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

on
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...

Expanding Voice Attribution in Microsoft Teams Rooms

on

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.