At the Microsoft 365 Copilot (Copilot) ‘Wave 2’ event, the company announced several features for its generative AI (genAI) assistant that further cement Microsoft’s leadership position in the team collaboration space.
Although Microsoft is playing catch-up with some of the capabilities and generally releasing them long after they were first announced, collectively Microsoft’s portfolio makes it a vendor to beat.
The range of introductions is striking. Microsoft has touched a roster of Microsoft 365 apps including Teams, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Word, and OneDrive. With genAI touching multiple points of its portfolio, Microsoft has taken the ‘permeate the platform’ approach adopted by competitors such as Cisco, Google, Zoom, and RingCentral.
Where Microsoft shines
Although Microsoft has followed the herd in that respect, some of the features make it especially shine. Copilot agents (generally available) are a great example. The agents automate and execute business processes and range in sophistication from basic prompt-and-response agents to agents that replace repetitive tasks to agents that are fully autonomous.
Another important example is the narrative builder in PowerPoint that allows users to engage Copilot in an iterative process to quickly build a first-draft presentation triggered by an initial prompt. Similarly in Excel, data visualisation tools like charts and pivot tables can be created through an iterative partnership with Copilot; and, among other generally available capabilities, Copilot in Excel can also work with text in addition to numerical data.
Compelling Copilot
Out of everything Microsoft unveiled, the most compelling is Copilot Pages, a digital canvas for creating, editing, and sharing content. Teams can collaborate and stay organised in real time. Content can be sourced from internal data and files as well as the web. And in keeping with other apps discussed immediately above such as PowerPoint and Excel, Copilot plays an iterative role in the content creation process.
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While Copilot Pages stands out for its robustness and versatility, it is especially noteworthy for the flexibility and ease with which it combines information into a single environment to optimise collaboration and thereby increase productivity. Copilot Pages will be generally available for Microsoft 365 Copilot customers later in September 2024.
Flawed but impressive
The event suffered flaws. Some features have already been introduced by key competitors. For example, Copilot Pages is essentially the same as ‘Zoom Docs,’ which launched in August 2024, and meeting summary and ‘catch up’ features announced for Teams have already been offered by Cisco for some time.
Also, several features were already revealed at the ‘Ignite’ event held nearly one year ago in November 2023, dramatically undercutting the thunder Microsoft had hoped for.
Those flaws do not spoil the fact that Microsoft continues to push the needle on both the team collaboration and productivity fronts simultaneously. Except for Google, only Microsoft augments its team collaboration offerings with a suite of tools aimed squarely at driving up productivity (in the form of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.).
Thus, by truly marrying team collaboration and productivity functionality, Microsoft delivers a more holistic package and achieves a degree of differentiation that is largely unmatched.
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