Microsoft Copilot for Sales Blog articles

What's New in Copilot for Sales - January 2025

mssle — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 02:03:53 GMT

Microsoft Copilot for Sales is reimagining sales. Integrated seamlessly into your daily tools across Microsoft 365 and Teams, Copilot for Sales harnesses the power of generative AI and customer data to keep sellers in their flow of work so they can spend more time with customers.

Welcome to 2025! We're pleased to let you know about several great new features shipping this month! First up - we're excited to announce a feature that allows you to easily share CRM records when composing emails in Outlook by using a single "/" symbol to select a recently used CRM record.

We're also announcing the public preview of mobile support for Copilot for Sales in Outlook to join our existing mobile support when using Teams. To round out the features this month, we're happy to deliver improved Teams meeting recap notifications that contain the information you need the most, directly in the notification.

Capabilities highlighted below are being released this month. It may take time for specific capabilities to reach every tenant in each market.

We look forward to bringing you even more features in the coming months!

In Outlook

Easily share CRM records when composing emails in Outlook*

Sellers should be able to easily share recently used CRM entities with colleagues directly in the flow of work within Outlook* emails. Starting this month, sellers can embed any configured CRM entity in an email message by typing “/” (forward slash) to show a list of previously used Copilot for Sales CRM entities.

As a seller interacts with Copilot for Sales, the most recently used entities are added to a new table in Dataverse. The service will shallow copy CRM entities (title, subtitle, link) to Substrate with a 1-year expiry date.

Just as Microsoft 365 Copilot users can type the “/" symbol and quickly get to recently used files, sellers will now be able to use the “/" symbol to quickly select a recently used CRM entity.

Once the desired CRM entity is selected, a record link is inserted and then unfurled into a rich adaptive card. The screenshots below highlight key components of this feature.

Settings screen showing the feature enabled. The feature is turned off by default. The CRM admin can enable the feature in settings.
Email message demonstrating how to insert a record into the email. Type “/” followed by character(s) to show matching Copilot for Sales entities from the CRM.
Email message showing the embedded adaptive card inline within the email.

1. Settings screen showing the feature enabled2. Email message demonstrating how to insert a record into the email3. Email message showing the embedded adaptive card

*This feature is currently available in the New Outlook for Windows and in Outlook for Web.

Mobile support for Copilot for Sales in Outlook (public preview)

We’re excited to announce the public preview of mobile support in Outlook! Starting this month, sellers can use Copilot for Sales in the mobile iOS and Android versions of Outlook.

Most features available in the desktop version of Copilot for Sales are also available in the mobile version (unless called out in the known issues section of documentation) including the following:

Add or edit CRM records such as contacts, accounts, and opportunities.
Search for and view CRM records.
Save emails to CRM.
View AI-generated email summaries.
Generate email drafts that can be copied into an email reply.
View AI-generated opportunity summaries.

You’ll find details in the product documentation on Microsoft Learn.

To Launch Copilot for Sales within an email

Select “...” on an open email
Select “Copilot for Sales”

Screenshot of the Copilot for Sales experience for Outlook mobile

In Teams

Improved Teams meeting recap notifications

In Copilot for Sales, today we send an empty notification that redirects sellers to the meeting recap in Teams. This can result in low click-through rates and missed information.

This month we're pleased to announce that we’re improving the value of the notifications by providing a summary of the meeting and follow-up tasks directly in the notification.

By bringing forward some of the recap content, we expect this feature to generate more interest in viewing the full recap and content in the Sales Pill, ultimately improving the feature’s usage. The screenshots below show the current and improved notifications.

Screenshot showing the current Teams meeting recap notificationScreenshot showing the improved Teams meeting recap notification

Get started

Join us and other top-performing sales organizations worldwide. Reach out to your Microsoft sales team or visit our product web page.

Install Copilot for Sales. Have a look at our deployment guide for Dynamics 365 Sales users or our deployment guide for Salesforce users.

Learn more

All the details. Check out the Copilot for Sales product documentation.

The latest tips...and more. Copilot for Sales Tip Time can serve as a foundation for your training of Copilot for Sales users, customers, or partners! This content includes use cases and demonstrates how each feature will benefit sellers, administrators, and sales managers.

The latest adoption resources. Visit the Copilot for Sales Adoption Center and find the latest information about how to go from inspiration to adoption.

Stay connected

Learn about the latest improvements before everyone else at https://aka.ms/copilotforsalesupdates. Join our community in the community discussion forum and we always welcome your feedback and ideas in our product feedback portal.

What's New in Copilot for Sales - December 2024

mssle — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 22:50:34 GMT

To wrap up the 2024 calendar year, we've released even more improvements to email summaries and drafts in Outlook, new quick filter options when saving records back to your CRM, and our first release of metrics through Viva Insights Analyst Workbench!

Capabilities highlighted below are being released this month. It may take time for specific capabilities to reach every tenant in each market.

We look forward to bringing you even more features in 2025!

In Outlook

Enhancements to email summaries and drafts

We’ve heard feedback from customers about the quality of email summaries and drafts, especially in languages other than English. Since receiving this feedback, we’ve been working iteratively to improve.

This month, we’re pleased to announce our first wave of improvements to email experiences in the Outlook side panel, including:

More concise email summaries that exclude information such as meeting information, signatures, and footers.
Support for suggested meeting times based on email conversations while creating the first draft (through custom prompt).
Support for language and tone while creating the first draft (through custom prompt).
Improved responses in languages such as French and Spanish by respecting tonality options.

Example of improved Outlook email summary and draft experiences.

Enable quick filters when searching for records to connect

By default, Copilot for Sales automatically searches the entire CRM to find the appropriate record when saving an email or meeting to the CRM. This ensures no records are left out but can make it challenging to find the correct CRM record when multiple records have similar text.

To help address this challenge, we’re excited to announce new Quick Filters. Sellers can use this feature to scope search results to "active records" or records "owned by me" and see a scoped-down list of results to more easily find what they're looking for. This feature is in addition to the already supported filter for record type.

For Dynamics 365 Sales, these new filters apply to Opportunities, Accounts, and Contacts. "Active records" is based on the default Status field and "Owned by me" is based on the default Owner field.
For Salesforce Sales Cloud, the "Active records" filter applies to Opportunities and is based on the default IsClosed field. The "Owned by me" filter applies to Opportunities, Accounts, and Contacts and is based on the default ownerId field.

This feature is supported in all Outlook versions.

Example of Quick Filter workflow when saving an email to Dynamics 365 Sales CRM from Copilot for Sales

In Other Surfaces

Copilot Dashboard: Access usage data using Viva Insights Analyst Workbench

We know that customers need access to usage data to earn trust, justify investments and drive adoption of Copilot for Sales. With this month’s release, we’re excited to announce the launch of Copilot for Sales metrics in Viva Insights Analyst Workbench!

Now, customers have a user-friendly way to track Copilot for Sales adoption in their organization – including everything from key high-level metrics to scenario-specific details. The metrics are complemented by an out-of-the-box Power BI dashboard (including 7 templates) to get started quickly and with minimal effort. The images below show a sample of what you'll see.

Learn more about the Copilot for Sales Adoption Report and the Viva Insights Copilot Dashboard and follow this blog to hear the latest updates!

Analyst Workbench - preliminary view

Power BI Template - Copilot for Sales Adoption Summary

Power BI Template - Copilot for Sales Usage

Get started

Join us and other top-performing sales organizations worldwide. Reach out to your Microsoft sales team or visit our product web page.

Install Copilot for Sales. Have a look at our deployment guide for Dynamics 365 Sales users or our deployment guide for Salesforce users.

Learn more

All the details. Check out the Copilot for Sales product documentation.

The latest adoption resources. Visit the Copilot for Sales Adoption Center and find the latest information about how to go from inspiration to adoption.

Stay connected

What's New in Copilot for Sales - November 2024

mssle — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 22:37:10 GMT

To reduce friction and increase efficiency for first time users of Copilot for Sales, this month we’ve released the public preview of an enhanced sign in experience in Microsoft Teams for both Dynamics 365 Sales and Salesforce® CRM users.

Capabilities highlighted below are included in this month’s release of Copilot for Sales. It may take time for specific capabilities to reach every tenant in each market.

