Microsoft 365 Copilot Blog articles

Join Us Live: Understanding Copilot Cowork and Managing Copilot Credits

JonJones_MSFT — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 16:36:52 GMT

The way we work with AI is evolving rapidly, and so is the way organizations manage and scale those experiences. If you're exploring Copilot Cowork, navigating Copilot Credits, or looking for guidance on consumption-based AI experiences, you won't want to miss our upcoming live event.

🎙️ Live AMA: Understanding Copilot Cowork and Managing Copilot Credits

Tuesday, July 21, 2026
9:00–10:00 AM Pacific Time

Join us for a live webinar and Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) featuring experts from the Microsoft 365 Copilot team as they dive into the latest capabilities of Copilot Cowork and share practical guidance for managing Copilot Credits across your organization.

During this session, we'll explore:

Who should be using Copilot Cowork
How to allocate and manage Copilot Credits effectively
Best practices for adoption and governance
Strategies for scaling Copilot Cowork while maintaining visibility and control over costs

This is your opportunity to hear directly from the experts, learn from real-world scenarios, and get answers to your most pressing questions. Whether you're an IT administrator, adoption lead, business decision-maker, or Microsoft 365 enthusiast, you'll leave with actionable insights to help your organization maximize the value of AI-powered collaboration.

Bring Your Questions

The session will include a live Q&A where attendees can submit questions and receive answers directly from Microsoft subject matter experts. The team is specifically focused on helping customers better understand Copilot Cowork, credit management, and the evolving landscape of AI consumption and governance.

👉 Register and join the conversation: aka.ms/CopilotCoworkAMA

We look forward to seeing you on July 21!

Available today: OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 in Microsoft 365 Copilot

xiasong — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 15:04:24 GMT

Starting today, OpenAI's GPT-5.6 family of models is available in Microsoft 365 Copilot—in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Chat and Cowork. OpenAI and Microsoft partnered together to optimize GPT-5.6 for knowledge work across Microsoft 365 apps and make it the preferred model for Microsoft 365 Copilot. In addition to serving the models natively, Microsoft will also access OpenAI models directly through the API to bring GPT-5.6 to Microsoft 365 customers.

Knowledge work is complex—multistep, ambiguous, and spread across tools and files. With stronger reasoning for agentic, multi-step work, GPT-5.6 helps Copilot take on more of that complexity more efficiently, moving faster from initial ideas to more complete work. Microsoft 365 Copilot is AI built for work, where frontier models like GPT-5.6 are an important part of a broader system designed to deliver business value—bringing together Work IQ, Microsoft 365 apps, and the enterprise-grade security, compliance, and privacy customers expect from Microsoft.

Higher-quality work across apps you use every day

GPT-5.6 helps Copilot raise the quality of everyday work in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, moving from rough intent to stronger drafts, clearer analysis, and richer presentation drafts.

In Word, Copilot can help turn rough ideas into more complete drafts, organize content with stronger structure and flow, and refine writing into a more polished artifact.

In Excel, GPT-5.6 helps Copilot reason through more complex analysis and move from task to outcome with less manual assembly.

In PowerPoint, Copilot can create richer presentation drafts with stronger slide content, better visual balance, and more flexibility across presentation styles.

Across these apps, GPT-5.6 helps Copilot take on more of the steps between idea and finished work, while keeping knowledge workers in control of the final outcome.

Reason through complex asks in Chat

In Copilot Chat, GPT-5.6 helps Copilot reason through more complex asks—comparing options, structuring plans, troubleshooting problems, and working through ambiguity—to turn open-ended prompts into clearer, more actionable responses.

Get complex work done in Copilot Cowork

GPT-5.6 also strengthens agentic work in Copilot Cowork, carrying complex multi-step tasks from instruction to completed results. You describe the outcome, and Cowork plans, reasons across tools and files, and runs the work end-to-end, returning a finished deliverable, not just a draft or recommendation. With GPT-5.6, Cowork can execute efficiently and produce outputs that are more complete, polished, and usable from the start. Paired with Work IQ, grounded in the systems your business runs on, Cowork brings the right context to each step so the work reflects your files, tools, and business context. You spend less time assembling the work and more time deciding what to do with it.

Get started today

The shift in how work gets done is real—and choosing the right model for the task at hand matters.

GPT-5.6 is rolling out to Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Chat, and Copilot Cowork. Once available, Copilot may automatically use GPT-5.6 when it's best suited for the task. Where model selection is available, users can also choose GPT-5.6 directly from the model selector.

Availability may vary by region and tenant configuration; refer to Microsoft Learn documentation, the Microsoft 365 Roadmap and Microsoft 365 Copilot release notes for the latest rollout status.

For more details on the model, see OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 announcement here.

Available today: Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 5 in Microsoft 365 Copilot

Bas Brekelmans — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 15:55:25 GMT

Starting today, Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 5 is available in Microsoft 365 Copilot—a new frontier model rolling out in Copilot Cowork and PowerPoint, built for agentic, multi-step work across everyday work: documents, spreadsheets, and presentation tasks.

Anthropic describes Sonnet 5 as a more capable agentic Sonnet model, with performance close to that of Opus 4.8, but at lower prices¹ —bringing another capable option to Copilot for work that requires planning across steps, reasoning through context, and turning information into polished business artifacts.

Sonnet 5 joins a growing lineup of frontier models in Microsoft 365 Copilot, giving users the flexibility to choose the right model for their tasks, tuned for work and tailored to business needs, with the security, compliance, and privacy that you expect from Microsoft.

When combined with Work IQ, Copilot plans, builds, and creates artifacts grounded in the files, meetings, chats, and business data of your work.

Get started today

Claude Sonnet 5 is now rolling out to Copilot Cowork and Copilot in PowerPoint. Admins can manage access to Claude Sonnet 5 based on their organization’s policies and readiness.

Availability may vary by region and tenant configuration; refer to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap and the Microsoft 365 Copilot release notes for the latest rollout status.

¹ For more details on the model, see Anthropic’s announcement of Claude Sonnet 5.

Sales Agent is now generally available: Bringing customer and deal intelligence into the flow of work

gurkansalk — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 15:00:00 GMT

Give every seller the customer and deal context they need, wherever work happens—helping them prepare faster, follow up sooner, and keep CRM data current.

Built for the pace of modern selling, Sales Agent helps sellers quickly access the customer and deal information they need, so they can enter every conversation better prepared, capture what matters afterward, and maintain momentum across every opportunity.

By bringing together CRM insights and Microsoft 365 work data in the flow of work, Sales Agent reduces the friction of switching between systems and piecing together information from scattered sources. With general availability, organizations can confidently deploy Sales Agent at scale across their sales teams to help sellers stay informed, responsive, and focused on what matters most: building relationships and advancing revenue.

From preview to general availability

When the public preview of Sales Agent was released last December, it introduced a new way for sellers to access CRM and work data in the flow of work using natural language. From the start, sellers could get up to speed on accounts with account summaries and customer relationship insights, catch up on past customer meetings, look up information across CRM records, and generate personalized email drafts grounded in sales context—all without jumping across multiple systems.

Those preview capabilities helped sellers ramp up on new accounts faster, prepare for customer meetings with more confidence, and review pipeline status with less manual effort. By bringing together insights from CRM systems, emails, meetings, and enterprise content while respecting existing permissions, Sales Agent makes it easier to ask sales questions naturally and get answers grounded in the systems sellers already rely on.

Since public preview, we’ve expanded Sales Agent with new ways to help sellers stay on top of every deal and keep momentum moving after customer conversations. AI-powered Opportunity Summary brings the most important deal insights into a single easy-to-scan view, combining opportunity and account details, engagement signals, and recommended next steps. Instead of pulling information together from across CRM, emails, meetings, chats, and notes, sellers can quickly understand the full picture and focus on what matters most: moving the deal forward.

Sales Agent also helps sellers turn customer conversations into action right away. After a meeting, sellers can use natural language to capture key takeaways, objections, priorities, and follow-up commitments, then add those notes to CRM or update opportunity fields without breaking their flow. That makes it easier to keep pipeline data current, reduce post-meeting admin work, and help teams stay aligned on the latest state of every deal.

Sales Agent also brings seller workflows directly into Outlook Mobile and the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, helping sellers stay productive wherever work happens. Instead of waiting to return to a laptop or switching across systems, sellers can capture voice notes, and update opportunity information from their mobile device. This makes it easier to stay current on customers and deals while moving between meetings, traveling, or following up immediately after a conversation – turning mobile moments into opportunities to prep smarter, respond quickly, and move deals forward.

Microsoft 365 Copilot and Sales Agent are now also available within Dynamics 365 Sales, bringing sellers a more consistent and connected Copilot experience across the tools they use every day. Sellers can ask natural-language questions in Dynamics 365 and receive CRM-grounded insights enriched with context from Microsoft Graph, including emails, meetings, customer interactions, and account activity. This helps sellers quickly understand customer engagement and dynamics, identify engaged stakeholders, summarize accounts and opportunities, and determine the right next steps without switching applications.

Sales Agent is also configurable and extensible, allowing organizations to tailor CRM grounding, connect additional business systems, and add custom tools or knowledge.

Why this matters for sales teams

Great selling depends on having the right information at the moment it matters. Yet for many organizations, customer and deal insights remain fragmented across CRM systems, emails, meetings, and internal conversations. Sales Agent helps close that gap by bringing the right context into Microsoft 365 Copilot so sellers can move faster with confidence, wherever they work.

For sales organizations, that can mean stronger seller productivity, faster follow-through, and better CRM hygiene across the funnel. For sellers, it means less time spent searching, less effort spent updating records later, and more time focused on customers. The result is a more connected sales experience—from preparation to post-meeting action.

With general availability, sales organizations can bring Sales Agent to more teams and embed AI-powered support more consistently into everyday selling. The result is a more connected experience that helps sellers stay prepared, respond faster, and spend more time driving customer outcomes.

What customers are saying

Customers are already seeing how Sales Agent can help sellers move from information to action faster, with the right context before and after customer conversations.

“What makes Sales Agent powerful is its ability to turn data into action at the moment it matters. Our sellers can quickly understand account context, prepare for meetings, and respond with confidence—without leaving their workflow.”
— Todd Jones, Siemens Smart Infrastructure

“Sales Agent represents an important step in our broader agentic journey. It helps transform data into guidance at the moment of need, supporting better decisions and more meaningful customer engagement. For us, this is not just about efficiency—it’s about building a smarter, more connected sales organization.”
— Silvana Zafarana, Sandvik Coromant

Available now

Now generally available, Sales Agent is ready to help organizations scale AI-powered selling across every stage of the sales cycle. Sellers can use it to get fast answers, review deal and opportunity context, and take lightweight follow-up actions in the flow of work—including generally available capabilities for mobile use when they’re away from their desk.

General availability is an important milestone for Sales Agent—and an exciting next step in helping sellers sell with more speed, clarity, and confidence. We can’t wait to see how organizations use Sales Agent to help teams show up prepared, stay aligned on customer context, and keep every opportunity moving forward.

Get started with Sales Agent now!

Use Microsoft 365 Copilot and Sales Agent in Dynamics 365 Sales

The workflow is the product: Copilot Cowork plugins change what AI can do for businesses

Srini_Raghavan_Msft — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 15:30:00 GMT

Most of the work that matters doesn't happen in one place. A quarterly review, a win-loss analysis, an onboarding plan—each one draws on several systems, moves through several tools, and depends on someone holding the thread across all of them. That sort of connective work is exactly what our customers would like to see from AI.

Copilot Cowork, now generally available worldwide, is built for this sort of work—navigating long-running, multi-step processes. We designed it to be enterprise-ready from the outset: secure, compliant, and grounded in the data your business runs on, across your connected systems.

Cowork is at its best when it can reach the systems your teams already use. I'm excited to show you the partners already making that real.

Cowork works across the systems that power your business

Our partners each extend Cowork with a new place to do real work—a system to draw from, a tool to act on, a step a user can review and take action on. The more systems Cowork can reach this way, the more of the task it carries from start to finish.

Two simple building blocks make this work. Skills are repeatable instructions for doing a job, such as a research process or a regulatory response workflow. Connectors are secure bridges into the systems you already run. Either or both can be packaged into a plugin, distributed through the Microsoft Marketplace, built and maintained by a partner, so your team can add the capability simply by installing the plugin. That's what makes Cowork a specialist in the systems your business runs on, not just a capable generalist.

Here are some of the partners bringing their expertise and insight to Cowork; all plugins are currently available unless otherwise stated (videos have been condensed for length and clarity):

Inform financial and investment decisions

These partners bring market, fund, and credit intelligence—and the legal reasoning behind the deals—into reach, so Cowork can ground the numbers and the agreements in sources you trust.

S&P Global Energy delivers a comprehensive view of global energy and commodities markets to Cowork, enabling more informed decision-making based on trusted data, insights, and research.

LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group) is one of the world’s leading providers of data, analytics, and critical financial infrastructure, enabling customers to draw crucial insights through data, analytics, and workflows. These capabilities are now brought to Cowork, bringing trusted data, analytics, and research across global asset classes.

Morningstar gives Cowork independent investment research, verified data, and proprietary analytics across global asset classes to help professionals ground portfolio decisions, client insights, and market analysis in the independent intelligence relied on by investors worldwide.
Moody’s equips Cowork with its intelligence to inform your decisions, powering high-priority financial workflows including peer comparisons, ratings pitches, sector outlooks and comprehensive company analysis, all grounded in Moody's proprietary ratings, research and risk intelligence.
Money Forward connects Japan-market finance and accounting to Cowork, pulling AP/AR and expense data, reconciling transactions, and producing close-ready reporting.

Scale consistent, high-quality outcomes across professional service engagements

Box powers a meeting prep workflow in Microsoft Copilot Cowork. With the Box plugin enabled, Cowork can search Outlook calendar invites, retrieve relevant documents via Box MCP server tools, and produce a prep summary saved back to Box and ready to open inside Microsoft 365.

Harvey brings purpose-built legal intelligence to Copilot Cowork—contract review, clause comparison, and jurisdiction-aware drafting—so legal teams can run complex, multi-step workflows without leaving Microsoft 365.

Ground your work in market and competitive research

When the question is what's happening beyond your own walls, these plugins give Cowork the analyst's view: market size, sentiment, and competitive signal.

CB Insights (coming soon) adds predictive intelligence on private companies and markets to Cowork. Teams use it to source the most promising companies, evaluate new markets, and support their work in strategy, M&A, and corporate and business development.

