Microsoft Ignite and here are my highlights✨. I had the opportunity to attend live in Chicago and to really enjoy the atmosphere. Let me start by setting the scene, we are slowly getting back to what Ignite was before the pandemic – and it feels good! A vibrant big expo hall with everything Microsoft in the middle, like a beating heart 🫀. The expo was fun, it had an ask the experts area, different interactive Microsoft stations such as the Microsoft Learn celebration or a low code escape room and cute photo opportunities. I could just breath the thrill in the room 🥹. Here are my best Microsoft Teams and Copilot news from Ignite.
Lots of fun 💃🏻
And as always, the book of news is THE best place for the news – read The book of news 2024 here.
1. Build an agentic world
If there was something trending and made a fuzz at Ignite it was agents. Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, said during the keynote that creating an agent should be as easy as creating a file. But what is an agent? We have Microsoft 365 Copilot that can help you broadly across all your Microsoft 365 apps, both grounded from your organization's data and from the web. With the help of agents, we can both niche the questions we ask and the answers we get, get help to automate routine tasks and automate complex business processes.
What I love about agents is that they never sleep or get sick, they can answer all of your employees questions at the same time and they are scalable. It’s the perfect first stop when a human isn’t needed. And it’s the natural next step of Copilot.
Before I move onto the specific announcements I want to share this image that Microsoft posted on several places. Copilot is the UI for AI and it is up to us to make it grounded and smarter in the background with all kinds of agents for our every need. Agents will take Copilot from a helper to actual transforming our business.
Let’s dive in!
The Employee Self-Service Agent
The Employee Self-Service Agent that is there to help with all kinds of HR and IT questions. Some of the demos I saw during Ignite really made me wow, for example directly in your daily context in Bizchat (in Microsoft Teams for me) you can ask questions about how much vacation you have left, apply for vacation, or even submit a support ticket. And the best part is the possibility to adjust the agents to your organizations specific needs in Copilot Studio.
Interpreter agent
Another ready-made agent they showed was the interpreter agent, imagine being able to speak your native language in a meeting which is simultaneously translated into another language with your voice – perfect for global teams. Like a real life Babel fish 😅.
Facilitator agent
This spring Microsoft announced that soon you will have a team Copilot, a Copilot that acts like one in the team rather than one layer on top The facilitator was one of them. The facilitator is actually takes a role in your meeting, taking real-life meeting notes and interacting in the meeting chat. Soon in Microsoft Teams.
Agents in Planner
Just as the facilitator agent takes an active role IN the meeting, in Planner we’ll get a project manager agent taking an active role. The project manager agent is there to help you with easy tasks, it starts with helping you defining a goals and breaking down it to tasks and then even finishing the tasks (until Copilot needs you and then asks for your input). When you assign tasks to the project manager agent the tasks will be executed with an automated detailed output in a Loop page embedded with each task. This sounds like a dream for all project managers!
Agents in SharePoint
Build your own agents with a SharePoint site or library as the source, this have been in preview for some time but now finally in GA! This is just another way of grounding your Copilot data more specifically and ensuring you get the best answer. So easy to create and share.
Read more here. In general availability now.
Copilot Studio
Let’s end with Copilot Studio, they place for building agents. I hope its been clear in this blog post how it is time to you start using or building agents. Using pre-built agents inside Microsoft Teams or SharePoint will solve many issues, but for the more complex ones we need Copilot Studio to expand. Don’t get me wrong Copilot Studio is still very easy to use (even for a basic user like me 😇). Two things I found extra thrilling that was announced:
Autonomous agentic capabilities: Yes, please make the agents do things on behalf of me <3. Now we can build agents that will act on our behalf without asking for prompt input each time, for example like respond to events or uploading a file. Read more here, in public preview now.
Agent library: A new agent library will come with a bunch of agents to inspire how you can use agents in your day to day, a few examples are deal acceleration or sales order agents. Read more here.
2. News for Microsoft Teams
There was a lot of news for Microsoft Teams, here are my top three. If you want to read more about Microsoft Places, how security features are being improved with Teams Premium, everything about meetings/webinars and more don’t forget to read the official Microsoft Teams and Ignite blog post here.
New chat and channel experience
We’re getting a new revamped design with chats and channels combined into one view, this will allow us to quicker shift between channels and chat. It will also give us more flexible options to organize our view, for example add both chats and channels to your favorites. Do you want to create organizing sections with your own name with chats and channels (you can’t believe how often I hear people missing this from the Skype days). There are also richer filtering option available, such as unread, meeting chats, unmuted e.g.
Storyline in Microsoft Teams
The storyline in Viva Engage is a perfect place to share ideas and content, and the perfect place for you to collaborate and engage more with your colleagues. Now we will get the Viva Engage Storyline as a tab in the chat. This will mean we in one windows and the flow of work can talk to a person, see files we collaborated on AND what they’ve been up to up on their storyline.