In Teams

CRM sign in experience in Teams (public preview)

Until now, first time users of Copilot for Sales who start from Microsoft Teams face friction as they must first open Outlook to sign into their CRM. The sign in capabilities previously supported in Teams did not have parity and consistency with the sign in capabilities in Outlook.

With this month’s release, we’re excited to announce the public preview of a new sign in experience for Teams designed for Copilot for Sales users who open the Teams Personal App for the first time.

Dynamics 365 Sales users will be automatically signed in to an environment even if they have never signed in before, using similar rules as Outlook. Sellers can confirm or change this environment to suit their needs. If they have multiple environments, they will also be able to switch their environment without first signing out.

Salesforce users will be able to sign in to any of their environments directly from the Teams Personal App.

Screenshot showing the new CRM sign in experience for first time users.

Get started

Ready to join us and other top-performing sales organizations worldwide? Reach out to your Microsoft sales team or visit our product web page.

Ready to install Copilot for Sales? Have a look at our deployment guide for Dynamics 365 Sales users or our deployment guide for Salesforce users.

Learn more

Ready for all the details? Check out the Copilot for Sales product documentation.

Ready for the latest tips...and more? Copilot for Sales Tip Time can serve as a foundation for your training of Copilot for Sales users, customers, or partners! This content includes use cases and demonstrates how each feature will benefit sellers, administrators, and sales managers.

Looking for the latest adoption resources? Visit the Copilot for Sales Adoption Center and find the latest information about how to go from inspiration to adoption.

Stay connected

Want to stay connected? Learn about the latest improvements before everyone else at https://aka.ms/copilotforsalesupdates. Join our community in the community discussion forum and we always welcome your feedback and ideas in our product feedback portal.

What's New in Copilot for Sales - October 2024

mssle — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 01:17:40 GMT

This month we’re excited to announce the release of email banners* that allow you to quickly update CRM data – right from the email message!

* shown on up to 2 external emails per day in the new Outlook for Windows and in Outlook on the Web.

Capabilities highlighted below are included in this month’s release of Copilot for Sales. It may take time for specific capabilities to reach every tenant in each market.

In Outlook

Streamline CRM Tasks with actionable message banners in Outlook

Effective management of important day-to-day CRM tasks, such as adding new contacts or leads and saving customer emails, is crucial for maintaining productive customer relationships. However, these tasks can often be overlooked when exchanging emails with customers in Outlook, with sellers either unaware that these tasks can be completed using Copilot for Sales or needing to self-navigate through the sidecar to complete them.

To simplify this process and ensure that critical CRM updates are never missed, we’ve introduced Actionable Message Banners directly within the sellers’ Outlook inbox. When reading emails from external customers, these banners will surface contextual prompts that guide sellers to perform important actions directly through Copilot for Sales, such as adding new contacts or leads and saving emails to the CRM, all helping sellers stay organized and save valuable time.

Each banner is contextual to the email on which it’s shown, surfacing only relevant content and actions.
Clicking on an action will take the seller directly to the appropriate experience in the sidecar to complete the action.
Banners will be shown on up to 2 external emails per user per day.
Banners and other on-canvas experiences are available only in the new Outlook for Windows and Outlook for Web.

Get started

Ready to join us and other top-performing sales organizations worldwide? Reach out to your Microsoft sales team or visit our product web page.

Ready to install Copilot for Sales? Have a look at our deployment guide for Dynamics 365 Sales users or our deployment guide for Salesforce users.

Learn more

Ready for all the details? Check out the Copilot for Sales product documentation.

Looking for the latest adoption resources? Visit the Copilot for Sales Adoption Center and find the latest information about how to go from inspiration to adoption.

Stay connected

What's New in Copilot for Sales - September 2024

mssle — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 23:12:23 GMT

This month, we’re enabling features to streamline your experiences in Teams, and Copilot Studio. First up: users signing in to Copilot for Sales for the first time can connect to their CRM directly from Teams rather than first having to sign in to Outlook. We also enabled zero-click sign-in for Copilot for Sales extensions using Entra ID, and finally, we’re making it easy to use the sample certified connector plugin – right from within Copilot Studio!

Capabilities highlighted below are included in this month’s release of Copilot for Sales. It may take time for specific capabilities to reach every tenant in each market.

In Teams

CRM sign in experience in Teams

Today, first time users of Copilot for Sales who start from Teams face friction as they must go first to Outlook to sign into their CRM because sign in capabilities in Teams do not have parity and consistency with sign in capabilities in Outlook.

We’re excited to announce that starting this month we’re improving the sign in experience. For Copilot for Sales users who open the Teams Personal App:

Dynamics users will be automatically signed in to an environment even if they have never signed in before (similar rules as in Outlook) and they can confirm or change their environment! Also, if they have multiple environments, they will be able to switch their environment without signing out.
Salesforce® users will be able to sign in to any of their environments directly from the Teams Personal App.

Extensibility and Cross-Surface

Sample certified connector plugin for Copilot for Sales (preview)

Currently, customers have access to a sample connector solution that helps them understand how to build a new extension for Copilot for Sales; however, to see and learn from the sample connector solution in action, customers need to take multiple steps: (1) download the connector solution; (2) import the downloaded solution in their Dataverse environment connected to Copilot for Sales; and (3) create a connection action in Microsoft Copilot Studio.

We’re very pleased to announce that starting this month customers can accelerate and get started more quickly extending Copilot for Sales by using a certified connection action that customers can discover, enable and study – directly from Microsoft Copilot Studio!

To get started, follow the instructions in the Learn article Manage extensions for Copilot for Sales (preview) using Microsoft Copilot Studio and enable the Contoso Hub connector action for Copilot for Sales. We also have more information available about the sample certified connector action.

Simplified zero-click sign in experience for Copilot for Sales extensions using Microsoft Entra ID (preview)

Currently, Copilot for Sales users need to explicitly sign into connector plugins enabled to extend Copilot for Sales even if the connector plugin uses Microsoft Entra ID for authentication.

Starting this month, Copilot for Sales will silently create connections for connector plugins which use Microsoft Entra ID for authentication if the copilot administrator has already enabled the connector plugin for Copilot for Sales users.

This allows users to view data and insights from non-CRM applications that extend Copilot for Sales and use Microsoft Entra ID without explicitly signing into those applications again, saving time and energy.

You can learn more about how to create a custom connector and connector action and how to view insights from partner applications (preview) from within Copilot for Sales.

Get started

Ready to join us and other top-performing sales organizations worldwide? Reach out to your Microsoft sales team or visit our product web page.

Ready to install Copilot for Sales? Have a look at our deployment guide for Dynamics 365 Sales users or our deployment guide for Salesforce users.

Learn more

Ready for all the details? Check out the Copilot for Sales product documentation.

Looking for the latest adoption resources? Visit the Copilot for Sales Adoption Center and find the latest information about how to go from inspiration to adoption.

Stay connected

What’s New in Copilot for Sales - August 2024

mssle — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 18:18:52 GMT

For August, we've enhanced our recent communications card in Outlook with support for quick view of meeting recaps and recurring meeting support. We've also added time of day support to our existing date support in record creation and editing. In Teams, we've added the ability for admins to configure defaults for saving attachments to the CRM, and last but not least - made it easier to send post-meeting follow-ups with the ability to draft the email directly from Teams.

Capabilities highlighted below are included in this month’s release of Copilot for Sales. It may take time for specific capabilities to reach every tenant in each market.

In Outlook

Recent communication card now supports meeting recaps and recurring meetings

Relevant information about past interactions with a customer is scattered across multiple tools - including emails in Outlook and meetings in Teams. Consolidating all the information is tedious, manual work. Our recent communication card already had an ability to view summaries of recent email threads but wasn’t able to show meeting recaps. It also didn’t support recurring meetings – showing only the first instance (if it occurred within the last 30 days.)

With this month’s release, we now enable customers to efficiently catch up on recent Teams meetings by adding capabilities to:

Quickly view a recap in Teams*
View individual instances of recurring meetings

Learn more about the recent communications card.

*Note: For View Recap button to show in the card for a Teams meeting, a recording needs to exist, and the user must have permissions to access the recording.

Date time support for record creation and editing

When sellers create records in their CRM, they want to record the date and the time of day when creating many record types such as activities, opportunities, and leads. During record creation, we allowed sellers to add date information, but not the time of day.