Statista (coming soon) supplies Cowork with validated market forecasts and consumer survey data spanning 190+ countries, 1,000+ markets, and 2M+ consumer interviews, grounding market sizing, consumer research, and automated briefings in statistics trusted by businesses worldwide.

Act across the enterprise systems work runs on

Cowork acts inside live records—reading orders, updating files, moving projects forward—without anyone needing to export or re-key a file.

monday.com connects boards and items to Cowork, opening projects, updating statuses and owners, flagging work that's slipping, and rolling board activity into a status update ready to share.

enosix Arnold™ for Cowork turns SAP order management into a smoother experience, helping teams track progress, make updates, create quotes, and retrieve documents with ease.

Turn finished work into something ready to share

Once the thinking is done, these partners turn Cowork's output into a finished, on-brand deliverable: decks, documents, and visuals.

Adobe (coming soon) extends Cowork with its Customer Experience Orchestration agentic capabilities and intelligence to streamline workflows, optimize customer journeys, and expedite campaign decisions within the flow of work.

Canva brings visual design expertise into Cowork. Set the goal—a branded deck, a launch kit, a personalized campaign—and Cowork uses Canva's design skills to deliver it end-to-end: on-brand, finished, and saved back to Canva, ready to share.

Miro turns Cowork's analysis into a visual board—diagrams, frameworks, and workshop-ready layouts your whole team can build on, all on one shared canvas..

Templafy (coming soon) turns Cowork’s output into consistent, on-brand presentations built from a company’s own templates, best-practice slides, and brand assets.

Every action Cowork takes is governed like the rest of Microsoft 365

Cowork integrates with Microsoft Purview controls your data security and compliance teams already use today to manage Microsoft 365 Copilot. That means sensitivity labels are inherited and respected, interactions are captured in audit logging and DSPM activity explorer, and Communication Compliance and eDiscovery apply. Customers can also detect user risk with Insider Risk Management and leverage retention policies with Data Lifecycle Management. Data Loss Prevention protections extended to Cowork are coming soon. For prompts, responses, and generated artifacts, we are extending to Cowork scenarios available today for Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Put Cowork to work across your systems

This launch is just the beginning. Every plugin that joins the ecosystem gives Cowork another place to do real work and another stretch of the task it can carry end to end. Cowork is generally available worldwide, and we can't wait to see what your teams get done with it.

What’s New in Microsoft 365 Copilot | June 2026

Seth_Patton — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 17:07:56 GMT

Welcome to the June 2026 edition of What's New in Microsoft 365 Copilot! Every month, we highlight new features and enhancements to keep Microsoft 365 customers 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:

User capabilities:

General availability for Copilot Cowork
Expanded citations and reasoning for Copilot app and Chat
New references and access for Copilot Notebooks
Customization and refinement for Copilot in Outlook
Improvements to document editing for Copilot in Word
Updates to branding, skills, and references for Copilot in PowerPoint
Skills, personalization, and rules for Copilot in Excel
Planner Agent availability and Researcher options for Copilot Agents

IT admin capabilities:

New adoption and management capabilities for Microsoft 365 admin center
Email restriction and Cowork controls for Purview Data Loss Prevention

User capabilities

General availability for Copilot Cowork

Copilot Cowork, an agentic system that plans, executes, and delivers real work, is now generally available worldwide. Users define the task, and Cowork executes it from start to finish, returning a completed deliverable rather than a draft or recommendation. Powered by Work IQ, Cowork grounds every task in the systems that a business already runs on, so the work reflects real context. Cowork is enabled via usage-based billing, and administrators can use the new Cost Management Dashboard in the Microsoft 365 admin center to monitor credit usage, manage budgets, and control spend. Learn more about Cost Management in the entry below.

Now the Microsoft 365 Copilot app has a toggle users can switch between Chat and Cowork. This gives users an easy way to choose between working on answers and action. This feature rolled out in June.

Cowork can now choose the model that best fits the task with OpenAI GPT 5.5 Thinking. Cowork can also choose Anthropic models for visual work like PowerPoint and graphics or use GPT 5.5 for deeper research with citations. This helps users get more tailored support for different types of work without selecting a model manually. This feature rolled out in June to Frontier.

Cowork now supports more plugins, giving users access to additional business systems directly in the flow of work. New plugins available in the plugin store include Enosix, Harvey, LSEG, Miro, monday.com, Moodys, Morningstar, S&P Global Energy, and TeamsMaestro, with Databricks available through sideloading. Microsoft Fabric and the full Dynamics 365 portfolio, including Sales, Customer Service, and ERP apps, are also supported. These plugins rolled out in June.

Users can now easily create, edit, and manage custom skills in Cowork through the Customize tab to personalize what Cowork can do. Skills are custom instructions that make Cowork work the way users do. Now users can more easily build and refine custom skills over time as well as combine your own workflows with partner-provided or org-wide skills deployed through plugins. This helps teams standardize recurring tasks without rewriting prompts each time. This feature rolled out in June.

Cowork can now directly create and edit visuals including deck graphics, document illustrations, and email imagery. Powered by OpenAI's ChatGPT Images 2.0, this helps users generate visuals in the flow of work without switching tools. Cowork can also now use branded PowerPoint templates from an organization’s asset library, so users can create decks with approved colors, fonts, logos, and layouts from the start, reducing manual formatting and brand cleanup after a presentation is generated. These features rolled out in June.

Cowork can use the Edge browser to do work across an organization’s business systems, websites, and intranet sites. This feature rolled out in June to Frontier.

Cowork is now available for mobile users on iOS and Android. Users can start working on one device and continue on another with the same context and conversation intact. This gives mobile users full access to Cowork without losing their place. This feature rolled out in June.

Cowork now sends push notifications for long-running tasks, including approvals, input requests, and completions. This enables users to stay informed without needing to monitor open tasks, so they can continue their own work while Cowork finishes. This feature rolled out in June.

Expanded citations and reasoning for Copilot app and Chat

With Work IQ, Microsoft 365 Copilot can now reason over Power BI enterprise data and return grounded answers directly from Power BI reports and semantic models. Users can ask natural-language questions and get accurate answers without building queries themselves. This brings governed BI data into the Copilot experience for faster, trustworthy insights. This feature rolled out to the Frontier program in June.

Work IQ also enables Copilot to now search and query Dataverse business data, bringing line-of-business records into the flow of work across Copilot Chat experiences. Users can ask about their Dataverse data in natural language and get grounded answers without leaving Copilot. This extends Copilot's reach into the structured business data organizations keep in Dataverse. This feature rolled out in public preview in June and will be generally available in September.

Deep citations let users verify Copilot's results by linking directly to the specific part of a referenced file rather than the whole file. The feature is rolling out with support for Word and PowerPoint files, and soon will include Meetings, Web, and PDF references as well. By enabling users to trace an answer back to its source, deep citations build trust in Copilot's output. This feature rolled out in June.

The new Regenerate action lets users use simple options like Try Again or Switch Model to quickly get an alternative response to their latest prompt directly in Copilot Chat. Instead of starting over, users can explore different answers and refine the output in place, helping to improve quality and find the response that fits. This feature rolled out in June.

Vision in Microsoft 365 Copilot helps users get answers faster when work depends on what they see on screen or through their phone camera. Instead of trying to describe a dashboard, document, image, error message, or real-world object, users can show it to Copilot and ask questions in a voice conversation. Copilot uses that visual context, along with available work and web context, to explain what is in front of them, surface insights, and guide next steps. Learn how to start vision. This feature is rolling out in July.

Users can now get actionable feedback on a Copilot Page by selecting "Suggested edits" in the Copilot Shortcuts menu. Copilot analyzes the page content and offers feedback and suggestions in-line to improve clarity and quality, which users can then apply directly to the page. This helps users quickly polish their work and keep momentum without switching tools. This feature rolled out in June.

New references and access for Copilot Notebooks

Users can add Outlook emails as references in Copilot Notebooks. Bringing email content into the notebook lets users ground Copilot in the conversations, decisions, and context that drive their work. This connects email-based context to the broader notebook workspace. This feature is rolling out in July.

Previously only available to Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed users, Copilot Notebooks is now rolling out to Copilot Chat users, giving more team members a shared place to gather project context, work from reference sources, and turn that information into helpful mind maps and learning tools in study guide. This feature rolled out in June.

Classic Outlook for Windows now provides direct access to different Copilot settings. Users can find and adjust their Copilot options without leaving Outlook. This makes managing the Copilot experience more convenient for classic Outlook users. This feature is rolling out in July.

Users can now refine an email draft with Copilot directly in the compose canvas. By selecting a section of the draft, users can ask Copilot to adjust its length, tone, or structure. This makes targeted edits easy without rewriting the whole message. This feature rolled out in June on the web.

Improvements to document editing for Copilot in Word

Model choice is now available in Copilot in Word, giving users the option to choose Anthropic models when editing documents with Copilot. This gives writers more flexibility for tasks like rewriting, summarizing, restructuring, and refining content, so they can choose the model that best fits the type of work they are doing. Users get more control over the editing experience and a better chance of getting the right tone, structure, and level of detail without starting over or rewriting prompts repeatedly. This feature rolled out in June.

Copilot Catchup is now available as a content card that surfaces a quick recap of what's changed in a document since a user last opened it. Instead of rereading a document to find updates, users get a quick recap up front. It's a fast way to get back up to speed on shared and evolving files. This feature rolled out in June.

Users can now create and insert an image using Copilot in Word. Copilot generates and places the image inline as part of the agentic editing flow. This brings image creation directly into the Word authoring experience. This feature rolled out in June.

Copilot in Word agentic capabilities are now available for iOS, so users can edit and add content to documents from their iPhone or iPad. This brings core Copilot writing support to users who need to keep work moving on their iOS devices. Users can make quick updates, draft new content, and refine existing text directly on their mobile device, while also performing more advanced actions like image insertion and tracked changes in the full Word experience. This feature rolled out in June.

Word now preserves Copilot Chat conversation history from chat to the apps. Users can pick up where they left off without losing the thread of their Copilot session, keeping complex, multi-step document work continuous. This feature rolled out in June.

Copilot can reason over and apply changes edits to a document based on content in comments. Rather than manually working through feedback, users can have Copilot implement the suggested changes. This speeds up the revision cycle on collaborative documents. This feature rolled out in June.

Updates to branding, skills, and references for Copilot in PowerPoint

Brand Kit Picker lets users easily create presentations that follow their organization’s approved brand templates. When building a deck with Copilot, users can select an admin-approved brand kit so the presentation starts with the right colors, fonts, and visual style. This helps teams create polished, on-brand decks faster and reduces the need for manual formatting or brand cleanup after the presentation is generated. This feature rolled out in June.

Users will be able to create and reuse Copilot skills for repeatable PowerPoint presentation tasks. By saving common instructions as skills, users can standardize how they build, refine, and format presentations without recreating the same prompts each time. This feature rolled out in July.

When creating a presentation with Copilot in PowerPoint, users can now reference SharePoint libraries and OneDrive folders. Copilot draws on these sources to ground the deck in the organization’s existing content, helping users create presentations that reflect specific material instead of relying on general information. This feature rolled out in June.

Skills, personalization, and rules for Copilot in Excel

Users can now use Skills in Copilot in Excel to package repeatable workflows as reusable instructions. Teams can create custom skills for common analysis, modeling, or reporting tasks and invoke them when working in Excel. This helps users standardize complex work without rewriting the same prompts each time. This feature rolled out in June.

Copilot in Excel now supports Personalization, so users can set standing preferences once and have Copilot apply them consistently across workbooks. Users can define guidance for formatting, naming conventions, formulas, PivotTables, and report styles, so Copilot’s edits reflect how they prefer to work without repeating the same instructions in every prompt. This helps make outputs more consistent, reduces rework, and gives users more control over how Copilot edits their spreadsheets. This feature rolled out in June.

Copilot in Excel now gives teams a way to define standards that stay with a specific workbook through workbook rules sheets. Rules can capture structure, formatting, naming, formula conventions, and examples in a .Rules sheet, so everyone using Copilot to edit the file follows the same workbook-specific guidance. Rules can also reference examples, formulas, ranges, and other sheets, making it easier to standardize recurring templates and team workflows directly in Excel. This feature rolled out in June.

Planner Agent availability and Researcher options for Copilot Agents

When the Researcher agent is added to a Copilot chat, users can now choose from supported Researcher models and modes directly in the conversation. This puts control over depth and approach in the user's hands for each research task. Teams get more flexibility to match the model to the job at hand. This feature rolled out in June.

The Planner Agent helps users plan, organize, and manage work more efficiently. The agent delivers interactive task cards and actionable insights in Microsoft 365 Copilot, so users can easily prioritize tasks across Planner plans, and focus on what matters. Via natural language prompts, users can also create and update tasks or ask the agent to create structured plans with goals and buckets. This feature rolled out in June.

IT admin capabilities

New adoption and management capabilities for Microsoft 365 admin center

Admins can now create and publish organization prompts in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, easily guiding users toward relevant, effective ways to use Copilot for common workflows. Users can find organization prompts in the Copilot Chat prompt suggestions and Prompt Gallery, helping them build effective prompting habits and explore Copilot use cases tailored to them. This feature rolled out in June.

Cost Management Dashboard in Microsoft 365 admin center provides a centralized way to activate, manage, and optimize spending on AI experiences enabled by usage-based billing, including Copilot Cowork. Administrators can allocate Copilot Credits, create spending policies and limits by groups, and choose between prepaid credits and pay-as-you-go billing models. Reporting, budgets, alerts, and hard caps help organizations monitor usage, control costs, and manage spend. This capability rolled out in June. Learn more here.

Additional cost reporting at the group or team level will also be available through a dashboard in Insights to give team leaders a view into their team’s use of Copilot Credits. The dashboard is enabled by default and available to managers with at least five direct reports, as well as Insights Analysts and Global Administrators, helping leaders quickly understand and manage AI spend. This capability will roll out in July.

Agent metrics for custom reporting will be available in Insights. Analysts can explore and combine granular agent usage data with organizational context to identify adoption trends, create customize reports, and make data-driven decisions without relying on predefined dashboards. This feature will roll out to public preview in July and be available in September.

Organizational Messages now support hybrid‑joined devices, enabling admins to deliver targeted in-product communications to users on devices that are connected to both on‑premises Active Directory and Microsoft Entra ID. This expands message reach to users within enterprise environments where hybrid identity configurations are common, helping organizations consistently drive awareness, onboarding, and adoption of Copilot, agents, and other Microsoft 365 experiences across managed endpoints. By closing a key gap in device coverage, IT teams expand organizational messages reach and engage users on a broader set of devices. This feature rolled out in June.

