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...

Custom Engine Agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot

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Agents in BizChat has been available for some time already, but now there is an upcoming update to Agents. The introduction of “custom engine agents” in Microsoft 365 Copilot! These specialized agents can be built on any large language model (LLM), toolchain, or orchestration tool, tailored specifically for your domain or tenant workflows. Initially supported in Microsoft Teams, this feature will soon be available in Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Chat (BizChat).  

The introduction of Custom engine agents enables your organization to create customized experiences using your own AI systems and orchestrators. You can design unique prompts, connect to any LLM, and integrate these custom agents with Microsoft 365 Copilot. After the rollout, users will be able to access these agents, provided they are enabled and deployed in the Microsoft 365 admin center under the Copilot tab.  You can read more about the feature on this page.

Eligible users can create agents using Microsoft Copilot Studio for low-code tools or the Microsoft Teams Toolkit in Visual Studio for pro-code solutions. Access to Copilot Studio requires enabling the Microsoft Power Automate free license.  

Users can deploy agents for individual tasks and share them with internal teams, but organization-wide sharing requires admin approval. 

This feature is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 474439 and will hopefully be in preview during February. The current target for GA is a finished roll-out by end of April.