Copilot’s Next Chapter

The #SummerOfCopilot is drawing to a close this week with the autumnal equinox (to be astronomical and scientific.) This week, I’m splitting the newsletter and blog posts in two. Today we’re exploring the last few weeks of Microsoft Copilot announcements - including Knowledge Agent and support for Claude models.

Here’s where we are in the series:

#SummerOfCopilot Week 13 Blog Posts

Week 1:  Trends and Insights from Microsoft’s Latest AI Innovations 

Week 2:  First Encounters with Microsoft’s Copilot Researcher & Analyst 

Week 3: From Tacit Knowledge to Talking Agents: Navigating Copilot’s Next Evolution 

Week 4: Copilot Goes Ubiquitous – Agents plus Copilot training resources

Week 5: Co-Piloting the Future – Custom AI Agents with Enterprise Control

Week 6: AI in Action: How New Copilot Features are Changing Content Management and Productivity

Week 7: The Future of Copilot – The Magnificent Seven

Week 8: Driving Productivity: Copilot from Driver’s Seat to Board Seat

Week 9: Copilot for Every Leader: How AI is Empowering the C-Suite

Week 10: GPT-5 Meets Microsoft 365 Copilot

Week 11: Your Copilot Preseason Playbook - 13 Wins

Week 12: 11 Copilot Tips to Supercharge Your Productivity

Our next post:

Week 13 Part II:  The Summer of Copilot

Our last post in the series will take a retrospective view on everything we’ve learned, and what comes next.

📝 Copilot News

Microsoft’s latest Copilot updates mark a turning point in enterprise AI. From democratized chat to intelligent agents, the September roadmap delivers tools that help leaders scale AI with clarity, control, and creativity. This post explores what’s new, what’s coming, and what we hope to see next—and why now is the time for leaders to shape the future of work.

Claude Comes to Copilot

Microsoft’s recent addition of Anthropic’s Claude models to Copilot Studio is a welcome expansion of generative AI capabilities within Microsoft 365. Claude offers powerful tools for external research, ideation, and marketing—especially when working with public or non-sensitive data.

However, it’s important to note that Claude is hosted outside the Microsoft 365 service boundary. This means any data used with Claude may leave the trusted Microsoft environment, potentially impacting compliance and security. For organizations like Synozur, where protecting sensitive client data is non-negotiable, Claude should be reserved for low-risk scenarios. M365-native Copilot experiences remain the best choice for anything involving internal IP, regulated data, or confidential client information.

Copilot Chat for All: A Strategic Shift

Copilot Chat is now embedded in Office apps for all M365 users. This move removes licensing barriers and brings AI into the hands of every employee. It’s secure, private, and grounded in the content users are working on. Paid users still benefit from Graph-powered insights, but the baseline experience is now universal.

This democratization of AI is a strategic shift, making Copilot part of the daily workflow rather than a premium add-on. It’s no longer a tool reserved for power users or pilot programs. It’s a default part of how work gets done. That shift changes how organizations think about enablement, training, and governance. It also means leaders need to rethink their AI strategy - not just for innovation, but for scale.

Meet the New Agents: AI That Works Like People

Microsoft’s new agents are designed to behave like coworkers—proactive, responsive, and context-aware. They don’t just answer questions, they take initiative, follow up, and learn from feedback.

• The Knowledge Agent tackles SharePoint sprawl. It suggests metadata columns, automates tagging, builds workflows from plain English, and flags stale content and broken links. It’s a leap forward in automated knowledge management—helping teams stay current, compliant, and collaborative. For organizations drowning in content, this agent is a lifeline.

• The Channel Agent in Teams acts as a dedicated project coordinator. It drafts status updates, schedules meetings, manages tasks, and answers questions based on channel context. It even joins related meetings to expand its knowledge. This transforms Teams into a smart project hub, reducing manual updates and keeping everyone aligned. It’s not just automation—it’s orchestration.

• The Project Manager Agent in Planner is a virtual PM that turns goals into tasks, executes work, and improves with feedback. It uses Loop components to produce outputs directly in tasks and tracks progress using visual boards. I’ve used it to coordinate logistics for my upcoming photography exhibit—assigning tasks like catering and signage to the agent and receiving fully researched plans in return. It’s like having a full-time coordinator who never sleeps.

  
  

Roadmap Updates That Matter

Microsoft’s roadmap includes several strategic updates that signal a shift from experimentation to enterprise readiness:

• Reasoning Over SharePoint Lists: Extract insights from structured data without needing a data scientist.

• Pay-As-You-Go Agents: Pilot AI without full licenses—ideal for testing use cases before scaling. You can prepurchase capacity to negotiate volume discounts.

• Content Management Assessment: One dashboard for governance, retention, and lifecycle planning for SharePoint– the CMS for enterprise AI.

• Metadata-Aware Agents: Smarter grounding for Copilot, improving relevance and reducing hallucinations. That custom metadata from Syntex and Knowledge Agent directly improves the accuracy of your Copilot results.

These updates help organizations move from “trying Copilot” to “trusting Copilot.”

Wishlist for What’s Next

Here’s our wish list for the next wave of Copilot innovation—features that would unlock even more value:

• HubSpot Connector: CRM insights without switching platforms.

• A Document Agent to bring all the benefits of SharePoint Content AI (classification, tagging, security, document generation, signature, translation, OCR and more) to documents in Outlook and Teams. Think of it as the Knowledge Agent for your content no matter where it lives in Microsoft 365.

• Outlook Agent That Sends Emails: Draft, approve, and send—true end-to-end automation. Also with calendar intelligence to auto-reschedule, suggest times, and prep your week.

• Shared Team Notebooks: Co-prompting for collaboration and brainstorming.

• Daily Podcast from Copilot Summaries: Reinvent the Viva commute with audio briefings.

Leadership Takeaways

For business leaders, the message is clear:

• AI is becoming embedded in daily work—not just as a tool, but as a teammate.

• Agents are evolving from assistants to collaborators, capable of managing projects, content, and communication.

• Governance, compliance, and clarity are built-in—but must be actively shaped.

Now is the time to pilot, scale, and shape your AI strategy. The tools are here. The opportunity is real. The next chapter of Copilot is being written—and leaders have a chance to co-author it.