Admins now have a control for vision in Microsoft 365, which uses a stream of images from screen or camera sharing as input to the model. This gives organizations control over when and where vision can be used. This feature rolled out in June.

Email restriction and Cowork controls for Purview Data Loss Prevention

Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention can now restrict external emails from being referenced in Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Chat. Admins can use this control to exclude messages from external senders from being summarized, referenced, or used as grounding data in Copilot responses. This helps organizations reduce the risk of external, third-party, or unvetted information appearing in AI-generated responses while keeping users productive with trusted internal content. The capability applies to Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents built in Copilot Studio that are published to Microsoft 365 Copilot, using only Microsoft 365 data. This feature rolled out to public preview in June and will be generally available in July.

Microsoft Purview controls now extend to Cowork, helping organizations manage security and compliance with the same tools they use for Microsoft 365 Copilot. Cowork supports sensitivity label inheritance and display, audit logging, interaction content in Data Security Posture Management Activity Explorer, Insider Risk Management of user risks associated with Cowork interactions, as well as eDiscovery, Data Lifecycle Management (DLM), and Communication Compliance of Cowork interactions. This helps organizations secure and govern Cowork interactions with familiar controls. These features rolled out in June.

Did you know? The Microsoft 365 Roadmap is where you can get the latest updates on productivity apps and intelligent cloud services. Microsoft 365 Copilot release notes is where you can see the Microsoft 365 Copilot features that are generally available (Current Channel for Microsoft 365 apps) and specific to each platform. Check back regularly to see what features are in development, coming soon and generally available. Please note that the dates mentioned in this article are tentative and subject to change.

What’s New in Notebooks | June 2026

ezrapark — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 15:03:45 GMT

Today, Copilot Notebooks is rolling out to more people across your team, making shared notebook collaboration broadly accessible in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app and OneNote.

Copilot Notebooks are available to Copilot Chat users

Previously only available to Microsoft 365 Copilot users, Copilot Notebooks is now rolling out to Copilot Chat users, giving more people across the team a shared place to gather project context, work from reference sources, and turn that information into helpful mind maps and learning tools in study guide.

This gives Copilot Chat users a powerful workspace for knowledge sharing and collaboration: they can add files — including Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Excel worksheets, and Outlook emails — into a notebook, ask questions across those sources, and understand content through mind maps and learning tools in study guide.

In mixed-licensed teams, everyone can collaborate in the same notebook¹, while Microsoft 365 Copilot users can add premium sources and use premium AI capabilities, like advanced creation experiences.

Starting today, Copilot Chat users can explore Copilot Notebooks in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app and in OneNote².

Availability: Rolling out to Copilot Chat commercial and education users² starting today.

Learn more about Copilot Notebooks and this change in our Support documentation. For more information for education users², read the Copilot Notebooks in Education blog.

¹Copilot Chat users have limited sources per notebook, access to standard sources only, and standard access to chat.

²Only Copilot Notebooks in OneNote on web will be available to Copilot Chat (Basic) commercial customers at this time.

Review our previous blog about Copilot Notebooks

What’s New in Notebooks | May 2026 | Microsoft Community Hub

Available today: Anthropic Claude Fable 5 in Microsoft 365 Copilot

Bas Brekelmans — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 20:58:32 GMT

We’re expanding model choice in Microsoft 365 Copilot with Anthropic’s latest model, Claude Fable 5 as a preview model—designed to support longer, multi-step workflows.

As organizations move beyond simple prompts to more complex work, customers are using Copilot to help plan, draft, and iterate across tasks. With Work IQ, Copilot can ground tasks and outputs in relevant work context—such as files, meetings, chats, and business data—so responses are more relevant to the work at hand.

This integration reinforces Microsoft’s commitment to bringing the latest AI innovations to Microsoft 365 Copilot quickly and responsibly—with enterprise protections, administrative controls, and customer choice built in. Admins can manage access to Claude Fable 5 (preview) based on their organization’s policies and readiness. Because use of Claude Fable 5 is subject to data retention by Anthropic, organizations should review this consideration as part of their enablement decision. Learn more

Get started today

In Microsoft 365 Copilot, pick the right model for the job. Claude Fable 5 (preview) is now available as a default-off option in Copilot Cowork (Frontier), with private preview available today in Copilot in Excel and PowerPoint.

Availability may vary by region and tenant configuration; refer to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap and Microsoft 365 Copilot release notes for the latest rollout status.

For more details on the model, see Anthropic’s announcement of Claude Fable 5 here.

Learning Agent now generally available — personalized AI upskilling for every employee

Dan Zarzar — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 16:02:52 GMT

Meet Learning Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot

Today we’re excited to announce the general availability of Learning Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot, to help every employee build Copilot and AI skills where the work gets done. It provides personalized recommendations based on each person’s context – their role, daily tasks, and work patterns – so learning feels relevant, practical, and easy to act on. Learning Agent helps users learn by doing — right within Microsoft 365 Copilot, and across other familiar experiences including Teams, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

As organizations roll out AI tools across the board, the workforce has not kept pace and employees need support to use these new tools effectively. Turning access into real usage is hindered by disconnected learning sources, outdated course catalogs, and generic learning programs. Employees are asked to adopt AI, but they’re not always given clear, relevant guidance into how it applies to their specific role and daily work.

How can leaders tasked with AI transformation help employees build AI fluency and turn AI investments into meaningful business results? Enter Learning Agent – a personalized, interactive Microsoft 365 Copilot agent embedded in the flow of work, designed to drive meaningful learning experiences and deliver measurable impact.

Scale AI skilling across your workforce

Powered by Work IQ and connected with AI Skills Navigator (in preview later this month), Learning Agent goes beyond content curation. The agent grounds every recommendation in the richest learning signal available in the enterprise – data from your Microsoft 365 ecosystem, authoritative SharePoint sites organization admins designate as sources of truth, Microsoft's out-of-the-box global content from AI Skills Navigator, Microsoft Learn, and Microsoft 365 training, along with the LMS and third-party content already flowing through Viva Learning. Employees and organizations can build AI fluency at scale in four key ways that personalize skilling for each employee, ensure learning is relevant to real work, and connect closely to measurable business impact.

Make AI upskilling and reskilling really stick

Employees need more than generic AI training. Learning Agent enables tailored AI and Copilot skilling through personalized, continuous learning they can use right away.

AI Tip of the Day – Copilot tips tailored to each employee’s role and tasks, with starter prompts they can try immediately
AI Skills Navigator integrated experience (in preview later this month) – trusted Microsoft-curated training, credentials, and insights from sources like Microsoft Learn, and YouTube for a variety of learning paths
Admin-led Copilot onboarding (in preview later this month) – IT admins can trigger guided, hands-on training to specific security groups, with progress tracked through Viva Learning
Copilot Academy entry point – structured learning paths and Microsoft documentation to build foundational and advanced Copilot skills directly in Microsoft 365 Copilot
Tenant-grounded microlearning– highly contextual recommendations sourced from admin-prioritized authoritative SharePoint sites and content across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem
Org-curated learning – while the agent enables AI skilling out of the box for Microsoft 365 Copilot users, organizations with Viva Learning licenses get an enhanced experience that surfaces assigned training, academies, and learning paths from connected learning management systems alongside AI-driven recommendations

For IT leaders rolling out Copilot in their organization, this means turning awareness into real skill growth — without building a separate training program from scratch.

Deliver learning in the moment employees need it

The best learning happens when it’s timely, relevant, and easy to act on. Learning Agent brings personalized guidance directly into the Copilot experience, so people can learn while getting work done.

Grounded in real work –recommendations are based on each user’s role, not a generic curriculum
Built into Microsoft 365 Copilot (desktop app and web browser) – no switching tools, no digging through course catalogs, and no extra friction
Access across Microsoft 365 experiences – streamlined agent experience extended to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams

Beyond traditional learning tools, Learning Agent meets people where they already work, making it easier to build habits and sustain adoption to reshape how people work.

“Learning Agent has the potential to reinvent Learning at EY delivering dynamic, deeply personalised experiences in the flow of work.

I’m incredibly excited to see how it continues to evolve and shape a truly future‑ready workforce.”

— Jon Turner, Global Learning & Development Innovation & AI Lead, EY

Personalize learning without adding complexity

Generic training gets generic results. Learning Agent personalizes learning at enterprise scale, so each employee gets guidance that feels relevant – without requiring manual curation for every role, team, or scenario.

Context from user skills and work patterns – recommendations are shaped by each person’s skills and tasks, powered by people and user context from Work IQ
Relevant across the organization – personalization can reflect the needs of individuals, teams, and the broader organization
Grounded in enterprise knowledge – the agent can surface content from across Microsoft 365 and prioritize admin-configured SharePoint as an authoritative source
Role-based and AI-driven paths – employees can explore curated learning paths from Copilot Academy, AI Skills Navigator, and their organization’s own training content
One connected learning ecosystem – bring together out-of-the-box content from AI Skills Navigator, LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft 365 training and content from Viva Learning (including courses, Academies, and curated learning paths), alongside integrations with LMS platforms and third-party providers. This creates a single, unified destination where employees can easily discover and access all their learning content.

For Talent Development leaders, that means every employee can get a more tailored learning experience — without the overhead of managing everything manually.

“Learning Agent in Copilot provides a unique and personalized learning experience for our employees in Grundfos … if someone doesn't know where to start, or how to proceed with their learning journey, Learning Agent supports you by identifying relevant skills and build personal learning collections through skill assessments. With a few minutes spent with Learning Agent, you find more relevant courses, instead of ending spending hours on a course only to find out it did not provide what you were looking for.”

— Marcus Bendt Krogh Haure, Lead Product Owner, Learn & Grow, Grundfos

Help employees learn by doing

Watching content is only part of the story. Learning Agent helps employees build skills through hands-on, interactive experiences that make learning more practical, engaging, and easier to apply on the job.

Skill assessments with personalized next steps – users can take an assessment grounded in enterprise content to spot gaps and get a learning plan tailored to what they need or complete a certification
Microlearning in chat – people can learn in short, conversational sessions without leaving the flow of work
Interactive coaching – get experiences like LinkedIn Learning AI Role Play and Skillsoft CAISY® Conversation AI Simulator so employees can practice real scenarios in a safe environment (additional licenses required)
Gamified engagement – features like learning streaks help keep momentum going over time

This learn-by-doing approach helps employees move beyond consuming content and start building skills they can put to work right away.

For Talent Development leaders, reports help admins and leaders understand the impact of skilling initiatives and connect learning activities to business outcomes. Reporting is accessed in two surfaces - in the Viva Insights Agent Dashboard, and in the Learning Agent reporting dashboard. These reports give admins and leaders a holistic view of how employees are engaging with Learning Agent.

The Agent Dashboard in Viva Insights (public preview) provides insight into adoption metrics across all agents. Learn more about the Agent Dashboard. Learning Agent usage reports show a variety of metrics calculated over a 30-day period – including discovery rate, active users, engagement rate, and general activity level. Admins access this report directly in Learning Agent, with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.

What’s next

General availability is just the start. Here’s a look at what we’re building next to help workforces grow AI skills faster and make skilling even more connected to the flow of work.

AI Skills Navigator preview features in Learning Agent will roll out to general availability, along with embedding the experience within the agent
Admin-led Copilot onboarding and training preview features in Learning Agent will roll out to general availability
Expanded support for content extensibility connectors, so customers can bring their existing content into a centralized agentic experience
Learning Agent will be embedded in Viva Learning, maintaining your experience wherever you are upskilling

Get started

For customers with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, Learning Agent is ready to deploy today – see our deployment and configuration guidance here. If you’re attending Microsoft Build this week, June 2-3, in San Francisco, join us at DEM351 - “AI Skills Navigator: Accelerate tech skills with personalized learning” and visit the Global Skilling booth.

Employees with access to Learning Agent can jump right into the starter recommendations or try out these prompts:

“What skills should I focus on to grow in my current role?”
“Give me a tip to use Copilot for [your scenario — e.g., summarize an email thread into key decisions and action items]”
“Help me improve in this task: [your scenario — e.g., maintain and update technical documentation libraries]”
“Recommend short videos to learn [skill]”
“Start a role play simulation for handling [scenario — e.g., a customer escalation]”

To read more about additional agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot, visit our adoption page and join the Copilot community to ask questions and connect with other customers.

What’s New in Microsoft 365 Copilot | May 2026

Seth_Patton — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 21:52:59 GMT

Welcome to the May 2026 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:

User capabilities:

Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8 is now available
Refreshed design, Notebooks enhancements, and Apple CarPlay for the Microsoft 365 Copilot app
GPT-5.5 Instant for Copilot Chat and Copilot Studio
Expanded content in the Copilot Prompt Gallery
Learning Agent
Account selector for Copilot in Outlook
Call delegation, recap deletion, and video recap with Copilot in Teams
Document summaries, personalization, and writing suggestions from Copilot in Word
Slide explanations and built-in skills with Copilot in PowerPoint
Custom skills for Copilot in SharePoint

Copilot controls:

Expanded ISO certifications across our Copilot portfolio
The new Copilot Adoption Hub
Enabling watermarks for sensitive material

User capabilities

Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8 is now available

Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8 is now available in Microsoft 365 Copilot, expanding model choice for more advanced work scenarios. This model supports complex, multi-step tasks and long-running workflows, with improvements in tool selection, instruction following, and task completion. It also delivers stronger results for drafting documents, analyzing data, and building presentations. When used with Work IQ, outputs are grounded in your organization’s data, helping ensure more relevant and accurate results. This model is available in Copilot Cowork (Frontier) and is rolling out to Copilot Studio early release cycle environments, Copilot Chat, Excel, and PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed users.

Refreshed design, Notebooks enhancements, and Apple CarPlay for the Microsoft 365 Copilot app

The refreshed design in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app delivers a more streamlined, chat-centered experience. These updates simplify the chat and response layout, improve navigation, and introduce new ways for users to organize work. This helps users stay focused, maintain context, and move work forward more efficiently. This feature is rolling out in June.

The Copilot Notebooks design in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app has been updated to help organize chats and work by project. The new UI brings together chats, output creations, and references in one place, so users can more easily collaborate and move work forward. And Copilot Notebooks in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app and in the OneNote app stay in sync, so users can move smoothly between experiences and interact with the same notebook in the way that works best for them. This feature is rolling out in June.

