Microsoft has added a number of features to its Copilot artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled assistant for office productivity, as it builds out its AI strategy for business users.
The company has spent the past year fleshing out how AI through Copilot is helping its customers become more productive. In the earnings call for its full year and Q3 2024 results, CEO Satya Nadella said almost half of the Fortune 500 are using Copilot.
“We’ve seen accelerated adoption across industries and geographies, with companies like Amgen, BP, Cognizant, Koch Industries, Moody’s, Novo Nordisk, Nvidia and Tech Mahindra purchasing over 10,000 seats,” he said. “We’re also seeing increased usage intensity from early adopters, including a nearly 50% increase in the number of Copilot-assisted interactions per user in Teams, bridging group activity with business process workflows and enterprise knowledge.”
The new capabilities build on this momentum. The Copilot in Excel with Python feature adds Python code generation that, according to Microsoft, lets people write advanced analytic capabilities in natural language with no coding required. “Just ask your questions using everyday language to enable predictive modelling and text analytics,” Brenna Robinson, general manager of the Microsoft small and medium business team, wrote in a blog post. “Iterate with Copilot right in Excel to generate heat maps and word clouds.”
She said Microsoft is planning to add Copilot in Outlook, allowing users to better manage their inboxes using a feature dubbed Prioritise My Inbox.
“Copilot will combine the context of your role in your organisation and previous work emails to surface the messages most important to you so you can spend less time triaging your inbox and focus on what’s most important,” said Robinson.
The new feature is expected to be made available in public preview by late 2024.
Another feature, Business Chat (BizChat), requires a $30 per user per month Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription, which can only be purchased as an add-on to a Microsoft 365 subscription.
Robinson said BizChat combines web-based insights with the Microsoft Graph to provide users with data from across documents, presentations, email, calendar, notes and contacts. “Like an assistant, it has a deep understanding of you, your job, your priorities and your organisation,” she said. “It can find whatever you need in your files (even the files you forgot existed), connect the dots across all your content and context swiftly, and even integrate with the apps you use to run your business.”
Robinson added that the BizChat experience also offers a feature called Copilot Pages, which holds AI-generated content in a collaborative Microsoft Word document that can be shared with other team members.
“You and your team can work together in real time – asking Copilot more questions and adding more content,” she said. “Copilot Pages will be generally available later this month, and will also be accessible in the free Microsoft Copilot.”
