[German]Short addendum from the other day: In addition to Office 2024 LTSC, Microsoft has also announced the launch of its "Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2". There is a product called Copilot Pages and Microsoft Excel gets support for the Python programming language. Agents are also being introduced.
Microsoft Corporate Vice President, AI at Work, Jared Spataro, has announced this release of Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2 products on September 16, 2024 in the article Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2: Pages, Python in Excel, and agents. This is the second wave of new Microsoft 365 Copilot features that are now being released to users.
Copilot Pages
A new feature of Copilot Pages is a "workspace" (referred to as a canvas) for "multiplayer AI collaboration". Users can use Microsoft Copilot and post their responses to a page in this workspace. This will allow teams to collaborate with Microsoft Copilot on this page and see the work of all team members in real time. The users of the team can iterate with Copilot like a partner, Spataro praises the new function.
Copilot in Microsoft 365
According to Microsoft, it is also working on expanding the Copilot functions in Microsoft Office. For example, Copilot support in Microsoft Teams Meetings has been well received by customers. Copilot is now being introduced for advanced data analysis in Microsoft Excel, dynamic storytelling in PowerPoint, inbox management in Outlook, etc.
In this context, Copilot in Excel with support for Python was also announced as a preview. This will enable users working with Copilot to perform advanced analyses such as forecasts, risk analyses, machine learning and the visualization of complex data. This is done in natural language without the need for programming skills.
The Narrative Builder in Microsoft PowerPoint is designed to help users with Copilot to create sophisticated presentations. The prompt window can be used to make entries from which Copilot can create an outline by topic. With the Brand Manager, Copilot can use a company's templates to design presentations that are suitable for the company and conform to the brand. Copilot will soon be able to integrate company-approved images from the SharePoint Organization Asset Library.
According to Microsoft, Copilot will now evaluate both the meeting minutes and the meeting chat in Microsoft Teams. In Microsoft Outlook, Copilot should help prioritize the inbox so that important messages can be processed first. Copilot automatically creates a short summary of each email and indicates why the message was prioritized, as well as the most important findings, according to the announcement. It is planned to make these functions available in a public preview from the end of 2024.
With Copilot in Word, which will be released in September 2024, users will be able to refer to web and work data such as Word, PowerPoint, PDFs and encrypted documents as well as emails and meetings. Copilot can use content from these documents to make suggestions for the design of new documents.
OneDrive will also receive Copilot support to help users search for files. Copilot in OneDrive will be generally available at the end of September 2024.
Copilot agents
Microsoft has also announced the introduction of Copilot agents. These agents are designed to simplify and accelerate the automation and execution of business processes by a user. The agents simply take over certain tasks. Users can create their own Copilot agent directly in BizChat or SharePoint to process the data stored in SharePoint files.
Copilot agents and the Agent Builder in BizChat will be made generally available to all customers in the coming weeks. Copilot Agents and Agent Builder in SharePoint will be offered as a preview in early October.
Interesting reactions
Interested users can read the details at Microsoft. The article also contains a number of embedded videos demonstrating the individual functions. It is unclear whether these Copilot functions will also be rolled out for Germany and Europe. However, when I look at what Microsoft has in mind, everyone is just busy managing, whiteboarding and reporting.
Of course, I asked myself whether I was a bit "narrow-minded". But a look at the comments of this The Verge article on the subject gives me the impression that other people see it similarly. Someone notes that Microsoft is constantly developing new things that are very similar to existing things, but incompatible. Users are constantly faced with the question of which application or interface they should use for what. Another commentator says that Microsoft has probably hired too many business managers to come up with such crap. A third adds: "Microsoft has a habit of introducing new solutions for problems that don't even exist" and notes that if nothing works, the company will later reverse these features. Doesn't sound very positive.