Copilot Notebooks can now reference individual Teams meetings as knowledge sources, by bringing transcripts, notes, chats, and shared content into the Notebooks experience. By grounding Copilot on the discussions, decisions, and context behind the work, users get more accurate and connected answers. This feature rolled out to Frontier in May and is rolling out worldwide in June.

Copilot Notebooks can now generate Excel spreadsheets with the Excel agent directly from a notebook. Copilot draws from the content and references already in the notebook, and then drafts a spreadsheet that is structured, consistent, and ready to refine. Once the flow is initiated, the Excel agent asks clarification questions to gather responses that will help create a spreadsheet tailored to each unique request. Users can continue working with Copilot to edit and steer the spreadsheet further in Excel. This feature rolled out to Frontier in May and is rolling out worldwide in June.

Infographics in Copilot Notebooks automatically convert notebook content into clear, visual summaries that are ready to share. The information and references in a notebook are analyzed to generate an infographic that highlights key points, relationships, and insights. Instead of manually building slides or visual assets, users can instantly turn technical notes, project updates, or documentation into easy-to-understand visuals that help them communicate complex information more effectively. This feature rolled out to Frontier in May and is rolling out worldwide in June.

Copilot is now available in Apple CarPlay, giving users a hands-free way to stay on top of work while driving. Users can use voice to start a new conversation or continue an existing chat through their car’s built-in display and audio system. This helps users catch up on their day, review priorities, and capture ideas more safely without typing or looking at their phone. This feature rolled out in May.

GPT-5.5 Instant for Copilot Chat and Copilot Studio

OpenAI's GPT-5.5 Instant is now available in Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot Studio, bringing higher-quality responses for everyday work tasks, image analysis, and STEM-related questions. Building on GPT-5.3 Instant, the new model delivers clearer, more concise answers with less verbosity and fewer unnecessary follow-up questions, so users reach a useful answer with less back-and-forth. In Copilot Chat it appears as "GPT-5.5 Quick response" in the GPT model selector; in Copilot Studio it rolls out to early release cycle environments as "GPT-5.5 Chat." This model rolled out in May.

Expanded content in the Copilot Prompt Gallery

The new Prompt Gallery helps users move from wondering what Copilot can do to trying useful tasks right away. It brings together ready-to-use prompts, simple guidance, and task-based ideas in one place. Prompts are provided for drafting content, preparing for meetings, analyzing information, and getting caught up on work faster. The gallery page helps users find a useful starting point, try a prompt in Copilot, and share workflows across an organization. Learn more at the Prompt Gallery.

Learning Agent

Powered by Work IQ and integrated with AI Skills Navigator (in preview), Learning Agent delivers personalized, in-the-flow learning, helping employees build Copilot and AI skills faster through content tailored to their role and daily work. It provides relevant tips, skill assessments, customized learning plans, certifications, and roleplay practice, so people can learn by doing directly within their workflow and continuously improve over time. This agent is rolling out in June.

Account selector for Copilot in Outlook

Users with more than one Copilot-enabled account in Outlook for Windows now get an account dropdown in the Copilot side pane in their Outlook calendar. The selector makes it clear which account Copilot is acting on and lets users switch accounts easily. For multi-tenant users, this removes a common source of confusion and accidental cross-account actions. This feature rolled out in May.

Call delegation, recap deletion, and video recap with Copilot in Teams

Copilot call delegation steps in when users can’t pick up incoming Teams Phone calls, so they don’t miss important conversations. Copilot answers on the user’s behalf, captures intent and details, and delivers a summary so the user can follow up on their own timeline. It can also set up follow-up appointments via Microsoft Bookings, so users can later meet with the callers who matter most. This enables responsiveness without sacrificing the focus needed for meetings and deep work. This feature is rolling out to Frontier in June.

Organizers can now permanently delete meeting recordings, transcripts, AI summaries, and notes from the recap page via the new option in the More (…) menu. Shared files stay in their original locations. Users can quickly and confidently clean up meeting artifacts and support retention practices, with no admin setup required. This feature rolled out in May.

Catching up on meetings just got a whole lot faster. Video recap turns recorded Teams meetings into short, narrated highlight reels, pairing an AI-generated voiceover with real clips of the key moments, decisions, and shared visuals from the conversation. Whether a user missed a meeting or simply wants to revisit the most important parts, video recap quickly grasps the flow, tone, and outcomes without scrubbing through the full recording. This feature rolled out in April.

Document summaries, personalization, and writing suggestions from Copilot in Word

Copilot in Word now surfaces a consolidated summary of recent file activity directly within the Copilot chat pane to help users quickly catch up. This summary includes the latest edits and user comments, so users can quickly review what has changed across a document. This reduces time spent navigating between edits and comments, while ensuring teams stay aligned on the most current updates and feedback. This feature rolled out in May.

When users are using Copilot in Word, Copilot memory personalizes responses based on relevant user context and prior interactions, reducing the need for users to repeatedly restate preferences or background. This helps deliver more tailored, efficient, and increasingly useful responses over time, improving the overall quality and effectiveness of agent interactions across the organization. This feature rolled out in May.

Word now displays personalized insights at the top of a document, helping users quickly focus on the most relevant content without the need to scroll or search. This makes documents easier to navigate and helps users find useful information faster, improving overall productivity and efficiency. This feature rolled out in May.

Word Agent writing suggestions provide real-time recommendations that improve clarity, tone, and structure as users compose documents, with guidance appearing directly within the writing flow. This helps users produce higher-quality content without interrupting their work, enabling faster editing, more consistent communication, and stronger overall document quality across the organization. This feature rolled out to Web in May.

Slide explanations and built-in skills with Copilot in PowerPoint

Now in PowerPoint Live, attendees can select slide text during a meeting and ask Copilot to explain the content. This helps participants quickly get clarity on unfamiliar terms, complex ideas, or slide details without interrupting the presenter. For organizations, it makes live presentations more accessible, informative, and easier to follow. This feature is rolling out in June.

Copilot in PowerPoint now includes built-in skills that act on a user’s deck in a single click. Instead of crafting a long prompt, users pick a skill and let Copilot do the work. Three new skills are now available:

Review this presentation provides slide-by-slide suggestions to improve structure, clarity, and storytelling, with recommendations users can review and apply.
Visualize this slide transforms text-heavy slides into engaging visuals to enhance the overall look and impact of presentations.
Prepare for Questions helps understand the presentations weak points and anticipate questions.

These features rolled out in May.

Custom skills for Copilot in SharePoint

Copilot in SharePoint now helps users turn repeatable, multi-step workflows into reusable, site specific assets that teams can run consistently. Using natural language, users can create and save skills that capture organizational standards (such as document guidelines and lists), summarize content, or review processes for reliable, context aware results consistently. This feature rolled out in May.

IT admin capabilities

Expanded ISO certifications across our Copilot portfolio

Microsoft is expanding ISO/IEC 42001:2023 (“ISO 42001”) certification across our Copilot portfolio, representing the broadest ISO 42001 coverage achieved by any AI company to date. This expansion reflects our continued investments and leadership in responsible AI. We are maintaining our existing certification for Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Chat, Microsoft Security Copilot, and Microsoft Foundry (first certified in 2025 by Mastermind Assurance, an IAS-accredited certification body). We are also extending certification to four additional Copilot experiences:

Microsoft Copilot Studio, our low-code platform for building custom AI agents
GitHub Copilot, the world’s most widely adopted AI developer tool
Microsoft Dragon Copilot, industry-leading AI clinical assistant for physicians, nurses, and radiologists
Copilot Health, AI health companion grounded in authoritative medical sources

For certification details, visit the Service Trust Portal.

The new Copilot Adoption Hub

The new Copilot Adoption Hub gives deployment leads a simple way to find guidance, tools, and next steps that help users get started with Copilot and increase their usage. Leads can start with the path that fits best, whether helping a smaller team get started or leading adoption across an organization. Highlighted content shows what to share with different users based on their needs. Whether deployment leads want to use Copilot themselves or help their teams use it more effectively, this is the place to start. Learn more at the new Copilot Adoption Hub.

Federated Copilot connectors are now available to bring real-time enterprise data into Copilot through Model Context Protocol (MCP). These connectors let organizations connect live data from hundreds of SaaS systems into Work IQ, giving Copilot richer business context alongside Microsoft 365 content while maintaining native security controls. The first wave includes connectors for partners such as LSEG, Moody’s, HubSpot, and Notion, with availability today in Copilot Chat and Researcher. LSEG and Moody’s are also available in Excel. Organizations can also build custom federated connectors for internal systems to further extend Copilot’s access to enterprise data. This feature rolled out in May.

Enabling watermarks for sensitive material

Watermark content in Teams meetings is a security feature that lets Teams meeting organizers overlay a watermark of each attendee’s email address across shared content during a meeting. When enabled in Meeting options, the watermark is enforced for all attendees, helping deter screen captures of sensitive material, enabling users to confidently share confidential information in meetings with an added layer of accountability. This feature rolled out to GA in March, GCC-High in May, and is rolling out to DoD in June.

Available today: Anthropic Claude Opus 4.8 in Microsoft 365 Copilot

Bas Brekelmans — Thu, 28 May 2026 18:37:31 GMT

Today we’re expanding model choice in Microsoft 365 Copilot with the addition of Anthropic’s latest model—Claude Opus 4.8. Available now in Copilot Cowork (Frontier) and rolling out to Copilot Chat, Excel, PowerPoint, and Copilot Studio.

Opus 4.8 builds on Opus 4.7 and previous Opus model strengths. It is designed for complex, multi-step coding tasks and long-horizon agentic work—with improved tool selection, closer adherence to your instructions, and better follow-through across multi-turn workflows.

Opus 4.8 is also stronger at drafting documents, data analysis, and presentations and when combined with Work IQ your outputs are grounded in your organization's context, so they're more relevant to your work.

We’re committed to bringing you the latest AI innovation and model choice for work, supported by Microsoft’s enterprise-grade security, compliance, and privacy commitments.

Get started today

Claude Opus 4.8 is available today in the model selector for eligible users in Copilot Cowork (Frontier) and rolling out to Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed users in Copilot Chat, Excel, PowerPoint, and Copilot Studio early release cycle environments.

Our team will continue to refine the experience based on your feedback.

For more details on the model, see Anthropic’s announcement of Claude Opus 4.8 here

Recertified: How Microsoft 365 Copilot continues to earn trust and What Changed in a Year

Oliver_Bell — Wed, 27 May 2026 16:00:00 GMT

Recertification: ISO 42001 for the second consecutive year

Today, we are announcing that Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Chat (Copilot) have achieved ISO/IEC 42001:2023 recertification independently validated for the second consecutive year.

First certified in March 2025, Copilot was among the first enterprise AI systems in the world to earn ISO 42001 certification. One year later, the recertification audit conducted in March 2026 confirmed: zero non-conformities and zero improvement observations, with back-to-back clean audits.

ISO 42001 requires annual recertification (called surveillance) audits that re-examine the AI management system across governance, risk assessment, data management, transparency, human oversight, and supplier management. An independent internal audit in late 2025 had already confirmed the system as effective across nine functional domains. The recertification audit by the certification body validated the same conclusion.

Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Chat is joined by GitHub Copilot, Microsoft Copilot Studio, Microsoft Dragon Copilot, Microsoft Dragon Copilot (Radiologists), Microsoft Copilot Health, Microsoft Foundry, and Security Copilot in Microsoft's ISO 42001 certified portfolio, for a total of eight AI systems, including previously certified Microsoft Foundry and Security Copilot, spanning enterprise productivity, developer tools, healthcare, platform, and security.

Certificates, audit reports, and control alignment documentation are available on the Service Trust Portal.

What changed in a year

ISO 42001 recertification is not about maintaining the status quo. It is about demonstrating that the AI management system evolves with the technology it governs. Here is what changed between March 2025 and March 2026:

The model portfolio expanded and governance scaled with it. When Copilot was first certified in 2025, it relied primarily on a single model family from Azure OpenAI. One year later, the same governance framework now manages a multi-model, multi-provider portfolio: GPT-5 is the default model, and Anthropic Claude models are available as an additional option. Third-party model providers undergo Microsoft's supplier security and privacy review process before integration, and enterprise customers have full admin controls including the ability to enable or disable third-party models.

This is the proof that ISO 42001 scales. The management system designed for a single-model architecture governed the expansion to multi-model, multi-provider without requiring a fundamental redesign.

AI risk assessment processes matured. The responsible AI assessment workflow was streamlined consolidating review steps to reduce duplicative effort while maintaining rigor. A structured harm identification capability was added to strengthen pre-release risk evaluation. And a risk-tiered review model was implemented to ensure senior oversight is aligned with the highest-impact AI systems and features.

Product quality improved alongside governance. User satisfaction with M365 Copilot improved meaningfully over the year a sign that governance and quality reinforce each other. When responsible AI practices are embedded into development, the result is not just a safer product but a better one.

The AIMS scope expanded. Microsoft Copilot Studio was formally brought under the governance framework, expanding coverage from two AI systems to three under a single certified management system.

Using AI to govern AI

This is perhaps the most distinctive aspect of Microsoft's approach. Over the past year, Microsoft has deployed AI agents internally to scale responsible AI governance. These AI-powered tools empower engineering teams in conducting RAI assessments, streamline design review processes, without replacing human judgment.

The result is an improvement loop: the same AI technology Microsoft builds for customers is being used to strengthen the governance of that technology. AI agents help in drafting assessments; human experts review, challenge, and approve. Humans remain in the loop, but AI helps us scale.

Product teams across the Copilot organization now use AI-assisted governance tools as part of their responsible AI workflow. Responsible AI training is also enforced across governance leadership roles.

This is what continuous improvement looks like in practice: not just maintaining the AI management system, but using AI to make the management system itself more effective.

Customer confidence, validated

The impact of this governance investment shows up in customer decisions:

Quilter, one of the UK's leading wealth management firms, explicitly cited Microsoft's data protection policies and assurances as "key factors in our decision" to deploy M365 Copilot. In a regulated financial services environment where client trust is paramount, Quilter took a deliberately phased approach beginning with technology teams to manage compliance risk before expanding.

Clifford Chance, one of the world's leading "Magic Circle" law firms, deployed M365 Copilot at global scale after developing comprehensive AI governance principles grounded in fairness, transparency, accountability, and privacy. Every legal output generated by AI is identified as such and validated by a qualified lawyer. Clifford Chance now advises other organizations on building their own AI governance frameworks and chose Microsoft as the platform they trust enough to build on.

