Beyond the hype: turning Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents into real business outcomes
Microsoft Ignite 2025 in San Francisco was an electrifying gathering that brought together over 30,000 tech professionals, business leaders, and innovators from around the globe. This year’s event set a bold tone for the future, spotlighting the transformative role of Copilot and agents in modern workplaces and unveiling a wave of advancements across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. The energy on the ground reflected both the excitement and the urgency of this new era, making it clear: Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents are not just the future—they are redefining the way companies get work done today. As I spoke with partners and customers, I was inspired by how organizations are embracing these tools to unlock new ways of working and developing rich business solutions. I want to take a moment to reflect on some of my highlights from the event. Extend familiar management infrastructure to agents with Microsoft Agent 365 Over the last week, I heard time and time again how business leaders are embracing the Frontier Firm wave, steering their organizations toward partnering people with agents across every workflow. Thousands of agents are already automating business processes, and by 2028 IDC projects there will be 1.3 billion in circulation.* For enterprise customers, this will bring a massive new digital workforce to manage. As agents get added to every workflow and become more capable, some business leaders have expressed concerns about how to accelerate AI innovation securely. Microsoft Agent 365 turns this challenge into an opportunity. Operating as a control plane for AI agents, Agent 365 extends the existing infrastructure used to manage people to also manage agents, equipping them with the same apps, protections, and context. For IT leaders, Agent 365 gives organizations a single platform to deploy, govern, and organize agents, transforming them from isolated actors into an integrated part of business operations. Agent 365 helps protect and manage agents across the organization by unifying Defender, Entra, and Purview, and provides a single view of their entire agent fleet with the Microsoft 365 admin center. To ensure agents have the context they need to provide the most accurate results, Agent 365 connects Microsoft 365 apps and Semantic Index through WorkIQ. For organizations ready to take advantage of this unified foundation, Agent 365 will offer a robust ecosystem. For example, Microsoft agents like the new, fully autonomous Sales Development Agent; partner agents from Adobe, Cognition, Databricks, Genspark, Glean, Kasisto, Manus, NVIDIA, n8n, SAP, ServiceNow, Workday, and more; and open-source agents from Anthropic, Cursor, LangChain, OpenAI, Perplexity, and Vercel. For developers looking to build their own Agent 365-compatible agents, they can start with Copilot Studio or Microsoft Foundry. For deeper integrations, Microsoft Agent Framework or Agent 365 SDK enable unified discovery, governance, and collaboration across Microsoft 365. Simplify HR and IT support with the Employee Self-Service agent Another impactful way businesses are integrating agents into operational workflows is by replacing fragmented employee-support systems for HR or IT tasks. At Ignite, we announced the general availability of the Employee Self Service (ESS) agent, which brings AI-powered service delivery directly into Microsoft 365 Copilot to improve HR and IT employee support scenarios. Within Copilot, employees can ask questions, submit requests, and complete routine tasks in one trusted place without disrupting workflow. Natively built into Copilot Studio, the ESS agent provides a customizable foundation for intelligent employee service. It works with HR and IT systems such as Workday, ServiceNow, and SAP SuccessFactors and can easily be expanded through low-code extensions, connectors, and integrations with enterprise systems. Employees can tailor workflows, embed organizational knowledge, and adapt the experience to match their organization’s systems, resulting in a faster and more connected support experience. Frontier Firms in action: Turning AI innovation into business outcomes On Thursday, I hosted a panel session with leaders from several enterprise customers who are well on the path to becoming Frontier Firms: Sean Alexander, SVP, Connected Ecosystem, Lumen Tim Holt, VP, Health Answers Tech Lead & Architect, Pfizer Mona Riemenschneider, Head of Global Communications, GenAI, BASF John Whittaker, Director, AI Platform & Products, Ernst & Young Two themes emerged from our panel discussion. First, the most successful organizations are moving from experimentation to operationalization, developing agent-specific KPIs, governance structures, and more. These are not science experiments, but production tools already embedded directly into some of the world’s most complex enterprises. For example, Pfizer is leveraging Copilot Studio at scale with over 300 agents deployed across their organization, including a specialized agent that provides continuous manufacturing improvement with prioritized opportunities across the supply chain. Second, leaders on the panel emphasized that the future of work is human-led and agent powered. At Lumen, they’ve developed a declarative agent that synthesizes internal data, external filings, and real-time insights to generate tailored executive briefings, reducing cognitive load and surfacing the context needed to prepare for partner and customer