Top 6 Copilot updates impacting adoption at MSIgnite 2024

Microsoft say that Copilot has been the fastest adopted product in the Microsoft 365 suite. But many organisations still find it difficult to get wide, sustained adoption.

At Microsoft Ignite, the flagship tech conference, there were some significant updates that will impact adoption of Microsoft 365 Copilot. Here are my top 6 picks.

1 Copilot Actions

Create actions that Copilot can complete for you. Reference people, files, choose to send a message, schedule actions. Actions are a mix of a Copilot prompt and automation like Power Automate.

Why is this impactful to Copilot adoption. You create actions using templates that provide a well-constructed prompt. The templates follow a format that provides a prompt that can be customized by filling in the blanks. Choose variables from a drop down menu or enter them yourself. This helps people learn what makes up a good prompt, shows them the possibilities with variables, and builds confidence to create their own prompts.

Copilot Actions are currently in Private Preview. Which usually means we won't be able to try it for month yet. No date has been shared for Public Preview.

2 Save and share your prompts in the Copilot prompt library

The Copilot prompt library gets a place to save personal prompts to reuse, or share.

Microsoft's prompt templates have been a good start. But they are often quite generic or not worded in a way that's easily related to a person's own work. Now when you write a great prompt, you can store it with your personal prompts.

Copilot power users in your organization are often the best source for prompts that relate to your work. Power users are familiar with your workplace, objectives, and information. They can now save their prompts to their personal library and share them to help others get started.

This isn't yet an organizational shared Copilot prompt library. But that can't be too far behind.

3 SharePoint Copilot Agent GA

Organizations have a lot to do to prepare their whole environment for using Copilot. But now they can focus on the sites and libraries that are Copilot-ready, as sources of information. SharePoint Copilot Agents are now Generally Available. Create a SharePoint Agent for a site and know that Copilot's responses through that agent can be trusted. Or at least you can focus on getting a SharePoint site ready and easily maintain it as a good source for Copilot.

SharePoint Copilot Agents are available now for creation and use by people licensed with Microsoft 365 Copilot.

4 Copilot Pages updates

Copilot Pages are a place to send the responses from Copilot Business Chat, to a page for editing and sharing. Think of them as a notepad to collect the responses from a chat and start to edit the information and ideas. You can share them with other team members and edit them at the same time. Copilot Pages are powered by Microsoft Loop. So you can share them in an email or chat as a component. Or add them to a workspace.

Copilot Pages will now support prompts that respond with suggested code. Send the code to a page and it becomes an editable, shareable code block. Or diagrams and charts from responses using Mermaid.

Copilot Pagers were released earlier in 2024 and are still rolling out at the time of MSIgnite. Look for the Edit in Pages button while using Copilot Business Chat. It is supported while switched to using Work as a source. Later, it will be supported in Web mode, and for people using the free Microsoft Copilot.

5 Copilot Analytics

Organisations need a way to measure the usage of Microsoft 365 Copilot. Copilot Analytics provides a dashboard, business impact reports, and advanced insights. Visit the dashboard and reports in Viva Insights. It is now generally available and included in the licensing of Microsoft 365 Copilot.

6 New Copilot-centric M365 logo

Lastly, if it wasn't already obvious that Microsoft is 'all-in' with Copilot. The Microsoft 365 logo is changing to a new Copilot-centric logo. That is, the M365 Copilot logo, with an M365 label over the top. While this shows that Microsoft sees Copilot as the UI for AI to get work done, it will be confusing for people. Based on the reactions and comments seen so far, many are still struggling to understand the different Copilots and ways to reference it. Now that Microsoft 365 IS M365 Copilot, will this negatively impact adoption? This remains to be seen.

What are your top picks for Copilot updates impacting adoption of Microsoft 365 Copilot?