Now sellers can set the time of day in addition to the date as part of record creation and editing in Copilot for Sales. Recording the accurate time of day is highly important for business activities and success when using the app.

In Teams

Admin settings to save attachments to the CRM

Attachments can be important context to include in the CRM, but not all attachments provide value, yet they all take up space. Different organizations have different requirements about whether saving attachments should be enabled and if so, whether saving all or none of the attachments should be the default.

With this month’s release, the CRM Admin can now configure the attachment saving feature for both emails and meetings, including whether it should be enabled and if enabled what the default behavior should be.

When the feature is enabled, the seller can decide which attachments to save when they save an email or a meeting to the CRM.

Learn more about the save attachments capabilities and details of the CRM admin settings options:

June 2024 What’s new blog announcing CRM Attachments capabilities.
Save Outlook activities to the CRM.
Configure how activities are saved to CRM.

Post Teams Meeting Follow-up Email

Today, sellers lack a streamlined flow for post meeting follow-up and need to remember to send meeting recap and next steps to all stakeholders themselves. With a proactive nudge they can send a copilot drafted “Thank you and next steps” email directly from Teams Meeting Recap. This can keep the deal moving forward with stakeholders informed, aligned and accountable.

Sellers can now create a follow up email directly from ‘Sales’ in Teams meeting recap. The email content is generated by LLM and includes a summary and next steps.

The seller can then open the draft in Outlook with the subject, recipient, and generated text pre-populated, make any desired changes, and send the email with a single click.

Get started

Ready to join us and other top-performing sales organizations worldwide? Reach out to your Microsoft sales team or visit our product web page.

Ready to install Copilot for Sales? Have a look at our deployment guide for Dynamics 365 Sales users or our deployment guide for Salesforce users.

Learn more

Ready for all the details? Check out the Copilot for Sales product documentation.

Looking for the latest adoption resources? Visit the Copilot for Sales Adoption Center and find the latest information about how to go from inspiration to adoption.

Stay connected

Want to stay connected? Learn about the latest improvements before everyone else at https://aka.ms/salescopilotupdates. Join our community in the community discussion forum and we always welcome your feedback and ideas in our product feedback portal.

What's New in Copilot for Sales - July 2024

mssle — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 23:45:28 GMT

This month, we're excited to bring capabilities to help sellers save time when collaborating with seamless sharing of key email info from Outlook to Teams, enable sellers to stay ahead of activities with meeting prep notes and recent emails, and enable sellers to receive suggested CRM updates in even more languages!

As always, we invite you to get started, learn more, and stay connected! See you next month!

Capabilities highlighted below are included in the July release of Copilot for Sales. It may take time for specific capabilities to reach every tenant in each market.

In Outlook

Share key email information easily from Outlook to Teams

Today, sellers face challenges in efficiently sharing crucial customer information received via Outlook with their sales team members on Teams. Currently, they resort to manual copying and pasting of information, searching for the appropriate recipient, and then initiating a chat or posting in the right channel on Teams to share it.

With this release, we’re introducing seamless sharing to Teams in the seller’s flow of work in Outlook to help sales teams quickly start a Teams discussion with up-to-date and relevant information that can move a deal forward. Now, sellers can:

Share key email information with their colleagues in Teams
Add preamble text before sharing
Review and modify key email info before sharing
Share to any location in Teams ─ with a person, in a group chat, or in a Teams channel

Find more details in our product documentation.

Full language support in suggested CRM updates

Sellers are busy and today updating information crucial for their businesses directly in their CRM requires manual work. Bringing the ability to update their CRM to the flow of work for quick updates, sellers can save time and be more efficient.

This month, we’re excited to announce the rollout of additional language support for suggested CRM updates. Prior to this release, four languages were supported; this expansion enables Copilot for Sales to provide suggested updates in ten languages* for:

Monetary value changes (like budgets, revenue, fees etc.)
Timeline changes
Stage progression changes for an opportunity.

* Discover all the details at our supported languages page.

The fields a seller can update depend on their CRM permissions as well as which editable fields are enabled by the admins. Calculate fields, and all other scenarios will deep link to their CRM.

In Teams

Stay ahead of activities with meeting prep notes and recent emails

Sellers and sales managers preparing for a meeting sift through vast amounts of data from a variety of sources, including their CRM, a time consuming and sometimes overwhelming activity. This can lead to information overload and potentially cause difficulty in prioritizing the most relevant details for their meeting.

We’re pleased to announce two new capabilities in our meeting prep to help both sellers and sales managers stay ahead of their most impactful activities! Starting with our July release:

A meeting prep card will be sent about an hour* before a meeting instead of just as the meeting starts. (admin configuration settings coming soon!)
Recent emails in meeting prep now contain information about the last 2 emails sharing the same external contacts who are participating in the meeting.

*card will appear 45-75 minutes prior to meeting start time

Get started

Ready to join us and other top-performing sales organizations worldwide? Reach out to your Microsoft sales team or visit our product web page.

Ready to install Copilot for Sales? Have a look at our deployment guide for Dynamics 365 Sales users or our deployment guide for Salesforce users.

Learn more

Ready for all the details? Check out the Copilot for Sales product documentation.

Looking for the latest adoption resources? Visit the Copilot for Sales Adoption Center and find the latest information about how to go from inspiration to adoption.

Stay connected

Build 2024 Wrap-Up: Elevating Sales with Copilot Extensibility Preview

mssle — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 20:18:17 GMT

At the start of this year, we embarked on an exciting journey to revolutionize our Microsoft Copilot for Sales solution with a new extensibility story. Our goal was to empower customers and partners to enrich Copilot with their own data and insights using their preferred tools. Recently, we reached a significant milestone by launching this solution in preview, making Copilot for Sales one of the first role-based Microsoft Copilots that can be seamlessly extended through Microsoft Copilot Studio.

Additionally, we partnered with a number of innovative ISVs to enhance our Copilot; resulting in the delivery of multiple extensions across chat, embedded canvas experiences, and our contextual sidecar, showcasing the versatility and potential of our platform.

We also had the privilege of showcasing these groundbreaking achievements at the 2024 Microsoft Build conference. The response from attendees, customers, MVPs, and our partner and ISV community was overwhelmingly positive. We were inspired by the enthusiasm and numerous unique use cases shared with us, highlighting the potential of Copilot Studio to transform sales processes with new extensible solutions.

What we presented at Build

Our presence at Build included three key sessions:

Mechanics Presentation for Extending Copilot for Sales with Microsoft Copilot Studio

This session demonstrated how Copilot for Sales can seamlessly integrate data from both internal and external systems using generative AI. Attendees were shown how to use zero-code solutions to connect their data with Copilot Studio, creating custom AI skills that enhanced sales workflows. Key highlights included enriching email summaries with CRM data, generating personalized meeting prep documents, and utilizing external data to inform sales interactions. The session also covered how to set up and test these extensions within Copilot Studio, ensuring that users could easily replicate these enhancements in their own environments.

Watch the video:

Extending Copilot for Sales with Microsoft Copilot Studio

During this session participants learned they can extend Microsoft Copilot for Sales using Microsoft Copilot Studio to empower sales teams with data and insights from any in-house or partner sales application. Copilot for Sales is purpose built to deliver actionable insights from Dynamics 365 Sales or Salesforce CRM, and during the session we showed in live demos how to use Copilot Studio to incorporate data and insights from any sales application –from account planning to eSignature and more!

Demo: Extend Copilot for Sales with Data and Insights from Any Sales App

In this in-person demo, participants watched us demonstrate how to easily extend Microsoft Copilot for Sales using Microsoft Copilot Studio. We showed how building an extension can empower your sales teams with data and insights from any in-house or partner application into both chat and non-chat experiences within Copilot for Sales. All your sales data, right in the flow of work within the Microsoft 365 applications you know and love!

Moving Forward

The momentum from Build 2024 marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter for Copilot for Sales. We are eager to see how our partners and customers will leverage these new extensible capabilities to drive innovation and achieve their business goals. Stay tuned for more updates and success stories as we continue to expand and enhance our ecosystem.

As mentioned earlier in this article, we announced our preview release in the May 2024 Copilot for Sales blog. Use the links below to get more details!