meetings. At BASF Agricultural Solutions, they’re using a Copilot agent to transform global corporate communication efficiency. The Copilot agent streamlines the compilation of internal and external communication messages, efficiently and securely, resulting in significant time savings. "If 2025 was the year of the agent, then 2026 will be the year of the agents," said EY’s John Whittaker. “That’s where I think we’re going to see the consolidation of processes into far faster, more real-time, improved outcomes.” Learn how partners and customers are already unlocking new value with AI agents It’s exciting to see how our rich ecosystem of customers and partners are using Microsoft technology to create their own agents to solve real-world challenges, accelerate transformation, and scale human-agent collaboration. Ignite 2025 featured several Microsoft partners and customers who are building innovative agents, designed to work with Microsoft 365 Copilot to help save time, boost productivity, and accelerate business transformation. ADP - The ADP Assist agent for Microsoft 365 Copilot is purpose-built to support HR and will simplify payroll tasks by bringing key workflows into Copilot Chat and Microsoft Teams. Employees will be able to check time-off balances, review pay statements, and confirm direct deposit settings, all without leaving their flow of work. Blue Yonder - Blue Yonder Inventory Ops for Microsoft 365 Copilot automates demand forecasting using advanced machine learning and generates optimized, constraint-based supply plans covering production, distribution, and procurement to meet business objectives and enhance planner productivity. Freshservice - Freddy AI Agent now integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Copilot, bringing instant IT and support assistance into Word, Outlook, Teams, and more. This deep integration boosts adoption, eliminates context switching, and empowers employees to resolve issues effortlessly inside their everyday Microsoft 365 tools. monday.com - monday.com has integrated its MCP server with Microsoft Copilot both as a ready-to-use agent in the Agent Store and as a "Tool" for users to build custom agents on Copilot Studio. Users can now directly access their monday.com data, surface boards and items, or even update statuses directly within their Teams app or Microsoft 365. Sophos - Sophos Intelix will integrate real-time threat intelligence into Microsoft 365 Copilot, empowering IT teams and business users to check links and files, and make faster, more informed security decisions while democratizing enterprise-grade cybersecurity insights within everyday Microsoft 365 workflows. Wipro – Wipro has implemented Copilot-powered agents across sales, procurement, finance, and talent functions, enhancing knowledge access and decision-making to drive faster, more accurate, and consistent business operations. These aren’t the only incredible agents helping businesses. Thousands more are available in Microsoft Marketplace, where partners like the ones below are already reaching customers at scale. Shape the future of work with AI agents What inspires me most coming out of Ignite 2025 is seeing how customers and partners are already building the foundation of their Frontier Firms—people and agents working together to transform productivity and decision-making. This shift is no longer theoretical, it’s happening now across industries, powered by Copilot. To learn more about agents in Copilot and gain access to Microsoft resources, follow the links below. Check out recorded sessions from Ignite and watch demonstrations of agentic solutions from leading software companies Read about the exciting AI innovations for software developers who are building agents Start building agents with Microsoft Copilot Studio and Microsoft Visual Studio Get resources for building and customizing agents from the Microsoft 365 Dev Center and the AI Agents Hub *IDC Info Snapshot, sponsored by Microsoft, 1.3 Billion AI Agents by 2028, #US53361825 and May 2025From Chaos to Clarity: How Microsoft 365 Copilot Helps SMBs Make Smarter Decisions
In today’s fast-paced business landscape, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) face a constant challenge: do more with less and do it faster. The pressure to innovate, respond to market shifts, and keep teams aligned is real. That’s why Microsoft 365 Copilot is more than just another productivity tool—it’s a strategic partner for SMBs looking to turn operational chaos into clarity.Microsoft Sentinel data lake is now generally available
Security is being reengineered for the AI era, shifting from static controls to fast, platform-driven defense. Traditional tools, scattered data, and outdated systems struggle against modern threats. An AI-ready, data-first foundation is needed to unify telemetry, standardize agent access, and enable autonomous responses while ensuring humans are in command of strategy and high-impact investigations. Security teams already anchor their operations around SIEMs for comprehensive visibility. We're building on that foundation by evolving Microsoft Sentinel into both the SIEM and the platform for agentic defense—connecting analytics and context across ecosystems. Today, we’re introducing new platform capabilities that build on Sentinel data lake: Sentinel graph for deeper insight and context; an MCP server and tools to make data agent ready; new developer capabilities; and a Security Store for effortless discovery and deployment—so protection accelerates to machine speed while analysts do their best work. We’ve reached