PwC deployed 200,000 Copilot licenses globally, generating $150 million in time savings and 40.8 million Copilot actions in six months. At this scale, governance is not optional it is what makes the deployment responsible.

For government customers, M365 Copilot is now available in GCC-High, built to meet FedRAMP High, DFARS, ITAR, and CMMC requirements with web grounding disabled by default and all data remaining within US-based data centers managed by screened US personnel.

A Forrester Total Economic Impact study found M365 Copilot delivers 116% ROI for enterprises and notably, 66% of respondents said Copilot improved or simplified their IT and data security posture.

As Drena Kusari, Microsoft VP & GM for Shared Services and Responsible AI, puts it: "Earning and keeping our users' trust is what gives us permission to build cutting-edge AI functionality. We put equal thought into the functionality of our features as we do into the responsible AI practices that encourage lasting interactions with Microsoft 365 Copilot."

What comes next

The AI landscape in March 2026 looks different than it did in March 2025, and it will look different again in March 2027. Models are becoming more capable, multi-agent architectures are emerging, and regulatory frameworks like the EU AI Act are moving from policy to enforcement, with high-risk system requirements taking effect in August 2026.

Our commitment is to evolve the AI management system with the technology. As Microsoft 365 Copilot continues to add agentic capabilities and expands multi-model support, the governance framework will scale accordingly. ISO 42001 recertification is not a destination; it is the annual proof point of continuous improvement.

Moreover, we have also achieved CSA STAR for AI Level 2 certification - pairing ISO 42001 with CSA's AI-specific transparency artifacts, and we are among the first organizations globally to do so.

Trust is not earned once; it is earned continuously, and it must be re-earned every year.

Additional resources

Trust should be verifiable. Here is where you can check the supporting information:

Service Trust Portal, ISO/IEC, ISO/IEC 42001 certificates, audit reports, and control alignment documentation
2025 Responsible AI Transparency Report, our annual report on AI governance, risk management, and implementation
Microsoft 365 Copilot Application Card, detailed documentation of capabilities, models, evaluations, limitations, and safety mitigations
ISO/IEC 42001 Compliance Offering, details of our ISO/IEC 42001 certification scope and services
EU AI Act Compliance, our EU AI Act compliance posture and GPAI Code of Practice signatory status
CSA STAR for AI Registry, our CSA STAR for AI Level 2 certification, achieved among the first organizations globally

Learn more about Microsoft’s approach to responsible AI at https://microsoft.com/ai/responsible-ai

Scaling the reach of finance: what’s next with Finance Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot

April_Olson — Wed, 27 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In most organizations, finance is a small but mighty strategic partner to the business, supporting enterprise-wide decisions while managing core processes from record-to-report and source-to-pay to forecast-to-plan. The insights and guidance finance teams produce are more than just outputs of these processes; they form the foundation for critical decisions that shape how the business operates and grows.

On any given day, finance teams are expected to:

Deliver accurate and timely financial reporting, while maintaining controls and compliance. 
Guide business performance by proactively identifying opportunities and risks.
Support operational decisions across business units, regions, and functions.  
Enable planning and forecasting in fast-paced environments where assumptions change quickly.

As businesses grow and become more complex, expectations can become harder to meet. Finance teams must navigate increasingly fragmented data—pulling together insights across systems, reports, and stakeholders to form a clear picture. At the same time, they’re asked to support more stakeholders, make more decisions, and operate on faster timelines—without growing at the same pace. To keep up, finance teams must scale.

But scaling isn’t just about doing more with the same tools. It requires a fundamental shift in how finance operates. This is the shift that underpins Microsoft’s vision for agentic ERP, where enterprise systems move beyond just recording transactions and generating reports, to helping organizations reason over data, coordinating decisions, and taking action. In this model, AI agents work alongside finance teams to extend their capacity—handling routine work, surfacing issues, and helping them focus on what matters most.

Empowering finance at scale: Finance Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot

Finance Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot delivers on this vision by connecting financial data, insights, and actions directly in the flow of work, helping finance teams scale their impact.

First introduced as Copilot for Finance, Finance Agent is purpose-built for the structure and rigor of modern financial operations. Rather than requiring extensive customization like general-purpose AI tools, Finance Agent is designed around core finance workflows and grounded in ERP data—so organizations can move from insight to action faster, without compromising financial controls, governance, or auditability.

As innovation with AI accelerates, Finance Agent continues to evolve. Today we’re announcing new Finance Agent experiences in Microsoft 365 Copilot, designed to give both finance teams and the stakeholders who rely on them the insights they need to act with confidence.

Announcing new ways to experience Finance Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot

At Gartner Finance Symposium/Xpo™ 2026, we’re showcasing a new Home workspace and Chat experience for Finance Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot, in public preview today. These new experiences make it easy for finance teams and their stakeholders to get a centralized, role-aware view of financial performance and activity. Instead of relying on static reports or ad hoc requests, users can access up-to-date financial insights tailored to their role with the appropriate permissions and context built in.

The Home workspace acts as a financial command center, proactively surfacing key metrics, emerging risks, and areas that require attention. For example, a finance leader can quickly identify variances impacting forecast accuracy, while a business unit leader can monitor performance against targets without needing to request or reconcile multiple reports.

The Chat experience lets users interact with financial data and processes using natural language, moving seamlessly from question to insight to action.

Whether investigating performance, resolving issues, or executing next steps, users can work directly in the flow of work. For example, they can enter prompts in Microsoft 365 Copilot like:

Analyze this project report and help me identify the key drivers for the variance between budget to actuals.
Help me respond to this customer’s question about an unpaid invoice by pulling their transaction history and identifying unmatched invoices.
Help me assess this new vendor’s compliance with our onboarding guidance and update the vendor record if approved.

Together, these experiences help finance teams scale how insights are delivered across the organization—reducing ad-hoc requests, improving consistency, and enabling faster, more informed decision-making. 

Speed, clarity, and control across core financial workflows

Alongside these new experiences, Finance Agent continues to support the core processes that define finance operations, helping teams move from analysis to action with greater speed and confidence.

Financial reconciliation streamlines one of the most time-intensive aspects of the close cycle. By identifying unmatched transactions, surfacing exceptions, and guiding resolution, Finance Agent reduces manual effort while maintaining financial control and auditability. 

Variance analysis accelerates the path from actuals to explanation. When performance deviates from expectations, Finance Agent identifies key drivers and produces structured summaries that support faster decision-making and stakeholder alignment. 

Financial data preparation accelerates the path from raw data to reliable insight. When financial data is inconsistent or incomplete, Finance Agent automatically cleanses, standardizes, and enriches datasets—ensuring they’re ready for reconciliation and analysis, while reducing manual effort and improving confidence in outcomes.

These capabilities are purpose-built for finance and designed to deliver outputs that reflect the structure, precision, and context required for financial decision-making, while operating within defined latency constraints to ensure timely responses. We’ve recently run evaluations to measure the outputs and found that Finance Agent scored meaningfully higher on Accuracy, Depth, and Structure compared with OpenAI and Anthropic.

In addition to the strong results in our core metrics, we also demonstrate clear differentiation in metrics for citations, clarity, relevance, recency and groundedness.

Get started with Finance Agent and see it in action at Gartner Finance Symposium/Xpo™ 2026

If you haven’t already explored Finance Agent, now is a great time to get started. The solution is generally available, ready to connect to your existing ERP environment, and continually evolving with new capabilities and experiences.

To learn more: 

Explore Finance Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot by visiting Agent Store and clicking “All Agents” within Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Review Microsoft Learn documentationfor setup and administration guidance. 
Discover more about Microsoft 365 Copilot and how role-based AI agents across Sales, Service, and Finance are transforming business processes.
Connect with us at the Gartner Finance Symposium/Xpo^TM, where we’ll be sharing our vision for agentic ERP and demonstrating the latest innovations, including Finance Agent in Microsoft 365. Add our session to your agenda.

We’re excited about the opportunity to reshape finance with AI and agents, and how Microsoft 365 Copilot can help you scale your organization, accelerate decision making, and empower your team to achieve more.

Finance Agent Benchmark: evaluating and improving AI for Finance

Sigita_Cepaitiene — Fri, 29 May 2026 20:43:08 GMT

As business complexity accelerates, finance organizations are being asked to support more stakeholders, guide more decisions, and operate at unprecedented speed, often without additional resources. As these demands outpace traditional tools and processes, AI presents an opportunity to reshape how finance teams scale their impact. Finance Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot is purpose-built for this shift, helping finance teams extend capacity, improve speed and accuracy, and deliver insights that support decision-making.

Today, we’re announcing the Finance Agent Benchmark, a benchmarking framework comprising an evaluation dataset and an evaluation harness, designed to assess how effectively AI-powered finance agents perform across real-world finance scenarios. It combines purpose-built metrics with finance-specific scenarios and a scoring methodology designed to produce meaningful, real-world assessments.

Our first release in the Finance Agent Benchmark includes tasks like preparing finance business briefs and researching financial performance, based on both reputable data sources (including public SEC filings and financial market data via MSN Money) and synthetic internal Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable data.
This technical deep dive describes how Finance Agent is designed, how the benchmark is structured and scored, and compares results of Finance Agent on the benchmark against those of OpenAI Responses API with GPT 5.5 and Anthropic Claude CLI with Claude Opus 4.7.

Finance Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot architecture

Finance Agent is built on a modular, agentic architecture designed to help organizations derive value from financial data while leveraging Microsoft’s AI ecosystem, including enterprise security and compliance controls such as identity-based access (Microsoft Entra ID), tenant-level data isolation, encryption in transit and at rest, and Microsoft Purview governance capabilities (e.g., sensitivity labels, data loss prevention, and audit logging). Its design centers on a unified, agentic backend that orchestrates finance-specific capabilities such as finance business brief generation, entity financial performance research, entity financial obligations with the user company research.

Finance Agent’s architecture includes a run-time generated dynamic, context-aware UI experience. Rather than relying on static interfaces, the system generates UI elements at runtime based on the user’s role, workflow stage, and current task context. The platform composes tailored experiences dynamically adapting to where the user is in their workflow and what action they are trying to complete. This enables highly personalized, scenario-driven interactions (e.g. researching invoicing history), where UI elements, tools, and insights are assembled in real time to guide the user through finance processes such as analysis, reconciliation, or reporting.

The unified agentic backend integrates APIs, MCP applications, tools, and skills with a data access layer designed for enterprise scenarios, enabling seamless connectivity to work context with Microsoft 365, ERP systems, and external financial sources. This agentic framework allows the system to intelligently orchestrate both data retrieval and user experience in a tightly coupled manner.

Together, this AI-powered backend and dynamic UI layer delivers deeply embedded, workflow-centric experiences within Microsoft 365 Copilot, enabling finance professionals to access insights, perform analysis, and execute workflows within their natural flow of work.

Evaluation Methodology of Finance Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot

We evaluated Finance Agent using a purpose-built benchmark designed to reflect real finance workflows, including ERP data retrieval and multi-entity financial analysis. The benchmark uses a transparent methodology, so results can be independently verified and reproduced. To keep the benchmark grounded in the day-to-day tasks and challenges finance teams face, we built it in collaboration with finance professionals across multiple industries. The benchmark is designed to execute repeatedly, enabling consistent measurement of improvements and producing results that remain comparable over time.

We constructed a dataset spanning three finance task areas: (1) finance business briefs preparation, (2) entity financial obligations with the user company research, and (3) entity financial performance research. This dataset includes approximately 300 questions spanning these areas, covering multiple industries, company types, and finance roles:

Finance business briefs preparation: A structured intelligence report on a company - combining financial performance, strategic context, and ERP history - of the kind a finance analyst would prepare before a negotiation or credit decision.
Entity financial obligations with the user company research: Answers to accounts payable and accounts receivable questions over Dynamics 365 Finance data, covering vendor balances, invoice aging, and payment obligations.
Entity financial performance research: Answers to time-bound factual questions about a company's financial health (e.g., revenue, margins, leverage, and latest reported results) grounded in public filings and market data.

The current release of Finance Agent focuses on providing quick answers in conversational experiences, therefore latency limits are applied for the responses: 60 seconds for entity financial questions and 300 seconds for business brief generation.

We compared Finance Agent with two alternative systems, to evaluate how it performed, both in user experience and results, against general-purpose agentic runtimes not specifically designed for financial tasks: OpenAI’s Responses API and Anthropic’s Claude Code CLI. Both were given the same tool access as Finance Agent, including a Dynamics 365 Finance MCP Server and web search, and operated under common system instructions designed to simulate the experience a finance professional would have when using an AI agent. We used the latency optimized models from each provider at the time of evaluation in May 2026: Anthropic’s Claude Haiku 4.5 and Claude Opus 4.7 and OpenAI’s GPT 5.5, all configured with low reasoning effort. Latency optimized models were selected to match the latency limits applied to Finance Agent: 60 seconds for entity financial questions and 300 seconds for business brief generation. In separate experiments using default reasoning settings, those systems often exceeded the time limits, resulting in a high rate of timeouts and lower performance. If we remove the latency constraints, models with high reasoning effort have substantial improvements at the cost of the extra latency. We will cover detailed performance with high reasoning effort for all three comparators in the next version of the Finance Agent Benchmark.

Evaluation Dimensions

We evaluated the AI agents along multiple metrics that were designed to measure alignment of responses with the expectations of finance professionals:

Accuracy - Measures whether the answer is factually correct and aligns with verified financial data or ground truth in the financial system of record, Dynamics 365 Finance.
Citation Rate - Checks whether the response properly references and cites sources to support its claims.
Clarity - Assesses how easy the response is to understand, including conciseness and readability.
Depth - Measures how thoroughly the response explores the topic, going beyond surface-level information.
Groundedness - Evaluates whether the response is supported by referenced sources and avoids unsupported or hallucinated claims.
Recency - Measures whether time-sensitive information is up-to-date and anchored to specific dates where relevant.
Relevance - Assesses whether the response directly answers the user’s question and stays focused on the task.
Structure - Evaluates how well the response is aligned with common finance workflow expectations, including logical flow and prioritization of key insights.

Outputs were scored automatically using a LLM as a judge (OpenAI GPT 5.2), with evaluations grounded in predefined, operationalized rubric assertions for each metric dimension, to reduce subjective interpretation, minimize bias, and improve scoring consistency and objectivity. Dimension scores were averaged within each task area and then weighted equally across the three finance task areas to produce an overall composite score. The result is a benchmark revealing where each agent excels or needs improvement. Additional details, including methodology, metrics, and definitions are described in our GitHub repository: https://github.com/microsoft/FinanceBenchmark.

