My top modern work news from Microsoft Ignite 2023

It’s time again for my thoughts about Microsoft Ignite! This time (and year?) it had a very clear theme –  Copilot, Copilot and a little more Copilot. It’s crazy to think that one year ago I was in Seattle for Ignite 2022 (read my post here about it) and Copilot didn’t even exist, and this year it’s been 99,9% Copilot. I asked Copilot to draft this blog post, I got a long post about Ignite 2021 – well is was a great guess and maybe that’s the core of it – get a great quick start but be aware it’s not a single source of  truth 😅. Enough about that, join me for me top modern work news from Microsoft Ignite!

From Chris Gill (cgill@X)

As always Ignite Books of News 2023 is the place for the most news in one place.

1. My top news for Microsoft Teams

We have to start with my favorite product 💜 Microsoft Teams. This year I heard  Microsoft talk about not just the hub for teamwork but the SMART hub for teamwork and that’s true for our new AI reality. I’ll leave all the Copilot goodies to the end of this post so here’s everything else!

AI that’s not Copilot

Ok this is AI but not Copilot 🫠, voice isolation and decorate your background are two things rolling out early 2024. Voice isolation is that Microsoft Teams can recognize your voice and filter out anything else, perfect for working in a café or so. Decorating your background with the help of generative AI means that AI see what’s behind you and changes is depended on your prompt, such as make it festive or make it cleaner. It will be a part of Teams Premium.

Read more here. Available early 2024.

Teams Premium

When we’re already talking about Teams Premium in the form of decorating your meeting background let’s look at a few other news for Teams Premium:

• Create a background image for channel announcements with the help of AI, engage with your team in a new, fun and creative way. This will also be available with M365 Copilot. Will be in GA later in November

• Customize your watermarks and decide how watermarks should display, should it be one time or repeated? You can also change between 1-100% visibility. Available now

• Avoid sensitive info being taken from the meeting chat with the option “Turn off copying or forwarding of meeting chat". Available now

• Maintaining the privacy of attendees but adding the option to hide attendees name and information during webinars, they can still interact but will be anonymous for other attendees. Will be in GA later in November

• It will be easier to see attendee engagement during webinars. In the engagement analytics we can see total on reactions, raised hands, times people came off mute or turned on their camera. Already available

A view of the engagement analytics that shows the total number of engagements for all attendees and highlights individual reactions at a specific time during the webinar

Read more here and here.

Group chat custom picture

Ok this is a tiny one but fits me so well, a lot is going on in chats and it can help differentiation in the list with a chat name but soon we can also change the chat photo from the profile photos to a custom image such as a an emoji 😍.

Read more here. Available early 2024.

Archiving channels

Ok this is somethings I been longing for the last five years and FINALLY we will be able to archive channels that are no longer active. The channel will be hidden but still possible to reach the info, just a bit cleaner.

Read more here. Available early 2024.

2. The new Microsoft Planner

Time for a makeover and this time for Microsoft Planner. The new Planner will combine To Do, Planner and Microsoft Project for the web making it an even better tool for both simple tasks as well as more advanced tasks management. From individual me-work to large scale project management aligned to goals and key strategic objectives. In one place!

Read more here. The new Planner app will be available in Microsoft Teams Q2 in 2024 and later in 2024 as a web experience.

3. Clipchamp

About two years ago Microsoft acquired Clipchamp, a video editing and creating software,

and up until now it’s been there for personal accounts but now it will be available to anyone licensed for Microsoft 365 Enterprise (E3 and E5) and Business suites 🙌🏻🎉.

Clipchamp Premium was also announced with richer features as 4X exports, premium stock content, advanced analytics and brand kits. Will be available to purchase December 1st. I’ve tried Clipchamp a little bit and like the simple UI – time to create more video content!

Access Clipchamp here and read more here and here.

4. Microsoft Loop

After a long wait Microsoft Loop is finally in GA and ready to use both with standalone components as well as pages and workspaces for organizing your work! I’ve really been into Loop the last months for content planning, I love how the app works and looks and will love it even more with some of the announcements from Ignite.

Some of the existing things we can see in the upcoming months are:

• Loop components in OneNote (for web in the start). Will come to preview in the end of the year

• Loop components in teams in Microsoft Teams (I hope this will get better and better since teams is THE place for teamwork). Available soon

• Planner component and task sync between Planner and Microsoft To Do. Available now

• Lots of integrations on the way, now Trello and Jira are in preview but more are coming

• Creating your own page templates to better fit the needs of your organization. Will be available in the end of the year

• Video recording directly in the Loop app. Now in preview

• Table of content, collapsable sections and headings on Loop pages. Soon available

Ok I could go on forever but I’ll stop now, as you can see it’s time to start using Loop as it’s only getting better and better 🤩.

Read more here.

5. Microsoft Copilot

Ok lets get into what everyone want to talk about! Copilot! I’m still trying out Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 and maybe if I feel creative I’ll write a post about it!

New features

This is just the beginning for both me and Copilot and I’m learning a new prompt each day. Some of the prompts and features announced at Microsoft Ignite was:

• Being able to use Copilots in meetings without a transcript being saved

• Being able to make Copilot meeting notes into a Microsoft Whiteboard (see gif)

• Intelligent recap from Teams Premium will be added in to Copilot for M365

• Copilot can help you schedule meetings

• Co-creating of prompts in Loop

• Brand assets and image library coming to PowerPoint making it easier to create with Copilot and your own content

• Personalization will make Copilot remember how you want your output, maybe you prefer bullet lists and a less formal language

Read more here.

Microsoft Copilot Studio

Say goodbye Power Virtual Agents – say hello Microsoft Copilot Studio. Copilot Studio is the tool for a low-code way to customize Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 and also to build standalone copilots. It’s included in the Copilot for M365 license, maybe that’s a good thing because the PVA license was super pricy. With Microsoft Copilot Studio you can customize Copilot for your own needs, for example connect it to your benefit system. You can as always in Power Virtual Agents super quick and easy build, test and publish standalone copilots and also make sure you have control over access, data, user controls and analytics.

 I’ll share this nice marketing videos from Microsoft to set the tone ✨✨.

I think this will be awesome, imagine just connecting Copilot to your intranet?!

Read more here and here. Available in a public preview now if you have Copilot for M365.

Making the most of Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365

Turning a new things on is never enough to create change that will last. With the new Microsoft Copilot admin page you will have one place to adjust settings, handle licenses but also measure adoption. Besides that the new Microsoft Copilot Dashboard from Viva Insights will even further help organizations prepare for Copilot rollout, track adoption of key features, and assess its impact.

Read more about the Microsoft Copilot Dashboard here and Copilot Admin here.

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This year I stayed home in Sweden and watched sessions online, for the keynote I joined a watch party with a few community friends at Exobe. But next year I have to go again IRL since the FOMO was huge.

Ready for the keynote 💜

All images, besides the last two ones, are borrowed from Microsoft.