a major milestone in our journey to modernize security operations — Microsoft Sentinel data lake is now generally available. This fully managed, cloud-native data lake is redefining how security teams manage, analyze, and act on their data cost-effectively. Since its introduction, organizations across sectors are embracing Sentinel data lake for its transformative impact on security operations. Customers consistently highlight its ability to unify security data from diverse sources, enabling enhanced threat detection and investigation. Many cite cost efficiency as a key benefit, with tiered storage and flexible retention, helping reduce costs. With petabytes of data already ingested, users are gaining real-time and historical insights at scale. "With Microsoft Sentinel data lake integration, we now have a scalable and cost-efficient solution for retaining Microsoft Sentinel data for long-term retention. This empowers our security and compliance teams with seamless access to historical telemetry data right within the data lake explorer and Jupyter notebooks - enabling advanced threat hunting, forensic analysis, and AI-powered insights at scale" Farhan Nadeem, Senior Security Engineer Government of Nunavut Industry partners also commend its role in modernizing SOC workflows and accelerating AI-driven analytics. “Microsoft Sentinel data lake amplifies BlueVoyant’s ability to transform security operations into a mature, intelligence-driven discipline. It preserves institutional memory across years of telemetry, which empowers advanced threat hunting strategies that evolve with time. Security teams can validate which data sources yield actionable insights, uncover persistent attack patterns, and retain high-value indicators that support long-term strategic advantage.” Milan Patel, CRO BlueVoyant Microsoft Sentinel data lake use-cases There are many powerful ways customers are unlocking value with Sentinel data lake—here are just a few impactful examples.: Threat investigations over extended timelines: Security analysts query data older than 90 days to uncover slow-moving attacks—like brute-force and password spray campaigns—that span accounts and geographies. Behavioral baselining for deeper insights: SOC engineers build time-series models using months of sign-in logs to establish a standard of normal behavior and identify unusual patterns, such as credential abuse or lateral movement. Alert enrichment: SOC teams correlate alerts with Firewall and Netflow data, often stored only in the data lake, reducing false positives and increasing alert accuracy. Retrospective threat hunting with new indicators of compromise (IOCs): Threat intelligence teams react to emerging IOCs by running historical queries across the data lake, enabling rapid and informed response. ML-Powered insights: SOC engineers use Spark Notebooks to build and operationalize custom machine learning models for anomaly detection, alert enrichment, and predictive analytics. The Sentinel data lake is more than a storage solution—it’s the foundation for modern, AI-powered security operations. Whether you're scaling your SOC, building deeper analytics, or preparing for future threats, the Sentinel data lake is ready to support your journey. What’s new Regional expansion In light of strong customer demand in public preview, at GA we are expanding Sentinel data lake availability to additional regions. These new regions will roll out progressively over the coming weeks. For more information, see documentation. Flexible data ingestion and management With over 350 native connectors, SOC teams can seamlessly ingest both structured and semi-structured data at scale. Data is automatically mirrored from the analytics tier to the data lake tier, at no additional cost, ensuring a single, unified copy is available for diverse use cases across security operations. Since the public preview of Microsoft Sentinel data lake, we've launched 45 new connectors built on the scalable and performant Codeless Connector Framework (CCF), including connectors for: GCP: SQL, DNS, VPC Flow, Resource Manager, IAM, Apigee AWS: Security Hub findings, Route53 DNS Others: Alibaba Cloud, Oracle, Salesforce, Snowflake, Cisco Sentinel’s connector ecosystem is designed to help security teams seamlessly unify signals across hybrid environments, without the need for heavy engineering effort. Explore the full list of connectors in our documentation here. App Assure Microsoft Sentinel data lake promise As part of our commitment to customer success, we are expanding the App Assure Microsoft Sentinel promise to Sentinel data lake. This means customers can confidently onboard their data, knowing that App Assure stands ready to help resolve connector issues such as replacing deprecated APIs with updated ones, and accelerating new integrations. Whether you're working with existing Independent Software Vendor (ISV) solutions or building new ones, App Assure will collaborate directly with ISVs to ensure seamless data ingestion into the lake. This promise reinforces our dedication to delivering reliable, scalable, and secure security operations, backed by engineering support and a thriving partner ecosystem. Cost management and billing We are introducing new cost management features in public preview to help customers with cost predictability, billing transparency, and operational efficiency. Customers can set usage-based alerts on specific meters to monitor and control costs. For example, you can receive alerts when query or notebook usage passes set limits, helping avoid unexpected expenses and manage