Check out our Microsoft Mechanics video about extensibility.
Watch our breakout session at Microsoft Build (on-demand)

Learn how to use the preview release to extend Copilot for Sales with partner applications. Today you can extend the following out of the box capabilities:

To extend additional capabilities sign up for preview support from the product team.

Get started

Ready to join us and other top-performing sales organizations worldwide? Reach out to your Microsoft sales team or visit our product web page.

Ready to install Copilot for Sales? Have a look at our deployment guide for Dynamics 365 Sales users or our deployment guide for Salesforce users.

Learn more

Ready for all the details? Check out the Copilot for Sales product documentation.

Looking for the latest adoption resources? Visit the Copilot for Sales Adoption Center and find the latest information about how to go from inspiration to adoption.

Stay connected

What's New in Copilot for Sales - June 2024

mssle — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 19:55:41 GMT

In June, we're adding features to multiple surfaces, including Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Teams, and to Microsoft Copilot Studio! We're pleased to announce new capabilities in the Outlook suggested actions card, new options for saving email and meetings, and the ability to view recent communications. In Teams, we've added a new action items service and improved discoverability for Sales in meeting recap. And now you can enable Power Connector plugins in Copilot Studio to extend Copilot for Sales (in preview). We wrap up the blog with resources for getting started, learning more, and staying connected.

Copilot for Sales capabilities highlighted in this post are released during the month of June 2024. It may take time for specific capabilities to reach every tenant in each market.

In Outlook

New capabilities added to Suggested CRM actions card

We’re excited to announce several new capabilities for the Suggested CRM actions card. Copilot for Sales scans email conversations and compares the data with data in the CRM when determining which updates to suggest - looking for changes in monetary value (such as budgets, revenue, or fees), timeline, and deal progression.

This month, we’re adding these new capabilities.

We now support scanning emails in additional languages, including Italian.
CRM record details are made available as soon as an email is connected to a record.
Inline editing is fully available to all customers for users with permission and for fields marked editable by admin settings. When not available, and for calculated fields, we deep link to the connected CRM.

Learn more about suggested CRM updates.

New options when saving email and meetings to the CRM

Copilot for Sales supports the capability to save email and meetings to the CRM. With this release, we’re enhancing the save capability with new actions on save, including the ability to save selected attachments and to add additional fields.

Include choice of email attachments on save

Today, emails and meetings are saved to the CRM without associated attachments. This means sellers need to manually add desired attachments to the CRM, adding to their process and taking them outside the flow of work.

In this release, we’re pleased to announce sellers can now select one or more eligible Outlook email or meeting attachments to save to the CRM when the email or meeting is saved. Sellers stay in the flow of work by eliminating the manual process of saving attachments to their CRM.

Categorize Outlook emails and events when saving to CRM

Sellers often want to add additional details about a meeting (such as whether it was face-to-face, or a site visit) or about an email (such as whether it has personal information) when saving it to the CRM. Today, sellers must leave their flow of work and manually update the activities in CRM with this additional information.

With our June release, sellers can now provide additional data to be saved along with the email or meeting right when they save the activities to CRM from copilot, allowing them to stay in the flow of work in Outlook.

This capability will be available once the Copilot for Sales administrator configures which fields will accept additional data when saving to the CRM by using the documentation to configure how Outlook email and events are saved to the CRM.

View recent communications

Relevant information about past interactions with a customer is scattered across multiple surfaces, including emails in Outlook and meetings in Teams. Consolidating this information is tedious, manual work.

By surfacing recent communications and insights in the flow of work, sellers can quickly catch up on the latest context and move deals forward with accurate, relevant responses.

In this release, available by the end of June, we’ve added a new “Recent communications” card that’s displayed in the context of an email or meeting opened in Outlook. By default, the card shows the most recent email thread and Teams meeting involving the first external contact* in the email or meeting.

*Contact is the first external email address in the list (sender, to, and CC for emails; and organizer, required attendees, and optional attendees for meetings). If the email or meeting is in Compose mode, the list does not include the sender/organizer.

Sellers can get AI-based summaries of recent email conversations and open recent email threads and meeting invitations in Outlook.

Sellers can see up to three of the most recent email threads and Teams meetings from the last 30 days with the first external contact in the email or meeting by choosing the See all link on the card.

Learn more about how to view recent communications in Copilot for Sales.

In Teams

New action items service

To be more efficient, sellers need systems which can automatically and accurately record their commitments and action items during meetings for efficient tracking and follow-up.

With our June release of Copilot for Sales, we’ve improved how we handle action item recording during meetings. These enhanced capabilities, now generally available, include:

An action item service based on LLM (GPT4)
A consistent structure for action items with topic, description, and assignee.
Improved quality with a higher “hit rate” for mentioned follow-ups.

Improved discoverability for Sales in Teams meeting recap

Sellers need a system allowing easy access to sales meeting summaries in the Teams recap for quick reference and action, saving their valuable time.

We’re happy to announce that we’ve improved the discoverability of sales meeting summaries with our current release! Now in general availability, eligible users will receive a notification when their meeting summary is ready for review, along with a link to the Sales section in the Teams meeting recap for easy access. By selecting the link from the notification, the seller will be taken directly to the sales meeting summary.

In Microsoft Copilot Studio

Enable Power Connector plugins to extend Copilot for Sales (In Preview)

Currently, customers need to reach out to Microsoft to enable plugins for users of Copilot for Sales. With our June release, customers can use the plugin management features in Microsoft Copilot Studio to deploy custom plugins for specific users connecting to specific CRM environments. This is a preview capability.

Simply have your Copilot for Sales administrator enable custom or certified plugins for copilot users in Copilot Studio. If a plugin is no longer required, the Copilot for Sales administrator can also disable them in Copilot Studio.

Learn more about how to extend Microsoft Copilot for Sales with partner applications (preview).

Get started

Ready to join us and other top-performing sales organizations worldwide? Reach out to your Microsoft sales team or visit our product web page.

Ready to install Copilot for Sales? Have a look at our deployment guide for Dynamics 365 Sales users or our deployment guide for Salesforce users.

Learn more

Ready for all the details? Check out the Copilot for Sales product documentation.

Looking for the latest adoption resources? Visit the Copilot for Sales Adoption Center and find the latest information about how to go from inspiration to adoption.

Stay connected

What's New in Copilot for Sales - May 2024

mssle — Thu, 30 May 2024 17:57:16 GMT

This month we’re bringing exciting capabilities to Outlook by unifying the sidecar for Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot for Sales, adding global entity search, and adding inline editing for from suggested CRM updates! We’re also excited to announce the preview of Copilot for Sales extensibility using Microsoft Copilot Studio! You can enrich out-of-the-box skills and bring your own skills to Copilot for Sales!

Capabilities highlighted in this post are included in the May 2024 release of Copilot for Sales. It may take time for specific capabilities to reach every tenant in each market.

Outlook

Unified Sidecar in Outlook*

We’re pleased to announce that Copilot for Sales and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat now live in harmony in a shared sidecar! To help avoid confusion when launching and interacting with Copilot, we now have one Copilot experience across all Microsoft Surfaces.

You’ll see sales-specific value as experiences will be called out using the keyword “sales” with the Copilot for Sales icon displayed as needed.

* Available in Outlook for Web and New Outlook desktop.

Global entity search in Outlook

Until now, sellers have been limited to viewing records automatically identified and suggested by Sales Copilot through certain relationships. With this month’s update, we’re excited to unlock the ability to search for entities directly from the Outlook sidecar!

Now sellers can search CRM data based on their own needs and requirements, using their knowledge and familiarity with their CRM data.

Suggested CRM updates now feature inline editing

In our March blog, we highlighted the release of suggested CRM updates within the Copilot for Sales Outlook experience. This month, we’re excited to announce you can now take action directly inline – without having to leave the Outlook side car!

The screenshot below shows these two new capabilities in action.

Linked record details will be shown immediately so that opportunity timelines and budget can be updated directly in the sidecar. Linked contact record inline updates coming soon! Opportunity stages will still take end-users to the CRM, in accordance with business processes.
Select the “Update Opportunity” button in the sidecar to easily edit Opportunity information in the CRM inline—without ever leaving the sidecar!

