Microsoft 365 Copilot: New Navigation, Voice, and Context Enhancements Arriving Soon

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Here are three new updates to the user interface of Microsoft Copilot. These releases improve usability, expand interaction options, and streamline how users incorporate work content into prompts. All three of these features were actually announced "a long time ago", and the initial release started almost 6 months ago. But I guess the setup is complicated, as the rollout hasn't completed yet. This only proves the importance of paying attention to the official roadmap and the tenant message center in order to understand when features are being implemented for your organization. Timelines may continue to evolve as deployments progress, and this summary includes the official reference IDs and documentation links for verification. Refreshed Navigation Experience There is a redesigned navigation experience for the Microsoft 365 Copilot app heading your way, delivering a cleaner, more efficient layout. The update flattens the menu structure and groups related components to help...

Normalization rules order

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I was troubleshooting a customer's normalization rules for international dialing, when I came the following conclusion: The order of the normalization rules in the DialPlan is important when you have more than one possible match.

In my setup, I was trying to accommodate how users might possibly try to dial an international number in different ways. Some users might have figured out how to use the + in their contact cards, or when dialing, and those are of no concern. But others will still tend to use "old-style" with a prefix, or forget the "+" all together.

For this I "always" create two simple rules:
One matching any number string longer than 8 digits (No extension in Norway is longer than 8 digits), and adding a + to it. This will Normalize any international number not beginning with a "+" and adding the "+" before routing.
New-CsVoiceNormalizationRule -Identity "Global/NO_INT_Digits" -Pattern '^(\d{8}\d+)$' -Translation '+$1'
The second rule was made to accommodate those who were dialing with the international prefix in front of the number (00)
New-CsVoiceNormalizationRule -Identity "Global/NO_INT_Digits00" -Pattern '^00(\d{8}\d+)$' -Translation '+$1'

What I have not considered before, is the order of which these commands are written. If you enter them in the order I have shown you here, the first rule will always take effect, and the stripping of 00 in the second rule, will never work.

So from now on, I will always add the most specific rule first, then the general rule.

Here's the "complete" list I usually use here in Norway:

New-CsVoiceNormalizationRule -Identity "Global/NO_3_Digits" -Pattern '^(1\d{2})$' -Translation '+47$1'
New-CsVoiceNormalizationRule -Identity "Global/NO_4_Digits" -Pattern '^(18\d{2})$' -Translation '+47$1'
New-CsVoiceNormalizationRule -Identity "Global/NO_5_Digits" -Pattern '^(0\d{4})$' -Translation '+47$1'
New-CsVoiceNormalizationRule -Identity "Global/NO_8_Digits" -Pattern '^(\d{8})$' -Translation '+47$1'
New-CsVoiceNormalizationRule -Identity "Global/NO_INT_Digits00" -Pattern '^00(\d{8}\d+)$' -Translation '+$1'
New-CsVoiceNormalizationRule -Identity "$Global/NO_INT_Digits" -Pattern '^(\d{8}\d+)$' -Translation '+$1'

Hope this saves you from some troubleshooting: Plan your Normalization rules carefully :)