budgets. In-product reports provide customers with insights into usage trends over time, enabling them to identify cost drivers and optimize data retention and processing strategies. To support the ingestion and standardization of diverse data sources, we are introducing a new Data Processing feature that applies a $0.10 per GB charge for all data as it is ingested into the data lake. This feature enables a broad array of transformations like redaction, splitting, filtering and normalizing data. This feature was not billed during public preview but will be chargeable at GA starting October 1,2025. Data lake ingestion charges of $0.05 per GB will apply to Entra asset data; starting October 1, 2025. This was previously not billed during public preview. Retaining security data to perform deep analytics and investigations is crucial for defending against threats. To help enable customers to retain all their security data for extended periods cost effectively, data lake storage, including asset data storage, is now billed with a simple and uniform data compression rate of 6:1 across all data sources. Please refer to Plan costs and understand Microsoft Sentinel pricing and billing article for more information. For detailed prerequisites and instructions on configuring and managing asset connectors, refer to the official documentation: Asset data in Microsoft Sentinel data lake. KQL and Notebook enhancements We are introducing several enhancements to our data lake analytics capabilities with an upgraded KQL and notebook experience. Security teams can now run multi-workspace KQL queries for broader threat correlation and schedule KQL jobs more frequently. Frequent KQL jobs enable SOC teams to automate historical threat intelligence matching, summarize alert trends, and aggregate signals across workspaces. For example, schedule recurring jobs to scan for matches against newly ingested IOCs, helping uncover threats that were previously undetected and strengthening threat hunting and investigation workflows. The enhanced Jobs page offers operational clarity for SOC teams with a comprehensive view into job health and activity. At the top, a summary dashboard provides instant visibility into key metrics, total jobs, completions, and failures, helping teams quickly assess job health. A filterable list view displays essential details such as job names, status, frequency, and last run information, enabling quick prioritization and triage. For more detailed diagnostics, users can view individual jobs to access job runs telemetry such as job run duration, row count, and additional historical execution trends, providing additional visibility. Notebooks are receiving a significant upgrade, offering streamlined user experience for querying the data lake. Users now benefit from IntelliSense support for syntax and table names, making query authoring faster and more intuitive. They can also configure custom compute session timeouts and warning windows to better manage resources. Scheduling notebooks as jobs is now simpler, and users can leverage GitHub Copilot for intelligent assistance throughout the process. Together, these KQL and notebook improvements deliver deeper, more customizable analytics, helping customers unlock richer insights, accelerate threat response, and scale securely across diverse environments. Powering agentic defense Data centralization powers AI agents and automation to access comprehensive, historical, and real-time data for advanced analytics, anomaly detection, and autonomous threat response. Support for tools like KQL queries, Spark notebooks, and machine learning models in the data lake, allows agentic systems to continuously learn, adapt, and act on emerging threats. Integration with Security Copilot and MCP Server further enhances agentic defense, enabling smarter, faster, and context-rich security operations—all built on the foundation of Sentinel’s unified data lake. Microsoft Sentinel 50 GB commitment tier promotional pricing To make Microsoft Sentinel more accessible to small and mid-sized customers, we are introducing a new 50 GB commitment tier in public preview, with promotional pricing offered from October 1, 2025, to March 31, 2026. Customers who choose the 50 GB commitment tier during this period will maintain their promotional rate until March 31, 2027. This offer is available in all regions where Microsoft Sentinel is sold, with regional variations in promotional pricing. It is accessible through EA, CSP, and Direct channels. The new 50 GB commitment tier details will be available starting October 1, 2025, on the Microsoft Sentinel pricing page. Thank you to our customers and partners We’re incredibly grateful for the continued partnership and collaboration from our customers and partners throughout this journey. Your feedback and trust have been instrumental in shaping Microsoft Sentinel data lake into what it is today. Thank you for being a part of this critical milestone—we’re excited to keep building together. Get started today By centralizing data, optimizing costs, expanding coverage, and enabling deep analytics, Microsoft Sentinel empowers security teams to operate smarter, faster, and more effectively. Get started with Microsoft Sentinel data lake today in the Microsoft Defender experience. To learn more, see: Microsoft Sentinel—AI-Powered Cloud SIEM & Platform Pricing: Pricing page, Plan costs and understand Microsoft Sentinel pricing and billing Documentation: Connect Sentinel to Defender, Jupyter notebooks in Microsoft Sentinel data lake, KQL and the Microsoft Sentinel data lake, Permissions for Microsoft Sentinel data lake, Manage data tiers and retention in Microsoft Defender experience Blogs: Sentinel data lake FAQ blog, Empowering defenders in the era of AI, Microsoft Sentinel graph announcement, App Assure Microsoft Sentinel data lake promiseUnlocking the Power of AI: Transforming Business with Microsoft 365 Copilot and Clipchamp
