Upcoming Features in Microsoft 365 Copilot app: Wave 2 Spring Release (2025)

The next wave of Microsoft 365 Copilot app is coming Microsoft just announced a huge set of new features for the Microsoft 365 Copilot app as part of they call the Wave 2 Spring release .  Let's dive into some of the key features and improvements coming your way. Some of them will be available for all users and some will be limited to users with a license. Updated app layout: Navigation Pane (1) The Microsoft 365 Copilot app's left navigation pane will provide all users (licensed and unlicensed) users with access to essential modules such as Search, Chat, Notebooks, Create, and Apps. The workspace can be personalized by users which can pin or unpin apps and agents.  New module: Notebooks (2) Copilot Notebooks turn notes, documents, and work data into immediate insights and actions. Users  can gather information from chats, meetings, pages, and files, as well as organize and store important documents, notes, and tasks. This feature then grounds chats in the contents o...

Expanding Voice Attribution in Microsoft Teams Rooms

Microsoft Teams is enhancing the capabilities of Intelligent Speaker Recognition, a feature that will identify and attribute speech to individual speakers in meeting transcripts. Initially this feature was exclusive to Microsoft Teams Rooms, but Microsoft has now announced it will extend this to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) settings as well. 

To be able to benefit from this feature on BYOD rooms, users must have either a Microsoft Teams Premium or a Copilot license. It is also important to make sure the meeting policy allows for recognition. This is configured with the -RoomPeopleNameUserOverride switch, which can turn the feature off or allow for attribution and recognition.

Users can set up their own profile in their own Teams Desktop App. Their profiles are stored within the company tenant. When joining a room, they must remember to sign into the meeting with their own app and selecting "RoomAudio" as the sound option to ensure their profile will be recognized.

It can be worth mentioning that the policies for voice and face enrolment is going through some changes as well. By default, the new voice and face biometric enrollment policy will be enabled, and will  introduce separate settings for voice and face enrollments, which can be individually enabled or disabled. The current settings in csTeamsMeetingPolicy will be replaced with a new csTeamsAIPolicy which includes separate EnrollFace and EnrollVoice settings.

The combination of expanding voice attribution to more room types and the new policy for voice and face recognition will surely improve the experience with meeting transcripts. It will be easier to recognize who is speaking, which can lead to more efficient and productive meetings. 

For more details, refer to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 413708 and ID 417155. The features seems to be planned for a release in the first quarter of 2025.