What's New in Sales Copilot – August 2023

In July 2023, we announced Microsoft Sales Copilot. 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 that they can spend more time with customers.

Additionally, this means that Microsoft Viva Sales is now part of Microsoft Sales Copilot. Viva Sales, which kickstarted our mission to empower every salesperson in the world, is being renamed to Sales Copilot, where we will continue to reimagine sales in even bigger ways.

This month, we’re thrilled to bring one of our biggest updates ever, with a suite of new features and improvements to build stronger customer relationships, streamline collaboration, and accelerate productivity in the flow of work.

Build stronger customer relationships

With Sales Copilot, sellers are able to personalize their relationships with customers in an increasingly remote world. We’re introducing some new and exciting ways to deepen these connections even further:

• Streamlined access to CRM data during Teams meetings
When navigating through a busy week filled with customer and prospect meetings, sellers know how important it is to keep discussions on track and well-informed with the right context. However, juggling customer information and keeping it up to date is a common challenge, leading to less productive conversations and delayed or forgotten updates to the CRM. Now, during meetings, Sales Copilot equips sellers with streamlined access to CRM data, right from within Microsoft Teams. Specifically, sellers can view and update the connected CRM record during the meeting—helping them run meetings that better meet customers’ needs, all while keeping records fresh as the conversation unfolds.

Use the Sales Copilot app during a meeting today.

• Opportunity summaries: Improved accessibility and transparency
With opportunity summaries, Sales Copilot generates concise customer briefs that sellers can use to quickly ramp up and ensure they’re prepared for every meeting. Now, we’re expanding the availability of opportunity summaries so that you access them from more places—including not only when drafting a meeting invite, but also when reading an email. Additionally, sellers can view the data sources used for these summaries, providing greater transparency and deeper insights.

View the opportunity summary today.

Streamline collaboration

Selling is a team sport, and Sales Copilot is transforming the way sales teams collaborate. Here's how we're making that even more effortless:

• Collaboration spaces honors CRM customizations
With Collaboration Spaces, sellers can converse seamlessly and securely with colleagues and customers in Microsoft Teams, bolstered by integrated CRM data and apps. Now, when setting up or accessing a team from Outlook, sellers will see that the “Collaborate in Teams” card seamlessly reflects the CRM customizations set by their admin. Specifically, the card honors configurations that have been made to the opportunity and account record types, including their availability and any name changes to the record types.

Learn more about the impact of CRM customizations on collaboration spaces here.

Accelerate productivity in the flow of work

Break free from admin chores and rev up your sales productivity. Here are some of the updates we’re bringing to keep you in the flow:

• Email summaries: Boosting transparency with citations
With email summaries, Sales Copilot generates digestible summaries of email threads so that sellers can swiftly catch up and save critical context to the CRM, keeping their teams well-informed. Now, we’ve enriched email summaries by adding referenceable citations to provide additional transparency behind each summarized point, equipping sellers with the context to make more confident and well-informed decisions.

View data sources in email summaries today.

• Suggested email content: Improved meeting invite suggestions
With suggested email content, sellers can instantly improve the quality and timeliness of their communications with customers. Now, we’ve refined the experience for how meeting invite suggestions get incorporated into generated emails. Sellers will now receive these meeting invite suggestions only when the email body indicates a clear meeting intent, or when they specifically request a meeting invite suggestion during the email refinement process.

Add or remove meeting suggestions today.

• Save email drafts to Dynamics 365
With Sales Copilot, sellers can effortlessly save their Outlook interactions to the CRM. Now, sellers using Dynamics 365 can mark emails to be saved to the CRM even while drafting them. Once the email draft is marked, Sales Copilot takes care of the rest and will automatically save the email once it gets sent, making it easier than ever to stay in the flow of work.

Save Outlook activities to your CRM today.

• Save Outlook activities to Salesforce without Enhanced Email
Until now, saving Outlook emails to Salesforce using Sales Copilot required Enhanced Email to be enabled in Salesforce. Now, for organizations without Enhanced Email, sellers can conveniently save their Outlook emails as task records in Salesforce.

If you are currently unable to save email to CRM as enhanced email is turned off in Salesforce CRM, review the corresponding article and save Outlook activities to your CRM today.

• Improved search with record type filter for polymorphic fields
At Sales Copilot, we’re committed to making your experience as frictionless as possible. That’s why we’re delighted to highlight improvements to our search experience. Now, sellers can filter search results by record type while setting fields that accept more than one record type. For instance, when setting the Customer Name field on the contact form, sellers can apply a filter to set only an account as the Customer Name. Sales Copilot will remember the filter chosen by sellers across sessions on the same device, applying this filter by default in subsequent uses.

Admin

As an admin, you’re at the cockpit of driving sales transformation for your organization. Here’s how we’re making that journey smoother for you:

• Copilot default on for Dynamics 365 orgs in North America and Europe
We’ve made it more straightforward than ever before for admins to enable generative AI for their sales organization. Now, Copilot-related settings are default on for organizations using Dynamics 365 in North America and Europe, specifically if the CRM resides in the same geography as Azure Active Directory (AAD).

Set up Copilot AI features today.

• Mark fields as mandatory only for Sales Copilot
As organizations leverage Sales Copilot to empower their sellers, they may want sellers to mandatorily provide specific details when creating or editing records in Sales Copilot, even though the same details may not be mandatory when creating or editing record through other channels. Now, administrators can set any field as mandatory in Sales Copilot, even if they are not mandatory in the CRM, fostering improved sales process excellence when managing records in Sales Copilot.

Mark fields as required in 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 Viva Sales deployment guide for Dynamics 365 users or the Viva Sales 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.