Learn more about suggested CRM updates

Copilot Studio

This month we're pleased to announce the public preview of Copilot for Sales extensibility experiences using Copilot Studio! You can try out extending Copilot for Sales with Microsoft Copilot Studio using our product documentation at https ://aka.ms/CopilotforSalesExtensibility.

Bring data and insights into chat and non-chat experiences (preview)

In preview now, you can enrich out-of-box skills in Copilot for Sales and bring your own skill to the chat experience. Sellers can now get insights from any sales application contextually in the flow of work in Microsoft 365 Copilot – from your CRM and other sales applications.

Enrich out-of-box skills like Email summary and Key sales info (shown in figure 1) and Opportunity (CRM record) summary and CRM record details (shown in figure 2). You can also bring your own skills to Sales chat (shown in figure 3).

Author Power Platform Connector plugins to extend Copilot for Sales (preview)

Now in preview, you can extend chat and non-chat experiences in Copilot for Sales using power platform connector plugins authored in Microsoft Copilot Studio!

Copilot for Sales integrates with CRM out-of-box (OOB). However, sales teams need data and insights from non-CRM sales applications in the copilot experiences. Using Copilot Studio, customers can now build power platform connector plugins to bring data and insights from any sales application into the copilot experience!

Use Copilot Studio to author power platform connector plugins to extend Copilot for Sales.
Enrich OOB skills, including Email summary, Key sales info, Opportunity / Account summary, and CRM record details
Bring new skills to Copilot for Sales chat

The screenshots below show the application flow from getting started (figure 4) to configuring (figure 5) to publishing (figure 6).

Get started

Ready to join us and other top-performing sales organizations worldwide? Reach out to your Microsoft sales team or visit our product web page.

Ready to install Copilot for Sales? Have a look at our deployment guide for Dynamics 365 Sales users or our deployment guide for Salesforce users.

Learn more

Ready for all the details? Check out the Copilot for Sales product documentation.

Looking for the latest adoption resources? Visit the Copilot for Sales Adoption Center and find the latest information about how to go from inspiration to adoption.

Stay connected

What's New in Copilot for Sales - April 2024

mssle — Thu, 09 May 2024 18:37:12 GMT

This month we’re infusing Copilot for Sales with even more AI-powered capabilities to help sellers be more productive. In Microsoft Outlook, we’re making it faster and easier to add new contacts or leads from emails to the CRM, view existing CRM contact details, save emails to the CRM with email banners, and sign-in to 3^rd party applications. In Microsoft Teams, we’re adding question detection and keywords in meeting recaps, and we now provide even more information in adaptive cards.

We’re also excited to announce the preview release of AI powered Planner tasks in Collaboration spaces! This new capability suggests tasks based on seller conversations, integrating with Microsoft Planner app in the flow of work to unlock advanced collaboration.

Outlook: Quick CRM actions from email banners

Sellers can now effortlessly boost their productivity by easily completing important CRM tasks pertaining to customer email communications - in their flow of work - from their Outlook inbox. Using quick CRM actions in the new actionable message banners that appear when reading external customer emails, you can seamlessly add new contacts or leads from emails to the CRM, access details of existing CRM contacts, and save emails to the CRM.

These banners will appear on up to 2 external customer emails per seller’s inbox per day. Some licensed users will begin to see this feature now; and it will gradually be made available to all users over the month of May.

Learn how to show saved contacts, add new contacts, and save outlook activities from email banners.

Outlook: Sign-in to Copilot plugins from action cards (extensibility)

Today, to get insights from external applications, sellers have to go the plugin portal to log into 3^rd party certified connector plugins. As part of that process, they have to select the plugin twice. With the April update, we’ve made it simpler to sign into 3^rd party partner integrations through a guided sign-in experience.

Sellers can now quickly and easily login from within Copilot for Sales in Outlook by using action cards and the sign-in widget. The action card will be shown to prompt users to sign-in to 3^rd party plugins enabled by their administrators.

Learn more about creating connections to partner applications.

Teams: Question detection and keywords in meeting recap

Sellers need an easy way to quickly scan customer conversations and find points of interest, such as questions that were asked, or people and keywords that were mentioned. The Sales pill within the Teams meeting recap aims to deliver more value, similar to other Copilot for Sales surfaces.

With this release, we support:

Question detection. Easily view and navigate to questions asked by meeting participants.
Keywords and mentions. Quickly browse through points of interest including brands, time, people, and other implicit keywords.

To use this capability, simply select the Sales pill within the meeting recap, where you’ll now find the identified questions and keywords from the transcript!

Learn more about sales related insights in meeting recap.

Teams: Adaptive cards with AI summaries

When sharing a CRM entity with a colleague in Teams, sometimes they need additional details – taking them out of the flow of their work and adding time and disruption.

With our April release, Copilot for Sales now provides an option to view an AI generated summary of the CRM entity within the flow of work! This helps provide a richer experience by providing additional details such as AI summarization as well as high value entity details right in Teams.

Teams: AI generated Planner tasks in Collaboration spaces (preview)

Now in preview, this new capability in Copilot suggests tasks based on seller conversations, integrating with Microsoft Planner app in the flow of work to unlock advanced collaboration.

As your sales teams collaborate, the Copilot for Sales bot in channel identifies crucial discussions to be tracked as tasks. From the Planner tab pinned in the channel you can see a comprehensive view of tasks associated with specific accounts and opportunities.

Sellers will see a curated list of suggested tasks (complete with task title and assigned owner) for review of the team members. Simply select all or some suggested tasks to be converted into Planner tasks, optionally customizing details before the tasks are finalized.

For added convenience, you can also access these tasks directly from the Microsoft Planner app once they are created.

Administrators can enable or disable AI powered Tasks in Collaboration spaces by using the Copilot for Sales app in Microsoft Teams. Simply navigate to the Collaboration spaces section within the admin settings. By default, the capability is enabled.

Learn more about collaboration spaces and see how you can set up an account team or deal room team to help your sales team collaborate.

Get started

Ready to join us and other top-performing sales organizations worldwide? Reach out to your Microsoft sales team or visit our product web page.

Ready to install Copilot for Sales? Have a look at our deployment guide for Dynamics 365 Sales users or our deployment guide for Salesforce users.

Learn more

Ready for all the details? Check out the Copilot for Sales product documentation.

Looking for the latest adoption resources? Visit the Copilot for Sales Adoption Center and find the latest information about how to go from inspiration to adoption.

Stay connected

What's New in Copilot for Sales - March 2024

mssle — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 21:01:36 GMT

This month, we’re bringing many exciting new capabilities! For our Salesforce customers, we now support Salesforce Notes objects when saving a summary to your CRM. Within the Outlook experience and side pane, we have a number of new enhancements, for example: new suggestions for CRM updates inside Outlook, direct entity creation support from the side pane, and updates to Key Sales Information. Keep watching our blog for additional new features coming soon!

AI-powered opportunity suggestions when saving email/meetings to CRM.

Updating CRM data is an important seller activity but can feel like a tax on their time. Businesses and sellers alike rely on up-to-date CRM records and the correct connections between related records and businesses often assess sellers based on their diligence in updating records.

To improve the seller experience, we’re pleased to announce AI-powered opportunity suggestions! Now sellers can effortlessly save emails and meetings to the most relevant opportunities in their CRM based on AI-powered opportunity suggestions. These smart suggestions eliminate the need for manual searches, making the process very efficient.

Opportunity summary now also supports Salesforce Notes object when saving a summary to the CRM.

Today, Copilot for Sales supports the Notes and Attachments object in Salesforce when saving an email summary to the Salesforce CRM, and when viewing Opportunity summaries. With this change, we’ll now support the Notes object as well! If you’re an SFDC admin and need this type of support, please simply contact your Microsoft Account team or open a Support ticket with Copilot for Sales. We’ll take care of the rest!

Suggested CRM Updates within Copilot for Sales Outlook experience.

With Copilot for Sales, sellers will start seeing suggestions to update their CRM records within their Copilot Outlook experience. When Copilot for Sales detects possible changes relating to monetary values (like expected revenue or budgeting) or deal timelines (like estimated close date or fulfillment dates), Sellers can take the action immediately via Outlook, thus keeping the CRM up to date with relevant changes quickly.

