Meet your new Copilot 365 assistants: Skills agent, Interpreter agent, Project agent and the facilitator

Making your tasks easier for you:

The other day I wrote about the new Skills feature coming to Microsoft 365 in the following weeks. But the Advanced tier os the new skills feature is just one of three out-of-the-box agents already in place or coming the next weeks and months (and many more in the future, I'm sure). This agents are designed to handle "everything" from simple tasks to complex multi-step processes where you choose to implement them. In this rather length post, I’ll try to break down each agent’s capabilities, why they’re useful, and how you can prepare to make the most of them.

Skill Discovery (Skills Agent – Powered by People Skills)

Let's start with the skills agent. In my previous post, I mentioned the release of the "skills feature" that will be released in two tiers. One basic, and one advanced. The advanced tier is driven by AI, more specific the "Skills agent". This agent is all about connecting people and expertise. The agent automatically infers what skills each person in your organization has, based on their profiles and work activities. 

This agent isn’t just for employees looking for help, like for example finding someone within the company who is proficient with Power Platform. Leaders and decision makers gain an up-to-date view of organizational strengths, skill gaps, and growth opportunities. The Skills agent will provide data-driven insights to support strategic decisions, like identifying skill gaps for upcoming initiatives or forming dynamic project teams based on skillsets. HR and team leads can now make informed decisions about training and hiring, as well as empowering employees to plan their own skill development.

As mention in my previous post, this feature will be rolling out in late May and all of June. And you can read the full announcement here.

Interpreter (Real-Time Language Interpretation in Teams)

Next up is a really useful feature for multilingual companies: The Interpreter agent, a feature that feels a bit like science fiction come true. Interpreter allows real-time speech-to-speech translation in Microsoft Teams meetings, letting each person speak and hear the meeting in their preferred language. This means language barriers in global meetings could become a thing of the past. The agent uses AI to detect who’s speaking and translate their speech into another language on the fly. Users can even opt to have the translated speech played in a synthetic voice that sounds like the speaker, which makes it easier to follow who’s talking (or they can choose a standard voice, if they prefer).

This feature requires the users to have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. It currently supports a range of languages (at launch, Microsoft noted nine languages including English, Mandarin Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish). This however, is an official list at the time of the release of the preview. I have tested it internally with languages like German, Norwegian, Finnish, Dutch and English, and as long as I asked it to translate and read back to me in English, it was quite impressive. One thing I noted though, is that it changed the flow of the conversation, as we had to really wait to hear each other out and not suddenly interrupt or ask questions in the middle of a discussion. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it took some time to get used to.

This feature also comes with some controls for admins. The feature can be turned on or off, but admins can also control the so called "voice representation". Voice representation is allowing the users to have the agent either simulate the user's own voice or to use a pure synthetic voice instead. Here is a Learn article on the topic.

Facilitator (Your AI Meeting Co-Pilot)

The facilitator is an assistant in your meetings that will handle note-taking and keep everyone on track. This agent works alongside you and your team during Microsoft Teams meetings to enable more effective collaboration. Initially, Facilitator could take real-time notes, creating a shared set of minutes that everyone in the meeting can see and even co-edit. New to the Microsoft Facilitator is it's capability to act as a "moderator" in your meetings. 

Facilitator can use the meeting’s agenda or the flow of conversation to guide the discussion. At the halfway point of the meeting, it will pop up a recap of what’s been decided so far and what questions are still open, just to refocus everyone. Then, before the meeting ends, it provides a summary of decisions made and any follow-up tasks or unresolved items.

In order to make this work, Copilot must be enabled for the meeting, and the facilitator needs to be enabled when the meeting is created, or invited at the very start of the meeting to be helpful.

The facilitator is enabled by default, but admins can control this through Teams Meeting Policies. For optimum performance, these policies should be set to: “Allow Copilot” set to “During and After Meeting”. You can read more in detail on Microsoft Learn.

Project Manager (AI Assistant in Planner)

The last big addition is the Project Manager agent in Microsoft Planner. This agent automates project and task management in Planner, helping with everything from setting up plans to generating content. Concretely, you can ask Project Manager to create a new plan for your team, starting start from scratch or use a template. You just feed it some goals or point it to relevant files, and it will spin up a Planner board with tasks and structure.

A new addition to the Project Manager agent is to generate project status reports in minutes. The agent will look at your plan’s data and conversations, then produces a report including a project summary, the reporting period’s highlights, any potential blockers or delays, and more. You can then review and refine that draft with your team and share it out through various channels, ensuring stakeholders are informed.

Should you not want to utilize the Copilot in planner, there is quick way to do so through PowerShell. The Project Manager Agent has been in preview for some time, and should be rolling out in June.

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