What’s new in Microsoft 365 Copilot | November 2024

Welcome to the November 2024 edition of What's new in Microsoft 365 Copilot! Every month, we highlight new features and enhancements to keep Microsoft 365 admins up to date with Copilot features that help your users be more productive and efficient in the apps they use every day.  

Let’s take a closer look at what’s new this month: 

Admin and management capabilities:

• Introducing Copilot Analytics
• Metrics and insights added to Copilot Dashboard
• Empower site owners with Site Access Review in SharePoint Advanced Management
• New usage reports in Microsoft 365 admin center

End-user capabilities:

• Copilot will now include knowledge from Viva Engage
• Act on employee feedback with Copilot in Viva Glint
• Themes and improved chat for Copilot in Outlook
• Surface business insights with agents in SharePoint
• Enhanced referencing and images with Copilot in Word
• Richer presentations with Copilot in PowerPoint
• Enhancements to the chat experiences with Copilot
• Discover, save, and share prompts in the new Copilot Prompt Gallery

Introducing Copilot Analytics

At Ignite 2024, we announced that Microsoft Viva Insights will be included in Copilot at no additional charge as part of the new Copilot Analytics. Copilot Analytics is designed to empower every IT and business leader to measure adoption and business impact of Copilot and agents, with out-of-the-box experiences (Copilot Dashboard and Microsoft admin center) and customizable reporting for deeper analysis against KPIs. With Viva Insights included, IT admins and analysts can now tailor advanced prebuilt Copilot reports with their business data or create custom reports with organizational attributes, longer usage data sets, and more granular controls. Copilot Analytics will roll out in early 2025. Read more about Copilot Analytics.  

chart of recommended individual-level business outcome metrics for analysis

To make it easy for customers to measure the ROI of Copilot, we’re introducing the new Copilot business impact report for Copilot Analytics. This prebuilt report, powered by Viva Insights, is designed to help organizations understand how Microsoft 365 Copilot usage relates to KPIs. With this report, organizations can gain valuable insights into how Copilot provides business value across key areas like Sales, Service, Finance, Marketing, and more. The Copilot business impact report is currently in preview.  

A computer screenshot of the Copilot business impact summary in Viva Insights.

Metrics and insights added to Copilot Dashboard

Eight new Copilot feature metrics will soon be added in the Copilot Dashboard and Advanced Insights:  

• Intelligent Recap shows actions taken in Teams  
• Visualize as table shows actions taken in Word  
• Chat (Copilot in Word) displays prompts submitted in the in-app chat section in Word 
• Add content to presentation and Organize presentation display actions taken using PowerPoint  
• Chat (Copilot in PowerPoint) shows prompts submitted in the in-app chat section in PowerPoint  
• Chat (Copilot in Excel) shows prompts submitted in the in-app chat section in Excel  
• Copilot Chat (web) shows prompts submitted in Copilot Chat  
• Copilot Chat (web) shows prompts submitted in Copilot Chat on the web (This feature is also known as Copilot with Enterprise Data Protection and the insights include prompts submitted through all surfaces including Business Chat in Teams, Outlook, Bing.com, Copilot.microsoft.com and the Microsoft 365 app).   

These insights will roll out in December. Learn more about advanced insights in Microsoft Viva. 

A white landing page with app buttons to the left and categories listed that include Meetings, Email and Chat.

Soon IT admins will see insights related to Copilot with Enterprise Data Protection in Copilot Dashboard. Beyond Business Chat (work) prompt adoption, IT admins will be able to review the number of users actively using Business Chat (web) and the number of Business Chat (web) prompts submitted. This feature is rolling out in December. 

 

A white chart with 7 columns tallies group total usage between Teams, Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Copilot Chat (Web) and Copilot Chat (Work).

Empower site owners with Site Access Review in SharePoint Advanced Management

Using Site Access Review in SharePoint Advanced Management, IT admins managing SharePoint tenants to delegate the process of reviewing data access governance reports to site owners of overshared sites. This review process is crucial because: 

• IT administrators can't access file-level or item-level details due to compliance reasons. 
• Site owners are best positioned to review and address oversharing issues for their own sites. 

Site Access Reviews can be initiated for the top 100 sites listed in data access governance reports. These reviews specifically target oversharing issues identified in the selected reports. When an admin initiates a review, the system sends a context-specific email to the site owner. For example, if the review is for the Content shared with 'Everyone except external users' category, the email focuses solely on sharing issues for that report. 