Coming Soon - these additional enhancements:

Take the suggested action inline within the Copilot for Sales sidecar application (today, the update takes you to the CRM to update the information in the Opportunity record).
Receive suggestions to promote and update the Sales Stage (for example, after sending a proposal or quote to the sales prospect).
Receive suggestions to update existing Contact information such as phone/mobile number, job title, and role or stakeholder status within a deal.
Bulk updates via Microsoft Copilot Chat.

Learn more: View suggested CRM updates

Entity creation support within Outlook side pane.

Within the Outlook Copilot for Sales side pane, sellers will be able to quickly create any configured entity (Contact, Opportunity, Lead, Account, etc.) directly within the Copilot for Sales panel. For complex creation forms, an additional option to deep link to the CRM system will also be available.

Creation of new entities is also available when searching for a record doesn't surface a result. For example, when editing a contact and searching for an account to add to it, if an account is not found one can easily be created.

Learn more about creating records from the Outlook side pane.

Key Sales Information in Outlook- suggest and change related records.

We currently provide CRM highlights for an email directly inside the key sales information card surfaced in Outlook. We’ve now made the content more accessible and added AI-provided suggestions with the ability to change related records easily! Here’s some of what’s included:

We’re combining key stakeholders in the same role into a single item in Key Sales Info, while retaining each as individual contact in references.

Instead of manually selecting a relevant opportunity for every email, now a new ranking mechanism allows an opportunity or other entity to be suggested automatically using AI. The seller can also change the suggested item easily, right from the Key Sales Info pane!

In the references for each connected entity, we’re now showing you citations that is: info about how the entity was connected! If you manually connect, we’ll let you know that you selected the item. If the connection was from an AI-generated suggestion, we’ll let you know that too!

Email is saved to an entity and to related entities
Email is saved to an entity based on automatically suggested entities.
Opportunity is connected because the user has selected a new opportunity.

We’re also adding support for internal emails! You can now connect emails within your company to relevant contacts, accounts, and opportunities.

Learn how to summarize an email thread using sales information with Copilot in Outlook.

Get started

Ready to join us and other top-performing sales organizations worldwide? Reach out to your Microsoft sales team or visit our product web page.

Ready to install Sales Copilot? Have a look at our deployment guide for Dynamics 365 Sales users or our deployment guide for Salesforce users.

Ready to learn all the details? Check out the Copilot for Sales product documentation.

Stay connected

What's New in Sales Copilot - February 2024

mssle — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 02:59:36 GMT

This month, we’re bringing you an exciting enhancement in Collab Spaces, and also highlighting new content, Copilot for Sales Tip Time.

Enable collab spaces creation and access from lists and cards for Account and Opportunity records.

Today, limited creation and engagement with Collab Spaces represents a lost opportunity. Selling is a team sport and seamless collaboration over key information that moves a deal forward is critical.

We’re excited to announce we’ve added contextual entry points for Collab Spaces by enabling Account and Opportunity collab space creation and access from both record lists and record detail cards.

Here’s how:

From the Sales tab:

From a record list, choose the ellipsis menu, and “Teams” to create or access linked Collab Spaces.
From a record’s detail view, create or access Collab Spaces linked to that record from the Collaborate in Teams card.

Create and access Collab Spaces from Account and Opportunity records’ list and detail views

Learn more about Collaboration Spaces in Copilot for Sales.

Copilot for Sales Tip Time

Copilot for Sales Tip Time can serve as a foundation for your training of Copilot for Sales users, customers, or partners! This content includes use cases and demonstrates how each feature will benefit sellers, administrators, and sales managers.

It aims to assist sellers in understanding the capabilities of Copilot for Sales; providing quick tips, facilitating product learning, and, more significantly, enabling them to make the most of the great features we provide. At the same time, tip time assists administrators who perform customizations and sales managers who need usage data.

Get started

Ready to join us and other top-performing sales organizations worldwide? Reach out to your Microsoft sales team or visit our product web page.

Ready to install Sales Copilot? Have a look at our deployment guide for Dynamics 365 Sales users or our deployment guide for Salesforce users.

Ready to learn all the details? Check out the Copilot for Sales product documentation.

Stay connected

Microsoft Copilot for Sales is here!

mssle — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 19:37:53 GMT

Microsoft Copilot for Sales is here! The next step in the evolution of Viva Sales and Sales Copilot was released on February 1, 2024 for Dynamics 365 Sales and Salesforce CRM. You can read the announcement about the general availability of Copilot for Sales (and Copilot for Service) and learn what’s new.

With Copilot for Sales, we bring together the power of Copilot for Microsoft 365 with role-specific insights and actions to streamline business processes, automate repetitive tasks, and unlock productivity. We still provide the flexibility to integrate with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Salesforce to get more done with less effort.

Check out the Copilot for Sales Adoption Center where we provide resources to deploy, use, and scale Copilot for you, your team, and your organization!

Get started

Ready to join us and other top-performing sales organizations worldwide? Reach out to your Microsoft sales team or visit our product web page.

Ready to install? Have a look at our deployment guides for Dynamics 365 Sales users or for Salesforce users.

Stay connected

Keep up to date on the latest improvements at https://aka.ms/salescopilotupdates and learn what we're planning next. Join our community in the community discussion forum and we always welcome your feedback and ideas in our product feedback portal.

User Experience changes with release of Copilot for Sales

mssle — Sat, 03 Feb 2024 04:00:21 GMT

Microsoft Ignite 2023 introduced the next step in the journey with our Copilot products. Sales Copilot has changed to bring the power of Copilot for Microsoft 365 and role specific insights and actions together under a new offering called Microsoft Copilot for Sales. On February 1, 2024, we released Copilot for Sales, the future sales product showcasing how Copilot capabilities work better together across your productivity apps.

As part of this effort, we are excited to bring several user experience improvements to our product. This article discusses some of the changes you'll see.

First, we're excited to announce that we're merging the Highlights and CRM tabs into a single unified view so sellers can access relevant CRM data grouped together to provide a full picture right in the flow of their work!

In Microsoft Outlook, sellers who have the new Copilot for Sales license will see email summary and generate reply integrated into the Outlook canvas as part of the Microsoft 365 Copilot experience.

In Microsoft Teams, sellers with the new Copilot for Sales license will be able to use the power of Copilot chat enriched with sales capabilities such as opportunity summary generation using CRM data and in-meeting brand analysis.

Additionally, Copilot for Sales users will soon experience new features in Microsoft 365 apps like Word, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Use the resource links below to stay connected with us and learn when new features are released.

Stay connected

Explore our latest release plans to find out what's coming next.
Read and follow our blog to hear the latest news.
Join our community in the community discussion forum and we always welcome your feedback and ideas in our product feedback portal.

Learn more

See the latest user experience changes and learn details about what's new in our learn documentation.

Ready to join us and other top-performing sales organizations worldwide? Reach out to your Microsoft sales team or visit our product web page.

Ready to install Sales Copilot? Have a look at our deployment guide for Dynamics 365 Sales users or our deployment guide for Salesforce users.

What's New in Sales Copilot – January 2024

mssle — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 15:22:28 GMT

Microsoft Sales Copilot is reimagining sales. Integrated seamlessly into your daily tools across Microsoft 365 and Teams, Sales Copilot harnesses the power of generative AI and customer data to keep sellers in their flow of work so they can spend more time with customers.

As we begin a new year, we have even more new features to share! Learn more as we discuss how Sales Copilot is added to Teams meetings automatically and how you can choose a different language for your Sales Copilot email drafts and replies. We also provide what you need to get started, stay connected, take part in our community, and provide product feedback.

Sales Copilot automatically added to Teams meetings no matter where the meeting is created

Until now, Sales Copilot was added automatically to meetings only when the meeting was created from Outlook with at least one connected contact. With our latest release, we’ve removed part of this limitation, and you’ll now see Sales Copilot automatically added to your Teams meetings regardless of where the meeting was created! A meeting still requires at least one external participant for Sales Copilot to be automatically added.

Whether you’re creating your meeting from Outlook, Teams, or even from a custom app built on Power Platform, Sales Copilot will be automatically added to your Teams meeting.

Learn more about adding Sales Copilot to Teams meetings.

Enable language selection for email drafts in Sales Copilot

Today, Sales Copilot automatically selects the language used in email drafts based on the email thread language (when replying to an email) or the prompt language (when composing a new email).

