Microsoft rolls out major updates to Copilot

Microsoft has introduced Work IQ, marketing it as the "intelligence layer" behind Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents.

It combines work data - knowledge in emails, files, meetings, and chats - with memory - a user's style, preferences, habits, and workflows. Inference then combines data and memory to make "valuable connections, unlock insights, and predict the next best action", according to Microsoft.

Work IQ is woven into such apps as Word, Outlook, and Teams, so Copilot is always learning and thus using those signals to aim to deliver more personalised experiences.

With Work IQ for custom agents, users can now tap into this 'intelligence layer' to build agents tuned for their own workflows and business needs.

This enables secure agent grounding that respects existing permissions, sensitivity labels, compliance controls, audit, logging, monitoring, and policy enforcement, and is available within Copilot Studio or via API for use in pro-code agent development. 

Agent and Copilot updates

The company also announced a range of other updates to its Copilot product.

With Agent Mode in Excel, users can now choose between Anthropic and OpenAI reasoning models. Agent Mode in Word is now generally available, and Agent Mode in PowerPoint is now available via the Frontier program.

New Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Agents allow users to create high-quality documents, spreadsheets, and presentations in Copilot chat.

With Copilot Mode enabled in Edge for Business, it becomes the "world’s first secure enterprise AI browser", according to Microsoft. Multi-step workflows are enabled with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, with multi-tab reasoning coming soon via the Frontier program.

Teams Mode for Microsoft 365 Copilot turns 1:1 Copilot chats into group chats in Teams, a feature currently in public preview. Collaboration-focused agents for Copilot, giving every team, project, and meeting an AI teammate, was also introduced.

Facilitator agent in Teams drives the agenda, takes notes, keeps meetings on track, and helps manage actions from the meeting, with agents in Teams Channels now able to work with third-party apps and agents via Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, such as GitHub, Asana, and Atlassian (Jira).

For example, a user can ask the agent in a Teams channel about blockers and mitigation plans for an upcoming product launch, and the agent will pull risks directly from Jira, then schedule a meeting with the team - this is currently in public preview.

Agent 365

Agent 365 is the control plane for agents, extending the infrastructure trusted to manage people to agents.

Whether agents are created using Copilot Studio, Microsoft Foundry, open-source frameworks, or from an ecosystem of partners, including Adobe, Manus, SAP, ServiceNow, Workday, and more, Agent 365 helps users deploy, organise, and govern them securely. 

Agent 365 includes five key capabilities: firstly, a registry to provide a single source of truth for all the agents in an organisation.

Access control to manage agents and limit their access to only the resources required to perform specific tasks, as well as a unified dashboard and advanced analytics to see connections between agents, people, and data, and monitor agent behavior and performance in real time, is also included.

Interoperability to equip agents with apps and data to simplify human-agent workflows, along with security to help protect agents from threats and vulnerabilities and detect, investigate, and remediate attacks that target agents, rounds out the capabilities.