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...

Create avatars from picture or photo is live

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Avatars in Teams is a way to express your presence without turning your camera on in meetings, and it is used when entering a Mesh meeting place. I must admit I du prefer the use of real video, but I do understand the user scenarios where an avatar might come in handy. 

Depending on your preferences, the avatar can be created to your liking, and there are many options to choose from when it comes to skin color, body type, face frame, colors and more. Sometimes, I think there are always too many options, and I never get a result that actually looks like me (if that was my intent).

The avatar feature has been around for a while, but I am obviously not the only one thinking my avatar could and should look more like me. Microsoft has now released a feature that allows you to create an avatar directly from an image (taken when you create the avatar) or by uploading an existing photo. 

The feature seems to be available for most Teams SKU's (Business and E3/E5, even essentials) at this time, and available for both MAC and Windows as long as you are using new Teams client (2.1). You still need 6GB of RAM and a Dual-core processor in order for avatars to be working, 8GB and Quad-core is still recommended for optimal performance. 

I had to give it a test run before writing this post, and the result wasn't that far off the real me. Here is the full user guide, if you want to give it a try: Join a meeting as an avatar.