In some cases, a seller may want to choose a different language. For example, they may receive an email in English and wish to reply in their local language, or they may prefer to save to their CRM in English when the email was in their local language.

With this new functionality, sellers can now refine the draft provided by Sales Copilot and choose a different language than the one suggested automatically. Copilot will use this language when drafting their reply or composing a new email message.

Read about how language selection works in Sales Copilot.

Get started

Ready to join us and other top-performing sales organizations worldwide? Reach out to your Microsoft sales team or visit our product web page.

Ready to install Sales Copilot? Have a look at our deployment guide for Dynamics 365 Sales users or our deployment guide for Salesforce users.

Stay connected

What's New in Sales Copilot – December 2023

mssle — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 15:22:54 GMT

As the calendar year comes to a close, we're releasing two great new features we'd like to share with you. Learn more below as we highlight our new features and provide you with what you need to get started, stay connected, participate in our community, and provide product feedback.

Enable support for creating Leads directly in Sales Copilot (Public Preview)

We're excited to release for Public Preview a much-anticipated feature to support Leads in Sales Copilot! Starting in December, sellers can engage with Leads in their regular flow of work as well as in their CRM to help streamline their day!

Sellers can now create and edit Leads in the same way they can with Contacts, as well as save emails and meetings to Lead records. This feature allows sellers to stay in their flow of work instead of opening their CRM to add new Leads.

Sellers can:

View existing Leads in Sales Copilot.
Create and edit Lead records from emails.
Associate emails and meetings with Lead records.
Disambiguate among multiple Lead matches.
Interact with Leads-related accounts and other related entities.

Learn how to configure leads support (preview) and register for the public preview.

Adaptive cards in Microsoft Teams load independent of Sales Copilot sign-in for Dynamics users

For Dynamics users, we're improving the user experience of adaptive cards in Teams by removing the pre-requisite to sign-in to Sales Copilot to have these load. As long as a Dynamics user has the right permissions, record cards and opportunity summary cards auto-posted in deal rooms will load without encountering the friction of a sign-in step from Sales Copilot.

As adaptive cards are fundamentally a collaboration between sender and recipient, both should see the same data to collaborate more efficiently and more effectively. With this enhancement the recipient will see what the sender meant them to see, even if the recipient was signed out or signed-in to a different environment from Sales Copilot.

Read about how to share a CRM record using Teams and how to open a collaboration space in Teams.

Get started

Ready to join us and other top-performing sales organizations worldwide? Reach out to your Microsoft sales team or visit our product web page.

Ready to install Sales Copilot? Have a look at our deployment guide for Dynamics 365 Sales users or our deployment guide for Salesforce users.

Stay connected

How IT organizations and M365 Admins can get started with Microsoft Copilot for Sales and Salesforce

sshriva — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 21:22:51 GMT

Microsoft Copilot for Sales brings sales data and insights into the flow of work to help sellers save time, focus on customers, and close more deals. Copilot for Sales is experienced within Microsoft 365 applications and connects directly to Salesforce© CRM for real-time data and updates.

General technical requirements

Copilot for Sales is available globally, supports 24 world languages, and works with the Professional (with API access enabled), Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer editions of Salesforce CRM. To use Copilot with Salesforce CRM, you must have a Microsoft 365 for Enterprise license and an Azure Active Directory account, which gives you access to Microsoft 365 apps like Outlook and Teams. Your organization must be on Outlook for Windows version 2206 (Build 15330.20196), and Outlook for Mac, version 16.78, to use the Outlook add-in. To take advantage of Teams Meeting sales insights, you should be on Copilot for Sales version 1.0.9 or higher. You can view Copilot for Sales application versions, session IDs, and other relevant application metadata easily for quick reference.

Permissions

Copilot for Sales uses your organization's existing access controls and user permissions in Salesforce CRM and M365 apps to deliver data and insights, always respecting your existing data security and privacy commitments. Salesforce CRM administrators must have the correct permissions to customize their CRM systems, and users must have the correct permissions to view, update, and create records in their CRM systems from Copilot for Sales. Salesforce administrators who need to customize Copilot for Sales must have Modify All Data or Manage Data integrations permissions, which need to be on the user's profile and not in permission sets assigned to the user. More information: Right permissions in Salesforce, Power platform env creation, Privileges required to use Copilot for Sales.

Installing Sales Copilot, enabling customization and AI capabilities

Microsoft 365 administrators can install Copilot for Sales and assign users/security groups to use it. As an admin, you can install the Copilot for Sales for Microsoft Outlook Add-In via the Microsoft 365 Admin Center and the Copilot for Sales for Microsoft Teams App via the Teams Admin Center. Like other Microsoft 365 apps and services, you can also manage the license assignment using the Microsoft 365 admin center. End-users can also install the Copilot for Sales. However, Microsoft 365 tenant admins can explicitly block the app for end-users. We recommend that an administrator install Copilot for Sales for best performance and usability.

After Copilot for Sales is successfully installed, your Salesforce CRM administrator can customize Copilot for Sales for your organization and set up AI capabilities. With customized settings, organizations can specify which information to display for users in Outlook and which CRM records to edit directly from the Copilot. Learn more: A Step-by-step guide to deploy Copilot for Sales for Salesforce CRM

Data Security and Privacy

Copilot for Sales securely integrates Salesforce CRM data and actionable insights into Microsoft 365 applications by adhering to data privacy, security, retention, and compliance standards for the core data stores. These stores include Microsoft Graph for Microsoft 365 information, Salesforce CRM data, and Microsoft Dataverse for Copilot for Sales-specific data.

When the first user from a specific Azure Active Directory (AAD) tenant uses the Copilot for Sales for Microsoft Outlook Add-In to connect to their Salesforce organization, a new Microsoft Dataverse instance is provisioned for that organization. This instance is shared among all the connected Salesforce environments and organizations within the tenant. You can manage your Dataverse instance from the Power Platform Admin Center.

The Copilot for Sales app keeps data secure during transmission with Transport Layer Security (TLS) and authenticates all endpoints through Azure Active Directory (AAD) scoped to user permissions. When users connect to Salesforce via Copilot for Sales, they use their existing login credentials, which generate a Salesforce authentication token. The Copilot then uses this token to interact with Salesforce, ensuring that the user's permissions in Salesforce are always respected.

Copilot for Sales accesses three types of data - Salesforce CRM data, including standard entities like Contacts, Accounts, and Opportunities, as well as configured custom entities; End-user Microsoft 365 data, such as emails and meeting data; and Copilot for Sales specific data, such as AI-generated email content and insights. Salesforce CRM data is viewed and updated directly in the CRM system in real-time. Copilot for Sales does not copy your CRM data to other systems, except when unique identifiers are used for mapping to Copilot for Sales-specific data. In some cases, Microsoft 365 data like emails and meeting content will be copied to the customer's CRM system for activity tracking or to Dataverse for Copilot for Sales-generated insights. For more details, you can visit Copilot for Sales Architecture Documentation.

AI Capabilities

The generative AI capabilities in Copilot for Sales are enabled through Azure Open AI services and leverage the latest developments in large language models (GPT 3.5) along with your organization's CRM and Microsoft 365 data. Copilot for Sales does not apply semantic indexing today. Most importantly, Copilot for Sales does not use customer data to train AI models. and it only accesses customer data when needed to create insights. When accessing your CRM and Microsoft 365 data, Copilot for Sales always works with existing user permission and respects the rules set for the data. Copilot for Sales uses Azure OpenAI for AI insights but does not manage or retain the content sent to Azure OpenAI for monitoring, preventing misuse, or enhancing capabilities. No Microsoft staff can access this content. Moreover, customers are solely responsible for the use of AI-driven features, including their end users' use. Since Azure OpenAI Service availability varies by region, using Copilot features with Azure OpenAI may involve data storage or processing outside your geographic area or compliance boundaries. Learn more about Data Residency in Azure and read our Privacy Statement. Finally, Copilot for Sales complies with GDPR throughout its data handling processes. For example, users can delete their personal data from Copilot for Sales at any time by deleting their account.

Staying up to date with changes and monitoring app usage

Copilot for Sales updates are released monthly and are automatically delivered to all users, requiring no action from admins or end users. In rare cases, explicit consent and action may be added for admins and/or users for certain updates. Microsoft communicates these updates through the “What’s New” section in the Microsoft Copilot for Sales documentation and Copilot for Sales blogs.