AI is becoming a part of everyday life and it's changing the way we do business. For business owners, the benefits are clear. It saves time, reduces the need for extra resources, and directly improves the bottom line. As part of Microsoft 365 Copilot*, we recently introduced the Create module, a new feature designed to make producing visual materials fast and simple. You don’t need to be an AI expert or add complex and expensive design software to your tech stack to get the most out of it. Effortless content creation with Microsoft 365 Copilot The Create module helps users produce high-quality visual content quickly and easily—often better than they could on their own. Because it's built into Copilot and fully integrated with the Microsoft environment, there’s no need for separate design tools or additional creative software. That reduces complexity for users and eases the burden on IT teams who would otherwise have to support and manage extra solutions. At the same time, Create puts professional-grade design within reach for everyone. It opens up the creative process to employees at any skill level, making it easier to produce on-brand, polished visuals. This is especially valuable for small and mid-sized businesses where time and design resources are often limited. AI-Powered Content Creation: The Create module leverages AI to generate high-quality content. From documents and presentations to marketing materials like flyers and infographics, a few simple steps can generate stunning content. Customizable Templates: Access a variety of templates tailored to different business needs, so projects don’t have to start from scratch. These templates help maintain brand consistency and ensure professional quality output. Brand Kits: Even non-designers can set up brand kits to keep all content consistent and on-brand, making it easier to produce polished and cohesive materials that look professional and stand out. Businesses are now empowered to create professional and engaging content effortlessly, without the need to outsource to a marketing agency or hire creative professionals in-house. In the near future, you can look forward to even more features coming to the Create module, including compatibility with new content types like podcasts and surveys, so Copilot can even create those for you. Revolutionizing video editing with Microsoft Clipchamp Transform your video editing process from a daunting task into a seamless, enjoyable experience. With its latest updates, Microsoft Clipchamp enables even those with no prior editing experience to effortlessly create professional-quality videos. AI Editing Tools: Automatically detect and trim silent parts of audio or video files. This is particularly useful for editing podcasts, meetings, and interviews. Custom Templates: Quickly create new projects without starting from scratch using a collection of over 100 video templates, including YouTube intro videos, explainer videos, and sales video templates. This is especially useful for repetitive tasks like training videos, product demos, or marketing content. Templates also help ensure videos adhere to the same branding and style. Transcript-Based Editing: Allows users to edit videos by making changes to the transcript. Users can edit videos as if they were editing a text document—it's that intuitive and straightforward. For those who may not be familiar with video editing, which often requires experience, the old complex video editing tools of the past are no longer necessary. Clipchamp democratizes video editing so anyone can make changes with ease. See how Evergrowth uses Clipchamp to produce marketing communications Since 2015, Evergrowth, a sales software provider, has been helping customers optimize their sales, marketing, and enablement processes. Discover how they are using Clipchamp to produce impactful demo videos and elevate their social media marketing in this case study. “I have zero video editing experience, but with Clipchamp I put together a great-looking demo video very quickly. That product demo brought 300 people to a customer event we were organizing at the time. When that happened, I knew we were onto something.” - JB Daguené, CEO, Evergrowth Check out the Microsoft 365 Create module and Clipchamp In today's fast-paced business environment, leveraging AI tools like Microsoft 365 Copilot with its new Create module and Clipchamp can significantly enhance productivity and creativity. These innovations not only save time and resources but also democratize the creation process, making high-quality content accessible to everyone in your organization. Ready to transform your business with AI? Explore Microsoft 365 Copilot and Clipchamp today and see how these powerful tools can elevate your brand and streamline your operations. *Copilot is available as an additional subscription plan and requires a base Microsoft 365 plan, such as Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard, or Business Premium.Supercharge Your Business. Getting Small Businesses Ready for 2025 with Microsoft 365