Results

Results reflect testing of Finance Agent completed on May 8th, 2026, against external systems, including OpenAI’s Responses API (GPT 5.5) and Anthropic’s Claude Code CLI (Claude Opus 4.7 and Haiku 4.5). The systems were configured with tools such as a Model Context Protocol server for finance and operations apps (exposing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance, version 10.0.48) and evaluated using instructions and latency constraints designed to approximate finance-user workflows. Testing was performed under controlled conditions using only synthetic or controlled datasets with no customer production data. Results may not reflect all real-world scenarios and may vary depending on factors such as operating system, hardware, network connection, datasets, evaluation methodologies, and usage.

Finance Agent leads across evaluation metrics because its instructions were explicitly tuned to align with the needs of finance professionals as reflected in those metrics. Its strong performance in factual accuracy is supported by access to structured financial data sources such as MSN Money, combined with instructions optimized to effectively leverage ERP data via the MCP server for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance. Beyond accuracy, consistent gains in depth, citations, clarity, relevance, structure, and groundedness¹ reflect deliberate design choices to produce outputs that are transparent, easy to validate, and directly actionable within finance workflows.

Sample Queries for the three finance tasks

Below are representative examples aligned to the three Finance Agent Benchmark task areas described above. Some examples are for illustration only and are fictitious. No real association is intended or inferred.

Finance business briefs preparation:

Query: "Corporate Profile report of Microsoft"

A complete response opens with a concise executive summary - ticker, sector, headquarters, market cap, and key financial highlights - then expands into sections covering business model and lines of business, leadership, competitive positioning, financial performance (FY revenue, EBITDA, margins, EPS, YoY trends), strategic priorities, and risk factors. Accuracy requires that financial figures - market cap, revenue, employee count, leadership names and titles - match the most recent official filings; mismatches on CEO identity or key metrics count against the score. Depth requires each section to be backed by a specific, traceable source, with gaps explicitly acknowledged rather than papered over with approximations. Structure is evaluated on whether the response leads with the most critical facts, uses a clear heading hierarchy, and is organized for a finance professional to use without reformatting.

Entity financial obligations with the user company research:

Query: Of the customers in Group 90 in USMF that have past due balances for more than 90 days, what are the top 10 based on past due balances as of March 2, 2026?

A correct response identifies the top 10 customers in USMF customer group 90 with balances past due more than 90 days, ranked in descending order: The Phone Company (SYNCUS-0025, $182,539.15), Northwind Traders Europe (SYNCUS-0327, $173,961.25), Fourth Coffee Pro (SYNCUS-0629, $171,810.59), A. Datum Retail (SYNCUS-0477, $169,758.98), Northwind Traders (SYNCUS-0019, $167,513.61), City Power & Light Europe (SYNCUS-0985, $166,496.40), Adventure Works Americas (SYNCUS-0282, $166,147.50), Adventure Works Europe (SYNCUS-0310, $166,057.25), Tailspin Toys Global (SYNCUS-0919, $165,614.07), and Coho Vineyard & Winery Wholesale (SYNCUS-0512, $158,547.55). What makes this question hard is that the agent must apply two independent filters simultaneously — customer group 90 and the 90-day aging threshold — before ranking, and most AR aging tool calls return all customers or all aging buckets; a model that omits either filter will pull the wrong population entirely. Completeness is the primary accuracy signal: group 90 has many customers, several with large balances that sit in younger aging buckets and therefore don't qualify, so including a near-miss or dropping a true top-10 entry both count as failures. Arithmetic precision matters at the margin — the 10th entry ($158,547.55) is close to several non-qualifying customers, so off-by-one errors in filtering or sorting will swap the right answer out. Depth rewards responses that go beyond the ranked list to note the aggregate past-due exposure across the 10 accounts, flag that the top entries have balances nearly 15% larger than the 10th, and observe whether the concentration is in a small number of accounts or spread evenly. Structure requires each entry to include the account ID alongside the name and balance in a table or consistent list — IDs are essential for unambiguous identification since several customer names share prefixes (Adventure Works Americas vs. Europe).

Entity financial performance research:

Query: "Compare UnitedHealth Group and CVS Health in Medicare Advantage for 2024: membership by top five states, year-over-year growth, and how 2024 and 2025 CMS rate updates influenced their guidance and medical loss ratios. Present findings in a side-by-side table."

A complete response delivers a properly formatted side-by-side table with companies as columns, specific metrics as rows, all monetary amounts and percentages to two decimal places, and explicit as-of dates for enrollment figures. Accuracy requires state-level membership counts - not just a ranked list of states - and actual FY2024 medical loss ratios cited from GAAP filings or earnings releases rather than approximate ranges from secondary sources. Depth requires the CMS rate narrative to be specific to each company's guidance and MLR, with gaps flagged where data was unavailable rather than implied complete. Structure is evaluated on whether the table is well organized and easy to interpret, the summary synthesizes rather than restates the table, and the CMS rate analysis is distinct prose - not collapsed into table cells.

¹Groundedness is inherently difficult to evaluate for the external AI agents because they only partially return retrieved sources they used for answering queries. While we attempted to reconstruct those sources for offline evaluation, we were not able to consistently achieve complete coverage.

What’s New in Notebooks | May 2026

ezrapark — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 14:34:37 GMT

Copilot Notebooks gets smarter for Microsoft 365 Copilot users

Work rarely lives in one place. A single project can span a deck in SharePoint, decisions in a Teams thread, customer context in email, and ideas captured in quick conversations.

Copilot Notebooks brings that work together in a shared, AI-powered workspace where teams can gather project context, make sense of information, and create useful outputs grounded in their reference sources.

Notebooks becomes even more useful—with deeper work-data grounding and more ways to turn ideas, notes, and source material into deliverables that move work forward.

This month’s updates build on that foundation with a refreshed experience, richer sources of context, easier mobile capture, and new ways to turn notebook content into finished work.

New way to interact with Notebooks

The updated Notebooks experience in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app makes it easier to keep project work organized and moving. Chats, output creations, and references now live together in one place, so it’s easier to collaborate, stay in context and move work forward. While this is the quicker, light-weight Notebooks experience, you can still find the fuller, workspace-forward experience in OneNote. Because notebooks stay in sync across the Microsoft 365 Copilot app and OneNote; users can smoothly move between experiences without losing context.

Availability: Coming to the Frontier program this summer.

In OneNote, the Notebooks experience is now more streamlined, with a refreshed design for the left navigation rail, that brings key actions like "Create" and add “Reference" to the top for faster access.

Availability: Rolling out to GA.

Bring more work context into your notebook

The strongest notebook outputs come from having the right project context. Instead of relying on scattered files or partial notes, users can now bring in more of the information that shapes real work—from meetings and email threads to web research—so Copilot can reason over a fuller picture.

Teams meetings — Add the full record of a meeting—including transcripts, notes, chat, and shared files—so decisions and follow-up context stay connected to the project.

Availability: Available in Frontier.

Outlook emails — Bring in the email threads where updates, tradeoffs, and next steps often take shape, so important context doesn’t stay buried in the inbox.

Availability: Coming to Frontier in the coming days.

Web pages — Add external research, competitor sites, whitepapers, and industry articles to give the notebook a broader base of information for analysis and creation.

Availability: Available in Frontier.

Prompts to try:

Pull the notes from last Thursday's product strategy meeting and compare it against the Project Status Summary page. Where did the discussion diverge from what's written down, and what got decided that hasn't been captured yet?

What key dates were agreed upon in the project email thread and how does that compare to the Timeline page in this notebook?

Compare the three vendor sites I added with our internal evaluation page and surface gaps.

Capture conversations and ideas on the go with the OneNote iPhone app

Important work doesn’t always begin in a document. It often starts in a hallway conversation, a whiteboard sketch, a brainstorm, or a quick note captured in the moment. The new multimodal capture experience helps bring those moments into Copilot Notebooks so they can become part of the project record, not something that gets lost.

From the OneNote iPhone app, users can capture live audio, snap images of a whiteboard, and type notes in a single session. Copilot then turns those inputs into a structured notebook page, making it easier to preserve context for a meeting, project, or idea—and use it later to ask questions, pull insights, or create Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files.

Availability: Rolling out to GA in the OneNote mobile app (iOS). For more information, read our Support page.

Turn your notebook into the deliverables you need

A notebook is more than a place to collect information—it’s a starting point for the work that comes next. Notebooks already helps create documents, decks, audio overviews, mind maps, and study guides from your sources. Now, it can generate two more types of outputs:

Excel spreadsheets help turn notebook content into structured data you can analyze, compare, and reason over.

Availability: Available in Frontier.

Infographics help turn dense material into a visual summary that’s easier to share and understand.

Availability: Coming to Frontier in the coming days.

Notebooks keeps getting better

Taken together, these updates continue to evolve Copilot Notebooks into a more capable workspace for individual thinking and team collaboration.

With a more streamlined design, richer grounding, mobile capture, and expanded output generation, Notebooks is becoming a more complete way to bring together project context, work with Copilot, and turn information into useful deliverables—all in one place. Try Copilot Notebooks today at aka.ms/copilotnotebooks.

Learn more about the Frontier program at https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-365-copilot/frontier-program

Review our previous blog about Copilot Notebooks

Copilot Notebooks: Enhancements to support creation, collaboration and learning | Microsoft Community Hub

Launched: Microsoft 365 Copilot Adoption Hub Redesign

Karuana_Gatimu_MSFT — Tue, 19 May 2026 22:53:07 GMT

One of the biggest barriers to Copilot adoption is people don’t always know where to start.

Today, we released the first version of our redesigned Microsoft 365 Copilot business user hub. Take a look.

We set out to simplify adoption by making the experience more practical and focused on key roles: AI Business User, AI Champion and AI Leader.

What you’ll find:

Prompts you can apply immediately in your work.
• Real examples of how Copilot helps across tasks.
• Clear guidance based on your role.

What's the same:

Connection to what’s new, communities and event information.
Advanced guidance for User Enablement and IT Professionals.
Content from Microsoft Learn to advance your skilling through the AI Skills Navigator and learning paths for certification.

Your feedback was essential in crafting this evolution of how to learn and use AI experiences from Microsoft. Keep sharing your insights via our feedback form at aka.ms/amc/feedback. The entire team reads what you submit and innovates to support your needs.

That’s really the focus here; helping people get started and keep going to get work done.

We’d love your input! What do you think, and what content would you like to see us build next?

#Copilot #AIAdoption

How Workday and Microsoft are redefining the agentic workplace

Srini_Raghavan_Msft — Wed, 13 May 2026 13:00:00 GMT

The modern employee is currently paying a "fragmentation tax." Across a typical workday, the average professional navigates over 200 disparate apps and systems. Every time they switch from a collaborative space like Microsoft Teams to a domain-specific tool to check a PTO balance or a tax form, they lose focus. We call this the "toggle tax," and it is the enemy of the flow of work.

At Microsoft, our vision for Microsoft 365 Copilot has always been to eliminate that friction by bringing the tools you need directly to the conversation. Today, I am thrilled to highlight how Workday—a leader in enterprise HR and finance—is making this vision a reality.

With the general availability of the Workday agent for Microsoft 365 Copilot, we aren’t just adding a new feature; we are fundamentally reimagining how employees interact with HR self-service.

Moving from "systems of record" to "systems of action"

Workday’s internal research reveals a staggering reality: when HR self-service is integrated directly into the flow of work, organizations see 60–70% of HR cases resolved without ever opening a support ticket.

The Workday agent brings a high-functioning HR and Finance partner directly into Microsoft 365 Copilot. Imagine a manager preparing for a 1:1. Instead of digging through tabs, they simply @-mention the Workday agent within their Copilot chat to pull up recent feedback and goals. In that same thread, they can upload a meeting agenda from Word, and Copilot will synthesize the two into a personalized briefing.

From optimizing PTO plans to querying complex leave policies, the agent moves work forward where it’s already happening.

The architecture of trust: why precision matters

For ISVs and developers, the Workday journey offers a masterclass in architectural intentionality. When dealing with "people and money," there is zero margin for error. You don’t want an AI to paraphrase your parental leave policy or hallucinate a carryover balance.

To solve for this, Workday chose the Custom Engine Agent framework via the Microsoft 365 Agents SDK.

While Declarative Agents offer incredible speed to market for generative use cases, Workday required the surgical precision of their own proprietary logic. By building a Custom Engine Agent, they ensured:

Data integrity: Responses are grounded directly in Workday’s source data, not just a summarized interpretation.
Consistent experience: The agent maintains the same rigorous guardrails and response quality found within the Workday core application.
Control: Workday manages the orchestration, ensuring that high-stakes HR and finance interactions meet their exacting enterprise standards.

"When you are dealing with people and money, there is no room for guesswork," said Michael Doonan, Senior Director, Workday Everywhere, Workday. "With Workday’s AI agents extended into everyday work experiences, employees can move faster while still knowing the decisions they make are grounded in a single, trusted source."

Frictionless for IT, seamless for users

One of the most significant hurdles for any new enterprise tool is the "security and procurement gauntlet." Workday and Microsoft solved this through a unified app strategy.

Rather than forcing IT admins to vet and deploy a separate integration, Workday bundled the Copilot agent into their existing Microsoft Teams app. If an organization has already cleared the Workday for Teams app, the agent simply becomes an extension of that trusted relationship. No new security reviews, no additional configuration—just immediate value.

The next frontier: multi-system orchestration

We are entering the era of the "Institutional Memory" agent—a digital colleague that knows your policies, your processes, and your history.

As we look ahead, the conversation is shifting toward multi-agent orchestration. Our mutual customers are already asking how the Workday agent can interact with other specialized agents to automate workflows that span across multiple platforms. We are committed to partnering with Workday to lead this charge, ensuring that the agentic workplace is not just a collection of tools, but a cohesive, intelligent ecosystem.

The Workday agent is a blueprint for the future of enterprise software: invisible, intelligent, and indispensable.

Experience the future of HR self-service

Deploy: Explore the Workday agent on the Microsoft Marketplace
Discover: See what’s new in the Microsoft 365 Copilot Agent Store
Build: Get started with the Microsoft 365 Agents SDK

Available today: GPT-5.5 Instant in Microsoft 365 Copilot

NitinAgrawal — Thu, 07 May 2026 18:42:35 GMT

Today, we're excited to announce the addition of OpenAI's GPT-5.5 Instant to Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot Studio. Building on GPT-5.3 Instant, GPT-5.5 Instant improves the quality of everyday work tasks designed to deliver more accurate and concise responses, with improved performance on image analysis and STEM-related tasks.