This feature rolled out in November. Learn more about Site Access Reviews for data access governance reports. 

A computer screenshot of SharePoint admin center with a view of data access governance requests.

New usage reports in Microsoft 365 admin center

The Microsoft Copilot usage dashboard provides insights into active usage of Microsoft Copilot for users signed in with an Entra account. The report includes total active users, average daily active users, and active users per app, such as Microsoft 365 Apps and Microsoft Edge. Admins can view usage insights as totals and trends for the past 7, 30, 90, or 180-day periods. This feature rolled out in November.  

Product UI image of the Microsoft 365 admin center displaying the usage dashboard for Microsoft Copilot (enterprise data protection)

Copilot will now include knowledge from Viva Engage

Q&A from public Viva Engage communities will be available in Microsoft 365 Copilot workplace search. This brings a vast source of Viva Engage knowledge into Microsoft 365 Copilot to help ground common knowledge, giving Copilot users increased accuracy and consistency as it draws from the collective knowledge of employees. This feature is rolling out in December. Learn more in the Viva Engage Ignite Blog. 

A computer screenshot showing a Copilot Prompt referencing questions asked in Viva Engage.

Act on employee feedback with Copilot in Viva Glint

Copilot in Viva Glint helps business leaders and HR analysts easily understand, interpret and act on employee feedback. They can use Copilot to quickly summarize employee comments and double click into specific groups and teams to understand the concerns, recommendations, and feedback employees leave in Viva Glint surveys. This feature rolled out in November. For more details, read the Learn article. 

A computer screenshot showing a Comment Report in Viva Glint.

Themes and improved chat for Copilot in Outlook

Copilot in Outlook can now create unique and personal themes powered by AI. Themes by Copilot in Outlook harnesses the power of generative AI to help users create unique themes that reflect their personal preferences and style within their Outlook experience. This marks the first instance of dynamic, context-aware AI-generated theming in productivity applications. This feature rolled out in November. 

A collage of notes and items scattered on a desktop.

In Outlook on mobile, users can now choose whether Business Chat is grounded on work or web by using the toggle at the top of the app to select the context they want to work in. This feature rolled out in November. 

A mobile phone screenshot showing Outlook mobile with the Business Chat prompt.

Surface business insights with agents in SharePoint

Agents in SharePoint enable users to turn SharePoint sites and documents into scoped agents for specific business needs. These agents empower everyone to quickly surface insights, scale expertise, and make informed decisions. Agents created in SharePoint, based on content you choose, are like subject matter experts for you and team members, helping to streamline workflows and enhance productivity. This feature rolled out in November. Read more about agents in SharePoint. 

A screenshot of a SharePoint site with the Copilot agent list drop down.

Enhanced referencing and images with Copilot in Word

Copilot now supports more referenced content, longer referenced content, and allows users to write longer prompts. How users create and what users create along with Copilot is incredibly important, and supporting rich content referencing and prompts is key to creating and editing documents with Copilot. We’re excited to share three key expansions: 

1. Users can now include up to 10 references. When drafting with Copilot in Word, users can include up to 10 references (instead of the current 3), including Word, PowerPoint, PDFs, meeting transcripts, and email from a user’s Microsoft 365 Graph. This gives more flexibility to include content and context that would be helpful when creating a new document.  
2. Total references used in a prompt can be four times longer than before.  The size limit for total of all the attached references combined has expanded to approximately 80,000 words. 
3. Users can now create longer prompts. The prompt limit has been effectively removed, so users can write prompts that are longer and more specific than before.  

These features rolled out in November 2024.  

A Copilot prompt in Word has up to 10 references with the total size limit for combined references to be 4x larger than before.

Now users can easily create new written content from existing information in files, meetings, and email. This means that when users create content, it is deeply connected to their work, ensuring that documents are not only relevant but enriched with the context and information that matter most to projects. Whether drafting a report or composing an email, Copilot builds a new draft in minutes based on existing work, making the writing process more efficient and less daunting. This feature started rolling out in November on web and will roll out in 2025 for desktop and Mac.  

Write a prompt in Copilot in Word and reference meetings and emails in addition to files.