How Microsoft 365 is Empowering Small Businesses In the ever-changing world of productivity and collaboration tools, Microsoft 365 continues to shine as a vital tool for small businesses. With a treasure trove of applications designed to boost efficiency, security, and innovation, Microsoft 365 rolled out some game-changing features in 2024, earning high praise from industry experts. Last year was a rollercoaster for business owners and their customers. They faced rising inflation, tighter budgets, and the AI revolution. Through it all, Microsoft 365 was the trusty partner that helped businesses run smoothly and operate productively. The suite introduced exciting new features, integrated smart AI capabilities, and laid out a promising roadmap to tackle current trends and challenges. Recapping An Exciting 2024 Here are some notable new features we released in Microsoft 365 -- starting with Teams and Teams Phone: We introduced the Queues App in the fall, a Teams-native solution designed to empower organizations to manage Teams Phone engagements directly from within Teams. With it, they can manage call queues, auto attendants, get real-time metrics, and see reporting – to ensure they’re conducting customer engagement efficiently. We introduced Shared Calling, which makes a single phone number and calling plan sharable by a group, so teams can better manage calls in coordination. We enhanced survivable calling with the Survivable Branch Appliance (SBA), a backup solution designed to keep your phone services running smoothly, even during network outages. It now supports call transfer, forwarding, and incoming calls during network outages. In Microsoft Excel, we added some powerful updates: The ability to automatically sync data from Forms to Excel for the web. In real-time, responses can be synced between the two apps, ensuring data is always up-to-date. There’s seamless integration so if you go to an active Form and the Responses page, you can click “Open results in Excel” to create an Excel worksheet in OneDrive to do deeper manipulation of your data. The addition of checkboxes that can drive and be driven by existing Excel functions. With Interactive Checkboxes, they automatically check or uncheck based on the value of another cell. And finally, we integrated Python into Excel for users to have the ability to manipulate data in the familiar Excel environment but now with access to powerful Python's libraries and plots to make even deeper analysis possible. We made generally available a brand new Outlook: It has an exciting, newly redesigned interface, new productivity features, and integration with Copilot. Small and medium-sized businesses currently on Microsoft 365 are already moving to it but the choice to keep using classic Outlook will still be available. To help small businesses conserve their marketing budget, we introduced Microsoft Clipchamp in the fall of 2023 and Microsoft Designer in the summer of 2024. Clipchamp is a user-friendly video editor for creating professional-quality videos without needing technical skills. In Clipchamp, we rolled out over 100 pre-built templates, transitions, noise-suppression, background removal, auto-compose, and text-to-speech – saving users tons of time in making videos that may have taken many hours to do before. Designer is a powerful, AI image-generating and graphic design tool that can help any small business create professional-quality visuals with ease – without needing technical skills. Key updates were: We integrated Designer into Word and PowerPoint so users can generate images and use those images within these apps. In addition, Designer will suggest design templates for your slides. A Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription is needed and unlocks the use of Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps. And lastly, in 2024, we empowered SMBs to see how AI could make them more productive by expanding Microsoft Copilot into our popular apps like Outlook, Word, Excel, and Teams. Users can now summarize emails, generate insights in Word and Excel, and unlock powerful meeting insights in Teams. Among many new AI-powered features, we introduced Intelligent Call Recap in Teams which serves up AI-powered insights and recaps for your VoIP and PSTN calls in Teams, helping you stay on top of important details. Microsoft’s Continued Recognitions With Analysts and Customers As a testament to our excellence, Microsoft was once again crowned a Leader in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications for the sixth year in a row! Here’s what Gartner called out: Microsoft Teams is the top pick for businesses, especially when using it for internal collaboration. With a super reliable 99.999% uptime, it has solid telephony services to keep you connected. Teams is perfect for global cloud telephony, offering flexible PSTN options. Plus, Gartner called out our Operator Connect feature, which allows businesses to connect their existing telephony services directly to Teams, is now available in over 96 countries, including India. Copilot in Teams and Teams Premium brings cutting-edge AI features to meetings, chats, and calls. Gartner said that for those seeking the latest in AI, Microsoft is rapidly innovating. Teams now has over 350 million monthly active users. This growth highlights the platform’s continued popularity and widespread adoption among businesses worldwide. If you haven’t tried running your meetings on Teams, there’s no better time to. And over on G2 Reviews, Microsoft 365 currently has 4.6 out of 5 stars. Users like its ease of use, seamless integrations, and the extensive suite of tools it offers. Small businesses have praised the platform’s ability to streamline workflows and supercharge productivity. TechRadar