With GPT-5.5 Instant, Microsoft 365 Copilot can provide clearer responses for everyday work, helping you get to a useful answer more quickly in many everyday workflows, with less back-and-forth. It improves how Copilot handles common work questions, image uploads, and STEM-related tasks, while reducing verbosity and unnecessary follow-up questions. Together, these improvements make Copilot responses easier to use right away across the flow of work.

We are committed to bringing you the latest AI innovation and model choice tuned for work and tailored to your business needs—built on Microsoft's enterprise-grade security, compliance, and privacy commitments. Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed users will receive priority access to GPT-5.5 Instant, while users without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license will have standard access. Learn more about standard versus priority access here.

Get started today

GPT-5.5 Instant begins rolling out today to Copilot Chat experiences for quick responses, available to Microsoft 365 Copilot users with priority access and to Copilot Chat users with standard access. In Copilot Chat, GPT-5.5 Instant appears as GPT-5.5 Quick response in the model selector under GPT.

For agent makers, GPT-5.5 Instant is rolling out in Copilot Studio in early release cycle environments as GPT-5.5 Chat, and is also available in Microsoft Foundry for developers building AI solutions.

Our team will continue to refine the experience based on your feedback as we build the future of work together. Learn more about GPT-5.5 Instant from OpenAI here.

Federated Copilot connectors - bringing real-time enterprise data within Microsoft 365 Copilot

RohitBhatia — Tue, 05 May 2026 18:57:54 GMT

Microsoft 365 Copilot leverages Copilot connectors with sync capabilities that can further enrich Work IQ and unify enterprise knowledge across hundreds of SaaS systems into a single, coherent enterprise knowledge base in your Microsoft 365 tenant. This foundation enables Copilot to deliver relevant, accurate, and context-rich insights, with enterprise data made discoverable alongside Microsoft 365 content - while inheriting native security and access controls.

Extending that vision, we are announcing general availability of federated Copilot connectors¹, a new class of Copilot connectors that bring real-time data to Copilot via Model Context Protocol (MCP). The first wave of Microsoft-built federated Copilot connectors includes partners like Canva, HubSpot, Intercom, Linear, LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group), Moody’s, Notion and more. Today, data through these connectors is available in Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and Researcher. Federated Copilot connectors in Excel to LSEG and Moody’s are coming soon. Customers will also be able to build custom federated Copilot connectors for internal and line-of-business systems by using MCP, and admins can securely deploy those connectors for their organization.

A new model for real-time data access in enterprise

Built on the emerging industry standard Model Context Protocol (MCP), federated connectors bring third-party data into Microsoft 365 Copilot live at query time, enabling users to reason over real-time information without leaving their workflow. Because these connectors query source systems at the moment a request is made, responses reflect the latest available data, helping with scenarios such as checking a deal’s current status or a company’s stock rating. Users can access this information directly within Copilot instead of switching between apps or dashboards. Access remains securely governed through OAuth 2.0 using each user’s own identity and permissions. Responses also include citations back to the source record, making it easy for users to verify the information and explore further. This foundation opens the door to richer, domain-specific experiences in productivity tools like Excel where users analyze, model, and derive insights directly from live business data.

For example, a treasury or risk analyst can ask Copilot for the latest market interest rate curve, stock price, or live operational metric and get an answer based on the latest data available at that moment. A sales manager can check the latest CRM records, open deal pipeline, or recently updated support tickets in Copilot and feel confident that the information is current. And for sensitive scenarios, such as healthcare or financial services, organizations can enable users to access restricted records through Copilot while keeping the data in the source system to help meet residency, security, and compliance requirements.

Using Researcher and federated Copilot connectors to unlock insights in the sales pipeline

Federated connectors are available as out-of-the-box connectors, built and maintained by Microsoft in partnership with leading SaaS and data providers, and enabled by default with admin controls. Learn more about federated Copilot connectors. Enterprises can also build custom connectors for their line-of-business applications and internal systems, using the same MCP standards, to bring proprietary data into Copilot for scenarios unique to their business. Learn more about custom federated Copilot connectors.

Available out of the box connectors

The first wave of federated Copilot connectors spans across top data providers from the financial services industry (Moody’s, LSEG), customer relationship management (HubSpot) and productivity (Canva, Notion).

Canva: Search and retrieve designs, brand templates, and creative performance data from Canva within Copilot. Marketing and brand teams can find campaign assets, audit template compliance, and analyze creative performance without context switching. Sample prompt: "Show me 2024’s top-performing holiday designs from Canva, along with the formats that delivered the highest engagement, aligned to our next season campaign idea”.

Google (Calendar, Contacts): Access calendar and contact information from Google Workspace alongside M365 data. Sample prompt: “List all my calendar events for next week, then determine which ones are overlapping.”

HubSpot: Access deal and pipeline data, contacts, and company records from HubSpot directly in Copilot. Sales teams can track open deals, review pipeline status, and surface customer information using natural language. Sample prompt: “From HubSpot, show me my open deals with a value over $10K where there's no logged activity in the past 7 days. Include deal name, stage, value, and the contact name.”

Linear: Access project tracking and issue data from Linear in Copilot. Engineering and product teams can stay aligned across tools without context switching.

LSEG: Surface real-time and end-of-day pricing for equities, fixed income, FX, and commodities, along with interest rate curves, forward curves, and historical time series. Treasury, risk, and trading teams can access the market inputs they need for instrument valuation, scenario modelling, and hedging analysis in context of broader work-related queries. Sample prompt: “Using LSEG, calculate bond price for CUSIP 91282CJK8 at 5.6% yield to include in my talking points for tomorrow’s meeting with <person’s name>.”

Select a federated Copilot connector from Sources below the prompt

Moody’s: Access entity profiles, ownership structures, financials, Moody’s Ratings credit ratings and research documents, and more directly in Copilot. Credit and risk teams can monitor counterparty quality, prepare committee materials, and track rating changes without leaving their M365 workflow. Sample prompt: “From Moody’s, compare <company A> and <company B> on scorecard factors including profitability, leverage, and financial policy.”

Notion: Query Notion pages, databases, and workspace content directly in Copilot. Product, strategy, and operations teams can synthesize insights from distributed Notion workspaces, track project progress, and identify gaps across documentation. Sample prompt: “Pull insights from Notion docs mentioning customer churn and create a consolidated analysis.”

Add, manage and connect to federated connectors used by Copilot

How to get started

Once federated connectors are available, users can authenticate into the service (for example, Moody’s) and start querying that data directly in Microsoft 365 Copilot. Copilot retrieves information live at the time of the prompt together with any relevant data from Work IQ by using the user’s own identity and permissions, so responses reflect the latest available data and include source citations for verification.

Users can connect directly to federated Copilot connectors from two entry points:

1) From Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat: Open Chat settings, navigate to Sources, and browse the available connectors. Select the one you need and authenticate with your own credentials. Once authenticated, the source appears as ‘Connected’, and you can start querying it immediately.

2) From the Researcher agent: When working within Researcher, you can click on Sources near the prompt and then in the same way - connect, authenticate, and go.

Connecting to data provider Moody’s from Sources

Admin management controls

Admins can manage federated connectors in the Microsoft 365 admin center under Copilot > Connectors > Your connections, where they can review available connectors, enable or disable them for the tenant, and stage rollout to specific Microsoft Entra ID groups before broader deployment. Admins can also use PowerShell to disable all default federated connectors across the tenant and selectively reenable individual connectors as needed, giving organizations a simple way to apply governance, security, and readiness controls at scale. Learn more about setting up and managing connectors for the organization.

How to provide feedback

Your feedback helps improve the Copilot connector experience. After ending the Copilot chat, use the thumbs-up or thumbs-down icons at the bottom of the chat to share feedback.

[1] Generally available to admins in the Microsoft 365 admin center for setup and management. The user experience will become available in the coming weeks. Federated Copilot connectors are available to Copilot Chat users without a Microsoft 365 license and to Microsoft 365 Copilot customers. Available only in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app on web and desktop and in Researcher.

* The same prompts may yield different responses due to inherent variability in neural networks.

(Co)work in Progress

ilyagrebnov — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 19:15:11 GMT

A complete record of milestones, launches, and newest innovations.

Introducing event-triggered tasks in Cowork: delegate the watching, not just the work

Scheduled tasks handle the predictable. But most of what matters at work doesn't run on a clock — it just happens: your manager pings you about a renewal, you get pulled into an incident channel, a deadline suddenly needs a follow-up. Cowork now lets you create event-driven tasks across Teams chats, channels, Outlook email, and meetings — triggered by a sender, an @mention, a keyword or topic, or an event name.

Just describe the trigger in plain language, and Cowork takes it from there: it watches your mail and Teams for the moments that matter, catches them the instant they land, and has the right response ready before you ask. No inbox-refreshing. No missed pings. For example, now you can unlock the following:

"Whenever my customer emails me about the renewal…" Cowork catches the message, summarizes the thread, and pulls the deal terms and account history. Then it analyzes renewal health — what's changed, usage trends, open tickets, sentiment — flags the real risks, and models the what-ifs (renew flat, discount, upsell, or walk) in Excel with a recommended path. It all lands as a reply in your voice plus a one-page brief — dates, risks, options, next move — plus email to share to the broader account team ready for review.

"When I'm @mentioned in the Incident channel…" Cowork reads the thread and sends you a one-line summary, then runs a root-cause analysis — tracing what changed across the ticket, logs, and recent deploys to separate symptoms from the trigger. It ranks probable causes, calls the blast radius, and proposes fixes with tradeoffs (quick mitigation vs. full fix). Then it packages it all: a drafted status update, action items with owners, related docs pulled in, and an offer to book a follow-up — so you walk in caught up and diagnosed.

And it's proactive without being reckless. Everything runs as you, sees only what you can see, and defaults to draft-and-approve — you decide how much autonomy each trigger gets. Set it up in a conversation, manage every automation in one place, and turn any of it off in a click.

Browser automation now generally available

The work is scattered across SaaS tools, internal portals, ticketing systems, billing dashboards, and the dozens of web tabs you jump between all day. Cowork with local browser automation — now generally available — can step into those tabs for you, working right alongside you in your Edge browser.

With browser automation, you can ask Cowork to check the status of an open ticket in your IT service desk, download the latest invoice from a vendor's billing portal and drop the totals into a summary for you, or pull this week's tasks from your project tracker and turn them into a status update — all without leaving Cowork. Just a couple of things to remember: Edge needs to be installed and signed in to use, and because this work happens right on your machine, your computer needs to stay awake until the task wraps up.

Starting today, OpenAI's GPT-5.6 family of models is available in Microsoft 365 Copilot Cowork. OpenAI and Microsoft partnered together to optimize GPT-5.6 for knowledge work across Microsoft 365 apps and make it the preferred model for Microsoft 365 Copilot. Learn more here.

Customizing Cowork just got easier

Skills are custom instructions that make Cowork work the way you do, and plugins help you expand into the systems you rely on every day — and now, adding new ones is even simpler.

In the Customize tab of Cowork, there are two ways to add a skill

Click Create new to walk through a guided process that helps you define your skill step by step.
Simply drag and drop an existing skill in (a .md, .zip, or .skill) to Upload skill

Plugins work the same way: upload a package via Plugins → Upload plugin, and if you already have a Claude or Open-Plugin zip, we auto-convert it into a publishable package for you — bundled skills and MCP connectors included, no repackaging required.

Make it yours — then share it

And once you've built something good, you don't have to keep it to yourself. Hit Share on any skill or plugin to make it available to specific people across your org. Best of all, you stay the owner — so any edit you make flows out automatically to everyone you've shared with.

Try it out today and customize Cowork to the way your work happens.

Delegate complex work – Copilot Cowork is now GA

Now generally available worldwide, Copilot Cowork is an agentic system that plans, executes, and delivers real work.

Getting to Cowork is now simpler. The redesigned Microsoft 365 Copilot app includes a toggle that makes it easy to move between everyday chat and deeper, multi-step work — with more capabilities on the way.

And once you're in Cowork, the new home page gives you a single place to manage the work already in motion. You can search and revisit past tasks, review and adjust your scheduled tasks, and personalize with skills and plugins that expand what it can do for you.

Built for real work

Real work doesn't happen in one app — it's a meeting in Teams, a follow-up in Outlook, a decision buried in a chat. Cowork is powered by WorkIQ, integrated with the M365 apps you already live in, and extensible to the other work systems across your org — so it maps to how work actually gets done. And because different work demands different strengths, Cowork is multi-model by design.

We’re expanding our model line-up, so you always get the right capability for the task, whether that's speed, depth, or specialized reasoning. Alongside Anthropic, we're adding OpenAI GPT 5.5 Thinking (Frontier) and, coming soon, Cowork 1 — a secure, fine-tuned model post-trained specifically for Cowork tasks at substantially lower cost.

In Auto mode, Cowork picks the best model for the job: Anthropic for visual work like PowerPoint and graphics, OpenAI for in-depth research with citations, and coming soon, Cowork 1 for everyday tasks. Prefer to choose yourself? Use the model picker to take the wheel.

And GPT 5.5 is hosted on Azure, so your data stays within Microsoft's trusted cloud — covered by Azure's enterprise security, compliance certifications, and data-residency controls including the EU Data Boundary.

Cowork also maps to the way you work by connecting to the systems you already use — and with new plugins, it can now reason and act across even more of them.

Nine plugins are available now in the plugin store — Enosix, Harvey, LSEG, Miro, monday.com, Moodys, Morningstar, S&P Global Energy, and TeamsMaestro — with Databricks also available today via sideloading.
Microsoft Fabric and the full Dynamics 365 portfolio — Sales, Customer Service, and ERP apps — are live as well.
And eight more plugins are coming soon: Adobe, Atlassian, Box, Canva, CB Insights, Databricks (in plugin store), MoneyForward, and Templafy.

Cowork doesn't just get things done — it gets things done how you like it. Skills are custom instructions that make Cowork work the way you do — and today we are making it even easier to build and refine over time as well as combining your own workflows with partner-provided or org-wide skills deployed through plugins.

Imagine a tone skill that learns how you write from your last 2,000 emails, so every draft sounds like you. Or a design skill that matches your team's visual style every time. Or a business process skill that captures exactly how something gets done, start to finish — and runs it that way every time.

Knowledge at work doesn't live in a handful of polished apps — it's spread across SaaS tools, internal portals, expense systems, and many other web experiences you click through every day. Now in Frontier, Cowork can use your Edge browser to get work done in those places too.

