New Year, New Momentum: Here are three Copilot updates to get you started into 2026

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It's a new year, so I thought I'd start the year by mentioning three features already released, or soon going to be released. One of the features improves the workflow of sharing files with comments, the other improves the application specific Copilot, and the last feature makes it easer to find the nest available timeslot for a 1:1 meeting. As with all of my other posts, timelines can shift, and the timelines in this post is as written in the Message Center at the time of posting. AI-Summary experience when sharing files. With this new feature, copilot intent to help users share files with clearer context in just a few steps. Users will get the capability to generate a concise summary of a file and include it when sharing from the File Explorer share dialog or the OneDrive activity center. This will make it easier to share the context of a file and giving the receiver a faster understanding of what a document or file contains before they open it. General Availability announced...

People Skills: Empowering Organizations with AI-Driven Skill Insights

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Microsoft 365 Introduces People Skills:

In large organizations (or when you're new to one) finding the right people with the right skills can often feel like searching for a needle in a haystack, and certainly time-consuming for you and everyone you ask. Talent may be all around, but visibility into the who what, and how well, is often limited. In an attempt to overcome this challenge, Microsoft is introducing two new service plans:
  • People Skills - Foundation, as part of the M365 license
  • People Skills - Advanced, as part of Microsoft 365 Copilot and Viva licenses. 
While the Foundation tier provides essential tools for managing and showcasing skills either by user updating their own profile or through organizational imports, the Advanced tier leverages AI to deliver deeper insights, such as identifying skill gaps, recommending development opportunities, and enhancing collaboration through intelligent skill matching.

Things to know for users and admins:

Once the feature is released, everyone gets the "Foundation" tier, and can then add skills to their own profile if they choose to do so. Also, users are in control of how their Skills can be added and shared on their profile. If the user have the advanced tier, they can also control how AI interacts in order to learn and populate each individual's list of skills. I think it is important for users to be informed of this.

As for admins, they can choose to control the default behavior of the advanced behaviour. The feature is called "Skills inferencing" and can be set to one of the following for users, groups or the entire tenant:
  • Admins can turn skills inferencing auto-on. Individual users can opt out.
  • Admins can turn skills inferencing auto-off. Individual users can opt in. 
  • Admins can disable skills inferencing for their tenant.
Here is a Learn article on how it works: Manage skills inferencing and visibility

The announcement from Microsoft has a lot of more in-depth information, and is a suggested read.

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