also recognized Microsoft 365 as “the original and best office productivity suite” in December 2024, giving it 4.5 out of 5 stars. We’re thrilled that they said: “What ensured that MS Office became a market leader is the comprehensive way data can be covered by different applications and moved between them, making working more efficient and hassle-free.” Transforming Operations: How ICG Build Scaled with Microsoft 365 ICG, a startup construction firm, has successfully leveraged Microsoft 365 to establish and streamline its entire operations from day one. By utilizing Excel for budgeting, Word and PowerPoint for creating branded templates, Outlook for managing emails, Power BI for data visualization, and Teams for communication and collaboration, ICG has been able to scale its business efficiently. Here are some insights from their experience: Nick Masci, Principal & Co-Founder at ICG, shares: “Having everything in Microsoft 365 makes finding information fast and easy. Microsoft 365 has been instrumental in setting up our entire operations, from budgeting in Excel to managing emails in Outlook.” Melissa McEwen, Principal & Co-founder at ICG, adds, “Using Microsoft 365, we’ve been able to create branded templates in Word and PowerPoint, which has streamlined our client presentations and enhanced our professional image.” These testimonials highlight the transformative impact of Microsoft 365 on ICG’s operational efficiency and client engagement. Navigating 2025 Together Small businesses are in for another exciting ride in 2025 as they face trends like the continued integration of AI into our lives, a shift to returning to the office, and the continued need to be as efficient as possible. Microsoft 365 is here to support you with tools that boost productivity like Copilot; Teams and Teams Phone to support all work models, and powerful features that come included in our core apps like Design Ideas in PowerPoint that gives you multiple layout and design options to help you get your new slide started. Curious to learn more? You can read more about how to choose the right plan here. Are you a small or medium business owner/decision maker currently using Microsoft 365? We'd like to hear from you! We invite you to apply to join the Microsoft 365 SMB Customer Advisory Board. Applications accepted until February 28th, 2025. See aka.ms/SMBCAB for more details.Supercharge Your Business with Microsoft Tools: Create Stunning Documents and Presentations
Create Stunning Documents and Presentations In today’s competitive business landscape, building a strong brand is essential for standing out and gaining customer loyalty. Microsoft 365 offers a suite of tools that empower businesses to create professional and visually appealing materials, helping to establish and enhance your brand identity. With Microsoft PowerPoint and Word, businesses can produce polished presentations and documents that reflect your brand's professionalism and creativity. PowerPoint's pre-designed templates and themes make it easy to create visually appealing slides, while features like transitions, custom animations, and video embedding add a dynamic touch. Discover Powerpoint’s Secret Weapons PowerPoint remains a cornerstone of presentation software, trusted by millions worldwide. Its intuitive interface and easy-to-use features make it an ideal choice for small business owners. With a plethora of pre-designed templates and themes, creating visually appealing slides is straightforward. You can use a range of features to create stunning presentations like: Transitions to add smooth, dynamic transitions between slides. You can choose from nearly 50 different types from subtle, to exciting ones, and to really dynamic types with added effects. Custom Animations to add personality and emphasize specific slide elements. You can tune your animations with triggers and effects so that objects in slides appear only when you want them to. You can also embed videos from your device, or even online videos to make your presentation more engaging. This feature, like Transitions and Custom Animations, help make presentations appear more sophisticated and show off your company’s brand in the best light. You can even convert your presentation into a video for on-demand viewing with Export to Video. Your customers, prospects, or partners can then view important content at their convenience – perfect for you to convey follow-up materials after a sales presentation, for example. Speaking of sales presentations. With PowerPoint Live, you can present your slides directly within a Microsoft Teams meeting, so you don’t need to switch between different apps or share your entire screen. You can see your slides, notes, and the audience all in one view so you have full control while you’re presenting. Keeping an eye on the room while presenting is especially important for high-stakes presentations and with PowerPoint Live, everything happens seamlessly within Teams. Press the Designer 1 button in the ribbon to get additional design features: Automatic Design Suggestions to give you slide templates and designs that you choose from to fit your brand to achieve a polished, professional look. Designer works in the background to analyze the content and provide design suggestions like layout options, color schemes, and relevant images. With Smart Layouts, Designer can detect elements like pictures, charts, and tables, and suggest cohesive layouts that make your slides look their best. Visual Enhancements can transform text-heavy slides into engaging visuals using SmartArt, making your