With browser automation you can ask Cowork to pull an executive summary from your analyst subscription, submit an expense report by first finding the right details in your email and then submitting it, or log into your analytics dashboard and export a data table as a CSV — without leaving Cowork. One thing to keep in mind: since browser activity runs locally, your computer needs to stay on until the task is complete.

Real work has a look — and Cowork now helps keep that look consistent . Presentations are now built using your company's official PowerPoint templates (GA), pulled straight from your asset library, so every deck comes out in your approved colors, fonts, logos, and layouts — no fixing slides after the fact.

The same goes for images. Cowork can now create and edit visuals directly — deck graphics, document illustrations, email imagery — powered by OpenAI's ChatGPT Images 2.0 (GA).

Work in confidence

Enterprise-ready AI starts with keeping everything secure. And security isn't just about where your data lives — it's about the controls you already trust, extended to the actions Cowork takes.

Cowork integrates with Purview controls your security and compliance teams already use today to manage Microsoft 365 Copilot. Today, Cowork is protected by sensitivity-label inheritance and display, Communication Compliance, audit logging of interactions, interaction content in Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) activity explorer, Insider Risk Management of user risk associated with Cowork interactions, as well as Data Lifecycle Management (GA 6/22) and eDiscovery. Coming soon, Cowork will have Insider Risk Management of user risk associated with Cowork interactions, as well as Data Lifecycle Management (DLM) and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) for M365 Copilot extended to Cowork.

In practice, this means that Cowork prompts, responses, and generated artifacts are governed, discoverable, and retained similar to Microsoft 365 Copilot today. No new stack to learn. No separate data security posture to manage. Admins govern Cowork the same way they govern Copilot today.

Get started with Copilot Cowork

Copilot Cowork requires the M365 Copilot User Subscription License (USL). Users are then billed for Cowork on a usage-based basis, with charges determined by the tasks they run. For more detail on the pricing model, refer to this Microsoft Learn article.

To get started with Copilot Cowork, check out the Copilot Cowork adoption site. For more information about Copilot Credits and cost management, see this Microsoft Learn article.

Today we are again expanding model choice in Microsoft 365 Copilot with the addition of Anthropic's latest model—Claude Opus 4.8—now available in Copilot Cowork (Frontier). Learn more about our announcement here.

Give Microsoft 365 Copilot Cowork your team's playbook. Plugins bring your organization's skills and knowledge into one workflow so Cowork can help support teams work the way they already do. Try Copilot Cowork in Frontier

In plain English: a connector is the “bridge” that lets Cowork safely pull data from another platform like Dynamics 365, Fabric, and Power BI—and in some cases send updates back. A plugin packages one or more connectors and skills together to help Cowork do a specific job. If something says read & write, it means Cowork can both read data from that app and where supported and configured, help write updates back (for example, create or update a record), not just view it.

* Plugins can include only skills, only connectors or a combination of the two packaged together.

Custom created plugins

Organizations can build custom plugins for their own needs or publish them for broader use. For example, a plugin could turn fragmented data into a single business snapshot, help new hires get up to speed by pulling the right context on day one, or connect to a pricing engine so Cowork can generate quotes on the spot. If you already use Claude Cowork plugins, you can bring them into Copilot Cowork in a few simple steps. Learn how to add, create, and manage plugins in Copilot Cowork and start building yours today.

Partner plugins coming soon:

* Partner integrations for LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group), Miro, monday.com, and S&P Global Energy are available in the coming weeks

Whatever tools your team runs on, you’ll be able to bring them into Cowork.‌ In the coming weeks, we're launching integrations with LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group), Miro, monday.com, and S&P Global Energy in Cowork. With additional partners including Adobe, Atlassian, Box, Enosix, Harvey.AI, Money Forward, Morningstar,  and Swoop by Prezi also on the way. This is just the first wave, with more plugins to come.

Native plugins & connectors

We’re introducing a Fabric IQ integration, starting with Power BI, that lets you bring your Power BI data into Cowork workflows. This enables a seamless shift from spotting a trend to acting on it, across everything from pipeline health to operational KPIs. Cowork works with the Dynamics 365 plugins to connect with Sales, Customer Service, and ERP so the work that moves your business—pipeline reviews, case resolution, supplier approvals—happens alongside everything else in Cowork, with the full context of the customer and transaction right there.

Here's how plugins and connectors come together in real-world scenarios

The following examples are illustrative scenarios and may require configuration, custom skills, appropriate permissions, and data readiness. Capabilities may vary by customer and environment.

Finance contract review

A finance manager asks Cowork to help review an existing customer’s contract and surface potential issue for review before countersigning, then send an email to review the results.

Plugin recipe	What it does
Dynamics 365 ERP apps	Cowork pulls AR/AP history, deferred revenue, and long term unpaid invoices and payment history from Dynamics 365 — confirming the customer's receivables are current and checking approval thresholds to surface any outliers before countersigning.
Fabric IQ	….then benchmarks the terms against historical deals in Fabric IQ
Core Cowork capability	… so Cowork can benchmark key terms — price, payment terms, discount, tenor — against the customer's own historical deals.
Custom skill: Compliance Checker	A customer-built Compliance Checker skill helps validate the contract against internal policy — revenue recognition rules, approval thresholds, and required legal language — and highlights potential gaps for human sign-off.
LSEG	Combined Quantitative & Qualitative Diligence Cowork assembles a multi-signal view using LSEG data: Worldscope fundamentals and IBES estimates for the counterparty’s financial health, sector-level credit spread curves and live swap rates to benchmark the contract’s pricing, FX forwards for any cross-border payment terms, and a sweep of IFR and news headlines for material events – producing a market-grounded risk context to sit alongside the compliance and ERP checks.¹
S&P Global Energy	Cowork then cross-references the customer contract's commodity pricing and indexation clauses against S&P Global Energy's AI Ready Data — surfacing the latest rationales, commentaries, and market analyses across crude oil, natural gas, and related commodities — to flag any terms that sit out of line with current market conditions.
Out-of-the-box Cowork skills	The output: a consolidated finance review report attached and sent to the right reviewers (finance, legal, and compliance leads) for approvals before countersigning.

¹Cowork does not provide financial advice or replace a financial advisor. It can help assemble market context and supporting research for a team’s review, but it should not be relied on as a complete or sole basis for financial risk assessment or decision-making.

Sales: Customer commit risk

An account executive asks Cowork to review deals closing this quarter and help highlight which opportunities may be at risk

Plugin recipe	What it does
Dynamics 365 Sales	Cowork pulls the open sales opportunities in the commit-stage from Dynamics 365 Sales, including estimated revenue, close date and primary contact and then...
Fabric IQ	...compares each deal to historical close patterns with Fabric IQ to flag the ones that don’t follow historical norms.
Core Cowork capability	Then Cowork compares each live deal against those patterns — surfacing the ones that don't follow the norm.
Custom skill: Risk Scoring Model	Then Cowork runs everything through the customer's custom Risk Scoring skill, which applies their own internal rubric to help assign a risk tier to opportunities based on the customer’s defined criteria.
Dynamics 365 Customer Service	It also checks Dynamics 365 Customer Service for account health — bringing together context from open and closed cases — since service issues are often the earliest warning signs.
Out-of-the-box Cowork skills	Cowork helps prepare the quarter-close review meetings for the top three opportunities, assembling draft PowerPoint decks for the team to review, and attaching them to the meeting invites.
Dynamics 365 Sales	After each meeting, Dynamics 365 Sales automatically attaches the Teams meeting transcript to the opportunity record — so nothing falls through the cracks.

Marketing: Market Entry Strategy

A marketing exec asks Cowork to help evaluate and compare three potential markets for H2.

Plugin recipe	What it does
Dynamics 365 Sales	Cowork pulls existing opportunity pipeline and customer concentration by geography from Dynamics 365 Sales to see where there's already organic pull versus where they'd be starting cold.
Fabric IQ	Fabric IQ models revenue scenarios for each market based on how similar expansions have played out historically, giving a realistic range.
Core Cowork capability	…then models revenue scenarios for each candidate market — grounding the ranges in how similar expansions have played out for this customer, not generic forecasts.
Custom skill: Market Prioritization Rubric	A customer can create a custom Market Prioritization Rubric skill that scores each candidate on the criteria that matter to this company so the scoring reflects their own playbook, not a generic framework
Core Cowork capability	From there, Cowork produces an interactive HTML dashboard with a side-by-side view of all three markets that leadership can filter and poke at before the session, and a PowerPoint deck built from the same analysis.
Miro	Cowork uses a Miro skill to build a visual pros/cons board — color-coded nodes laying the three markets side by side against the team's criteria and past expansion decisions, so leadership can see the trade-offs at a glance and align on a choice.
monday.com	A monday.com skill then spins up a planning board pre-populated with the market comparison and open decision points, so the team can work through alignment in the room instead of building the board live.

Plugins are a big part of how Cowork gets more capable over time, but these are not the only enhancements coming to Cowork today.

Now available on iOS and Android mobile

You can now delegate tasks to Cowork wherever you are—on your commute, between meetings, or away from your desk. Start a task on your phone and pick it up later on your desktop or begin on your desktop and stay on top of it while on-the-go. Your laptop could be sitting at your desk, closed, and the task will be ready regardless. It's the same conversation, same context, always synced in the cloud and now in your pocket. Cowork is rolling out now for eligible Frontier users on mobile iOS and Android in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app.

This is just the beginning. Every new plugin brings more of your organization’s skills and knowledge into Cowork, helping it work more like a capable teammate that understands how your business runs. With new mobile experiences and enterprise-grade security and governance, Cowork is ready to support work across apps, devices, and teams. Try Copilot Cowork today in the Frontier program.

Today we're expanding model choice in Microsoft 365 Copilot with the addition of Anthropic's latest model—Claude Opus 4.7—now available in Copilot Cowork (Frontier). Learn more about our announcement here.

Today, Copilot Cowork—designed for long-running, multi-step work in Microsoft 365—is available via the Frontier program. Join Frontier to get early access to Microsoft’s latest AI innovations.

Copilot Cowork makes it easy to delegate work. Describe the outcome you want and Cowork automatically grounds the work in your emails, meetings, messages, files, and data. Powered by Work IQ, Cowork draws on signals across Outlook, Teams, Excel, and the rest of Microsoft 365 so it can act with the same understanding you bring to your job.

Built for the enterprise

Copilot Cowork runs with security and governance boundaries. Identity, permissions, and compliance policies apply by default, and actions and outputs are auditable. Cowork runs in a protected, sandboxed cloud environment, so tasks can keep progressing safely as you move across devices. This is what makes execution durable at enterprise scale.

Working closely with Anthropic, we have integrated the technology behind Claude Cowork into Microsoft 365 Copilot. It is this multi-model advantage that makes Copilot different. Your work is not limited by one brand of models. Copilot hosts the best innovation from across the industry and chooses the right model for the job regardless of who built it. This is a pattern of work that will only become more powerful as new models and ways of working emerge.

Learn more about Copilot Cowork here.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Blog articles

Join Us Live: Understanding Copilot Cowork and Managing Copilot Credits

🎙️ Live AMA: Understanding Copilot Cowork and Managing Copilot Credits

Available today: OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 in Microsoft 365 Copilot

Higher-quality work across apps you use every day

Reason through complex asks in Chat

Get complex work done in Copilot Cowork

Get started today

Available today: Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 5 in Microsoft 365 Copilot

Get started today

Sales Agent is now generally available: Bringing customer and deal intelligence into the flow of work

Give every seller the customer and deal context they need, wherever work happens—helping them prepare faster, follow up sooner, and keep CRM data current.

From preview to general availability

Why this matters for sales teams

What customers are saying

Available now

The workflow is the product: Copilot Cowork plugins change what AI can do for businesses

Cowork works across the systems that power your business

Inform financial and investment decisions

Scale consistent, high-quality outcomes across professional service engagements

Ground your work in market and competitive research

Act across the enterprise systems work runs on

Turn finished work into something ready to share

Every action Cowork takes is governed like the rest of Microsoft 365

Put Cowork to work across your systems

What’s New in Microsoft 365 Copilot | June 2026

User capabilities

General availability for Copilot Cowork

Expanded citations and reasoning for Copilot app and Chat

New references and access for Copilot Notebooks

Customization and refinement for Copilot in Outlook

Improvements to document editing for Copilot in Word

Updates to branding, skills, and references for Copilot in PowerPoint

Skills, personalization, and rules for Copilot in Excel

Planner Agent availability and Researcher options for Copilot Agents

IT admin capabilities

New adoption and management capabilities for Microsoft 365 admin center

Email restriction and Cowork controls for Purview Data Loss Prevention

What’s New in Notebooks | June 2026

Copilot Notebooks are available to Copilot Chat users

Review our previous blog about Copilot Notebooks

Available today: Anthropic Claude Fable 5 in Microsoft 365 Copilot

Get started today

Learning Agent now generally available — personalized AI upskilling for every employee

Meet Learning Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot

Scale AI skilling across your workforce

Make AI upskilling and reskilling really stick

Deliver learning in the moment employees need it

Personalize learning without adding complexity

Help employees learn by doing

What’s next

Get started

What’s New in Microsoft 365 Copilot | May 2026

User capabilities

Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8 is now available

Refreshed design, Notebooks enhancements, and Apple CarPlay for the Microsoft 365 Copilot app

GPT-5.5 Instant for Copilot Chat and Copilot Studio

Expanded content in the Copilot Prompt Gallery

Learning Agent

Account selector for Copilot in Outlook

Call delegation, recap deletion, and video recap with Copilot in Teams

Document summaries, personalization, and writing suggestions from Copilot in Word

Slide explanations and built-in skills with Copilot in PowerPoint

Custom skills for Copilot in SharePoint

IT admin capabilities

Expanded ISO certifications across our Copilot portfolio

The new Copilot Adoption Hub

Enabling watermarks for sensitive material

Available today: Anthropic Claude Opus 4.8 in Microsoft 365 Copilot

Get started today

Recertified: How Microsoft 365 Copilot continues to earn trust and What Changed in a Year

Recertification: ISO 42001 for the second consecutive year

What changed in a year

Using AI to govern AI

Customer confidence, validated

What comes next

Additional resources

Scaling the reach of finance: what’s next with Finance Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot

Empowering finance at scale: Finance Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot

Announcing new ways to experience Finance Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot

Get started with Finance Agent and see it in action at Gartner Finance Symposium/Xpo™ 2026

Delegate complex work – Copilot Cowork is now GA