Ignite 2024: Microsoft announced Copilot Actions and agents for Microsoft 365
Microsoft announced Copilot Actions and agents at Ignite 2024. The announced features build on the company's commitment to make Copilot a powerful AI-powered personal assistant, and to enhance productivity and transform business processes by applying the much-touted potential of AI agents.
Building on Microsoft 365 Copilot's success, Microsoft announced Copilot Actions and agents in Microsoft 365 at Ignite 2024 as part of its commitment to "empower every employee with Copilot as a personal assistant and to transform every business process with agents built in Microsoft Copilot Studio."
Copilot Actions are designed to enhance Microsoft 365 Copilot's capabilities as employees' personal assistant, and can be programmed using fill-in-the blank prompts that are set up only once. According to Microsoft, Copilot Actions can be used to set a summary of the day's action items at the end of that workday, collect inputs for a newsletter, or automate customer meeting prep by having Copilot summarize the latest interactions with that customer beforehand.
Other notable Copilot updates include the addition of rich artifacts to Copilot Pages, which is Microsoft's version of the ChatGPT canvas or Claude's Artifacts; the possibility to ask Copilot about visual information (webpages, PowerPoint slides) presented within a Teams meeting; and to ask for a summary of a file shared in a Teams chat (public preview upcoming). Additionally, Copilot in PowerPoint is now able to translate entire presentations to 40 languages (GA in 2025), in Outlook can help manage calendars to find focus and one-on-one times suitable to both participants (available by the end of November), and users can now design custom themes to personalize Copilot.
Similarly, agents in Microsoft 365 are aimed at automating repetitive aspects of business workflows, such as searching for files and information on SharePoint. Agents in every SharePoint site will unlock the contained knowledge for users without the need to manually search across files. Moreover, an 'Interpreter' agent will enable users to clone their voice to leverage voice-to-voice real time translation capabilities in Teams (public preview upcoming); the Employee Self-Service Agent is designed to answer questions and let employees perform simple requests to the HR and IT departments, like understanding their benefits or requesting new equipment; other upcoming agents include the note-taking Facilitator, planning Project Manager, and third-party agents from partners like ServiceNow and Cohere.