Loop workspaces in channels
I think this is one the things I’ve mostly been looking forward to ever since the emergence of Loop 🥹. Earlier this spring Microsoft silently added to the roadmap that we will be able to connect a Loop workspace to a Microsoft 365 group. Now we are getting possibility to add a workspace as a tab in a team happy dance.
Read more here.
3. News for Copilot
As you can image the main attraction of the show was Copilot and a lot of time during the keynote was spend talking about Copilot. One quote by Satya that I enjoyed during the keynote is:
The problem with AI is that it don’t give a damn, but we at Microsoft do
And I think the announcements show, and they were many, small and big, for end users and for business decision makers or admin. Here are a the ones I enjoyed a little extra.
Copilot in Microsoft 365 admin center
I love Microsoft 365 Copilot, and one use case I like is asking where I do things. This is available today in several Microsoft 365 apps and is now also coming to the Microsoft 365 admin center. Imagine starting your day by asking, Hey, what insights do you have about my environment?, Hey, is there any new message in the message center?, or Hey, is any service down?. Or asking, Where do I set X? and being guided there by Copilot. Or asking, Who is not using their Copilot license? so I know where more change efforts are needed. You see, a must-have for all admins! In summary:
Optimize routine tasks
Get more out of Microsoft 365
Get faster insights
Read more here, targeted general availability is January 2025.
Copilot Business Impact Report
Something that I loved seeing this year was a big focus on change management. For me, who works with change on a daily basis, it is obvious that technical implementations will fail if people are not included from the beginning. And this is as important with Copilot. One announcement related to this is Copilot Business Impact Report. With this report we will be able to measure our Copilot usage against our business goals and not only see printed on paper how much money we are saving but also identify where in the organization more efforts are needed for the change to be successful
Rich artifacts in BizChat and Copilot Pages
Getting a response in text is nice right? But getting other kinds or responses even nicer, and soon we’ll have added types of answers such as code and interactive charts/tables/diagrams. Since this output can be opened in Copilot Pages which is built on Loop it means they can be transformed to Loop components are worked on in any part of Microsoft 365 🥳.
Another news announced on Copilot Pages is that soon you’ll be able create several pages from one chat, or what I’ve been missing add content from several chat to one page.
Read more here, rolling out early 2025.
Copilot Actions
It is time to take Copilot to next step, one of those steps are Copilot Actions with which we can automate boring repetitive tasks. I see it as a workflows in Microsoft Teams part two where we also get the help of Copilot to save time during our day. For example you know that you every Monday want to start with summarize last week and write a newsletter or automate preparing for specific meetings. Lets automate more with Copilot Actions.
Read more here, in private preview now.
Copilot Prompt Gallery
We could a need inspiration for getting better at prompting, and a great place for that is Copilot lab! And Copilot Lab has gotten a refresh and a new name – Copilot Prompt Gallery. With the gallery you can find prompts, save them and even share them with your peers. Some of the news we got at Ignite about Copilot Prompt Gallery:
Agents will be included
See what prompts are trending in your organization
A lovely app in Microsoft Teams to stay in your flow of work
Read more here, soon rolling out.
A lot of Copilot...
There were several smaller Copilot news announced as well, for example I’m excited about:
Microsoft Teams: Copilot being able to also read content being shared on the screen in meetings in Microsoft Teams
PowerPoint: The narrative builder that’s coming to PowerPoint to more easily make beautiful presentations
PowerPoint: Connect Copilot in PowerPoint with Templify to get branded photos from start
PowerPoint: Copilot translating PowerPoints without changing the design
PowerPoint and Word: Add stock videos or create new AI generated images in PowerPoint and Word
Word: Copilot will show sources when creating material in Word
Word: Get a summary of a Word file without even opening it
Outlook: Getting a Copilot chat in Outlook to be able to ask open questions in Outlook
Outlook: Copilot looking in your and your colleagues calendars to book meetings in Outlook
Forms: Copilot will help you a plan to get the answer you want in Forms, and also remind people if you need more answers
Read more here. Here on Outlook. Here on Forms. Here on PowerPoint. Here on Word. Here for Microsoft Teams.
4. Community
This year I was also invited to participate in a relaxed panel session about the MVP program, it was really fun! Laurie Pottmeyer and Betsy Weber hosted, Amy Dolzine, Jeremy Sinclar and I participated. We talked about community, tech and how you can share your knowledge. It has always been on my bucket list to have a session at Ignite, next time I’m just hoping I will see my name in the agenda 😎.
And ofc Ignite was amazing meeting friends and peers from all around the world. Here are a few pictures of friends from the days!
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In summary lots of great news and I had a blast!
All images, well not the ones on my face ha-ha, are borrowed from Microsoft.