Monitoring of Copilot for Sales is supported via native Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Teams usage. As an admin, you can track usage metrics for the Copilot for Sales for Microsoft Outlook Add-In via Microsoft 365 Reports and for the Copilot for Sales for Microsoft Teams App through the Microsoft Teams app usage report.

Sales Copilot adoption

To drive user adoption, you should follow your organization’s best practices on change management. This typically involves creating early adopter teams and training materials tailored to your business needs. Microsoft is committed to helping you get the most value from your investments and will share materials to aid adoption, such as Copilot and AI fundamentals, at the Microsoft AI help & learning site. You can leverage Microsoft’s best practices on driving Copilot for Sales adoption across 60,000 users, along with the user training guide, to get started today.

Resources

You can visit our troubleshooting page to see resolutions for common issues.
Install Copilot for Sales- Deployment guide for Salesforce
Advanced Configuration: Customize forms and fields; Set up email insights
Deep Dive on Copilot for Sales: Architecture docs; Supported languages; Data handling
Azure Open AI services; Data Residency in Azure; Privacy Statement.
Adopt Copilot for Sales: User Training module; Change management best practices
What’s new Overview

DocuSign integration brings visibility on sales agreement to Sales Copilot

Bharath Varadarajan — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 22:07:39 GMT

Sales Copilot recently introduced the ability for Microsoft partners building applications for sales teams to extend Sales Copilot. We are thrilled to announce the preview of Sales Copilot’s integration of DocuSign, a Microsoft partner and an established leader in the eSignature and agreement lifecycle management space.

With the integration of Sales Copilot and DocuSign, sales teams can be more effective in customer engagements using the additional visibility they get on all agreement and agreement related activities in DocuSign presented contextually by Sales Copilot when engaging with customers on emails in Outlook.

Screenshots of Sales Copilot integrated with DocuSign

Get latest updates on agreement activities in DocuSign from within Sales Copilot

Sales Copilot presents an AI generated summary of deals and accounts to sellers so that they get full context of the customer conversation in Outlook. Out-of-the-box, the summary is based on information on the account or opportunity in CRM. With DocuSign integration, the summary will also include the activity updates on agreements created in DocuSign and related with the CRM account or opportunity.

Contract activity updates from DocuSign in Sales Copilot

The seller can view more details about the agreement on which the activity is noticed within Sales Copilot and open the agreement in DocuSign if they need more information.

Additional context on DocuSign activities inside Sales Copilot

View DocuSign agreements signed with customers contextually in Sales Copilot

Sales Copilot brings customer and deal information contextually from Dynamics 365 CRM into Outlook so that sellers have all relevant information available to them as they engage with customers on email. Now, with the integration of Sales Copilot and DocuSign, sellers can get the list of all agreements signed by customers using DocuSign. They can view key details about each agreement inside Sales Copilot.

Sales Copilot showing agreements related to an account from DocuSign

Additional DocuSign agreements inside Sales Copilot

Sharing DocuSign agreements with colleagues or opening the agreement in DocuSign to get additional information is simplified as Sales Copilot provides an easy way to copy a link to the agreement in DocuSign.

Open Agreements in DocuSign from Sales Copilot

Start using Sales Copilot ’s integration with DocuSign

Before you get stared, here are few things to keep in mind

you need to be a customer of Sales Copilot, Dynamics 365 and DocuSign to benefit from the integration
you need to have DocuSign for Dynamics 365 installed on Dynamics 365 and create DocuSign agreements from inside Dynamics 365 to relate DocuSign agreements to Dynamics 365 accounts and opportunities

To get started, sign up for the preview here: https://aka.ms/SalesCopilotDocuSignPreview. The Microsoft team will get in touch with you to enable the integration for your organization.

Once the preview is enabled, you can check out the integrated experience by

Sending a DocuSign agreement for signature to the customer from inside a Dynamics 365 opportunity or account. Please refer to the user guide of DocuSign for Dynamics 365 for detailed step by step instructions.
In Outlook, open Sales Copilot in the context of any email thread exchanged with the customer to whom the agreement was sent. Save the email to Dynamics 365 and connect it to the Dynamics 365 opportunity.
The AI generated opportunity summary in Highlights tab in Sales Copilot will show that a DocuSign agreement was sent to the customer with additional details. After the customer signs the agreement, you will see the activity updates in the opportunity summary in Sales Copilot. You can click on the citation of each activity to get more details.

Opportunity summary in Sales Copilot showing DocuSign activity updates
In the Dynamics 365 tab in Sales Copilot in Outlook, click on the opportunity to view the record details. Sales Copilot will list the DocuSign agreement along with the Dynamics 365 opportunity details. You can click on the agreement to get additional details inside Sales Copilot or open the agreement in DocuSign.

Opportunity details in Sales Copilot showing related DocuSign agreements

Next steps

If you are a Microsoft customer and would like to try the integration of Sales Copilot and DocuSign, sign up for the preview here - https://aka.ms/SalesCopilotDocuSignPreview
If you are a Microsoft partner building applications for sales teams and would like to extend Sales Copilot – please register here: https://aka.ms/SalesCopilotPartnerSignUp

What's New in Sales Copilot – November 2023

davidshin — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 15:23:08 GMT

This month, we’re bringing a suite of new features and additions to open Sales Copilot up to a whole new world of possibilities, accelerate sales transformation, and help sellers be more productive:

Extend Sales Copilot through Power Connectors

We're thrilled to announce the extensibility of Sales Copilot through Power Connectors. Partner applications can now integrate their data and insights directly into Sales Copilot, empowering sellers to get a more complete understanding of the customer. Sellers can access the latest activities from these partner applications within the opportunity and account summaries. Additionally, sellers can view related records from partner applications along with the CRM account or opportunity details.

Extend Microsoft Sales Copilot with partner applications today.

Get DocuSign agreement details and updates from within Sales Copilot

DocuSign is paving the way as the first to extend Sales Copilot through Power Connectors. Now, sales teams can stay abreast of all agreement updates in DocuSign such as when a contract gets signed, right from within Sales Copilot as part of the opportunity summary. They can also view all DocuSign agreements related to CRM accounts contextually from within Outlook using Sales Copilot.

Learn more about how the DocuSign integration brings visibility on sales agreement to Sales Copilot.

Suggested email content: New adjustment options and user prompt explanations

With suggested email content, sellers can improve the quality and timeliness of their communications with customers. Now, we’ve made suggested email content even easier to use with more ways to tailor these emails to your liking. A new length knob allows sellers to adjust the email’s length, ensuring message is as concise or as detailed as needed. Sellers can select from up to 3 suggested meeting times to include in the email, offering greater flexibility when proposing a meeting time. Sellers can also set the default language from a list of supported languages, ensuring that the generated email is always in their preferred language. Finally, sellers can see explanations for any prompts that were used in the generated email.

Use Copilot to kickstart email messages today.

Receive a welcome message in Teams after Sales Copilot is installed

New users will now receive a welcome message in Teams after the Sales Copilot app for Teams has been installed. This initial message from the Sales Copilot bot outlines key benefits and includes links to a product demo video and detailed documentation, equipping sellers with helpful resources as they begin their journey with Sales Copilot. To ensure convenience, this message is timed according to each user's time zone and sent only during business hours. This feature will be progressively rolled out to tenants through November and December 2023.

Control the exposure of Sales Copilot AI features with tenant and security group settings

For the first time tenant-level and security group level controls are being introduced in Sales Copilot. Now tenant admins can start easily tailoring the deployment and access of AI features in Sales Copilot, which can be important from compliance, security and other aspects tenant admins are commonly on top of for their organizations.

Access administrator settings for Sales Copilot today.

Conclusion

Ready to join us and other top-performing sales organizations worldwide? To get started with Sales Copilot, reach out to your Microsoft sales team or visit the product webpage.

Ready to install Sales Copilot? See the Sales Copilot deployment guide for Dynamics 365 users or the Sales Copilot deployment guide for Salesforce users.

Want to stay in the loop? Stay connected to the latest improvements before everybody else at https://aka.ms/salescopilotupdates. We welcome your feedback and ideas in the community feedback forum.