Users can create custom images using DALL-E 3 or find, add in stock images, or find a brand images from your organization’s SharePoint Organization Asset Library. To do this, they type a prompt into the Copilot chat pane, and Copilot will find and retrieve those most relevant image assets to insert into the document. ​This feature became available in November. Learn more about generating images and including stock images here, and connecting SharePoint OAL to Copilot for brand images here. 

Copilot chat pane is open with a prompt to generate an image of a parking lot, and showing 4 generated image options to choose from.

Richer presentations with Copilot in PowerPoint

Users can now develop company templates that work with Copilot to seamlessly create branded presentations. If an organization wants to use Copilot in PowerPoint to create, edit, and help present, now the Copilot PowerPoint starter template provides a blueprint for creating Copilot-friendly branded templates. This ensures that users can create branded decks and easily design branded slides with Copilot. Learn how to design company PowerPoint templates to work well with Copilot and download the Copilot PowerPoint Starter Template. This guidance became available in November. 

The layouts in the Copilot PowerPoint Starter Template that companies can use and adapt to their corporate branding.

After entering a prompt and seeing the outline of a narrative in PowerPoint, now users can add topics that include a Word doc or an encrypted Word doc. This helps fine-tune a user’s story, so Copilot can create a first-draft deck with relevant topics and information. This feature rolled out in November. 

A user sees the outline Copilot created and adds a topic that references a Word doc.

Images in PowerPoint presentations matter. They can make or break the look and feel of the information creators want to share. Now with Copilot in PowerPoint (and Word), users can create the perfect AI-generated image with a simple prompt, pull in the ideal stock photo, or add in the ideal brand image. To do this, a user will just prompt Copilot to:  

• “Create an image…” and Copilot will generate the image 
• “Find an image…” and Copilot will find options from Microsoft’s stock photography library, or  
• “Find a brand image…” and Copilot will find options from a connected SharePoint organization asset library. 

This feature rolled out in November. Learn more about how to create or add stock images here, or connecting SharePoint organization asset library to Copilot. 

In the Copilot chat pane a user asks to add a brand image of an EV charger, and Copilot includes the image, then Designer helps layout the image in the slide.

Enhancements to the chat experiences with Copilot

Now, users can ground their Copilot conversations in the latest information available on the web. Business Chat web mode is now available in Teams and Outlook. This feature rolled out in November. 

Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Chat web mode in Microsoft Teams web application.

Other features that rolled out in November for Business Chat include: 

• In the Edge browser sidebar, users can now ask Copilot to summarize an open webpage or PDF.  
• Copilot will provide contextual prompt suggestions to help users ask relevant questions about an open webpage.  
• Users can put more information into their prompts because the input size limit has increased. This will give users more space to share their thoughts, ideas, and questions without worrying about running out of room.  
• Users now have the ability to search for their meetings with external individuals in Business Chat.  

Discover, save, and share prompts in the new Copilot Prompt Gallery

Copilot Prompt Gallery (formerly known as Copilot Lab) empowers users to create, save, and share their favorite Microsoft 365 Copilot prompts with colleagues. Now, users can streamline their work by saving frequently used prompts within Business Chat. Users can easily find and reuse prompts under the ‘Your prompts’ tab from Copilot Prompt Gallery right in Business Chat. This feature rolled out in November. 

Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Chat UI with a filled flag icon showcasing a Copilot prompt being saved.

Users can now share with coworkers the great prompts that help them prepare for a customer meeting or generate ideas for a new product launch. Leaders across an organization can showcase how they’re using Copilot by sharing their favorite prompts to save time or tackle any task at hand. This feature is rolling out in December. 

Copilot Prompt Gallery allows you to create, save, and share prompts to colleagues within Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Chat.

Copilot Prompt Gallery is also expanding on this value to include prompts for agents. Agents supercharge Copilot by adding specialized skills and knowledge while automating specific tasks. Now users can discover prompts for agents provided by their organization that are tailored to specific roles, functions, and tasks. Additionally, users will soon be able to save and share these prompts to inspire others on the team. This feature is rolling out in December. 

To improve the prompt creation experience, new prompt collections have been added that are tailored to customer service, IT, and legal roles. Find these and other prompt collections in the Copilot Prompt Gallery by selecting “View prompts” in the prompt box of Business Chat, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, or visit aka.ms/prompts. These prompt collections rolled out in November.