presentation pop with imagery. Designer can even recommend high-quality photos and icons from the Microsoft 365 library with the Contextual Images and Icons feature. Format Your Documents Like a Pro For small businesses, documents produced in Word makes you look more professional and grown up. Word provides a wide range of templates for various document types, including reports, proposals, and invoices, ensuring that your business documents always look professional. One of the most powerful features in Word is Real-time Co-authoring, which we first introduced in 2013. It allows multiple people to work on a document simultaneously, which is incredibly beneficial for small businesses and teams who want to work together while meeting short deadlines. Here’s how it works as it enables live collaboration while ensuring your company looks its best. When a document is stored in OneDrive or SharePoint, multiple users can open and edit it at the same time. Changes are visible in real-time, so you can see what others are working on as they do it. Word automatically saves versions of the document, so you can track changes and revert to previous versions if needed. Authors and Reviewers can make Comments and Chat with one another and discuss changes directly within the document. Best of all, Co-authoring works on Word for the web, desktop, and mobile apps. So team members can collaborate from anywhere, using any device and get work done much faster with Co-authoring. Other popular features that come with Word include: Themes, which provide a coordinated set of fonts, colors, and effects to apply to your entire document to make it look consistent and visually pleasing. Charts and Tables: you can insert and customize charts and tables to present data clearly. This is useful for reports and proposals. Watermarks: To enhance document security and branding, you can add text or image watermarks (like “Confidential” or your company logo) to the background of your document. Themes, Charts and Tables, and Watermarks can make your document stand out with very little effort from the author. Word makes it easy for your work to shine, and start building a beautiful company brand. Export to PDF: To ensure your document cannot be edited and stays as you intended, you can turn it into a PDF. Doing so is easy. Just go to the “File” menu and choose PDF under “Save As”. This process ensures that your document looks the same on any device and is easy to share or print. Your work stays the way you intended it to look. Just like in PowerPoint, press the Designer 2 button on the Ribbon to access more capabilities that can make your document more visually appealing and professionally-looking: Enhance the appearance and consistency of your document though Design Suggestions, which provides a variety of design themes and layout options that you can apply to your document to make it more visually appealing. Formatting Consistency, which automatically identifies and fixes formatting inconsistencies in your document, ensuring a uniform look throughout. Smart Recommendations: Based on the content of your document, Designer suggests relevant design elements, such as fonts, colors, and styles. Add Microsoft 365 Copilot And Do Even More If you already have a Microsoft 365 business or enterprise plan, you can add Copilot at an additional cost to unlock an AI-powered image generator in both PowerPoint and Word. With this powerful AI feature, you can match the capabilities of a creative agency designer instantly. Even without any design skills or experience, you can create images ready for internal or external use at the press of a button. For small businesses, this means saving valuable time and resources while achieving beautiful results without needing to hire a designer. Simply ask Copilot to generate images to your specifications, and you can enhance your slides or documents. Use it to create background images, hero images, or illustrations that better convey your points in a long document. AI image generation can help your Marketing and Branding, to create unique and engaging visuals for marketing campaigns, social media posts, and promotional materials. This can help SMBs stand out and attract more customers. Or use it for Customer Engagement, with personalized images for customer communications like newsletters and emails, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. Lastly, you can use it for Product Ideation: whether it's to storyboard your customer experience or to strategize a new product launch, you can ask AI image generation to visually communicate your out-of-the box business ideas with ease. Get Started: Do Beautiful Work Today If you haven’t already, try the many free features in PowerPoint like Transitions, Animations, Embedded Video, and Icon Library in PowerPoint to amp up your slides. In Word, you can also access popular features like Themes, Charts & Tables, and Watermarks to make polished-looking documents. Copilot unlocks additional design tools in PowerPoint and Word to offer small business owners the professional tools they need to create stunning presentations and documents with the magic of AI. By leveraging AI image generation, you can make beautiful images for your clients and partners, while saving time and budget. Don’t let a lack of design skills or resources hold you back—try out these Microsoft tools and experience the difference they can make for your business. [1] Designer is only available in the online versions of PowerPoint and Word. [2] Designer is only available in the online versions of PowerPoint and Word.
