Welcome to the first part of our 2025 Copilot series! We're excited to dive into the latest updates that are transforming how we work with Microsoft's powerful AI assistant.
Before diving into these key features, it's worth noting that Microsoft has recently expanded access to basic Copilot Chat capabilities for users with standard Microsoft 365 subscriptions at no additional cost. While the advanced features we'll discuss still require Microsoft 365 Copilot or Copilot Pro licenses, this expansion brings AI assistance to many more users.
In Part 1, we'll be looking at the significant new features in Copilot Chat that streamline collaboration, enhance prompt creation, improve file handling, and more.
Let's explore the five most impactful updates to Copilot Chat and how they can make your workday more productive. (Please note that some of the features discussed in this article are available to users with Microsoft 365 Copilot or Copilot Pro licenses.)
Brainstorm effectively: Turn Copilot responses into editable pages that can be revisited and refined over time.
Easily share and collaborate: Share a page with your team, allowing multiple stakeholders to build on AI-generated content.
Creating a page is simple:
Copilot Chat has received several updates that make prompting more efficient and effective.
Chat with Copilot using real-time prompt suggestions: Copilot now offers recommended prompt suggestions based on your chat history. This helps you save time while creating more comprehensive prompts that generate better Copilot responses.
Save and access your favorite prompts: Save a prompt that you've used to easily access it for next time. Eliminate the need to remember or retype effective prompts you've used previously.
Save time with one-click prompts in Copilot Chat: Copilot Chat now includes relevant prompts based on your emails, files, and meetings, helping you get more done with less effort. Instead of crafting detailed prompts from scratch, simply click on these suggestions to get instant assistance.
These prompting improvements dramatically reduce the learning curve for effective Copilot use, making the technology more accessible to everyone in your organization.
Easily upload files in Copilot Chat: One of the most requested features has now arrived. You can attach and reference local files directly in your Copilot Chat prompts, making it even easier to access templates and offline documents.
This practical enhancement addresses a common workflow challenge—the need to constantly switch between local storage and cloud-based tools. Now, when you need Copilot to analyze a document stored on your computer, you can simply upload it within the chat interface.
Whether you're working with draft content, reference materials, or legacy documents stored locally, you can now bring them directly into your AI-assisted workflow without the extra steps previously required.
You can now get more comprehensive summaries for files with a lot of text, such as reports with hundreds of pages or PDFs with extensive terms and conditions.
This enhancement significantly expands Copilot's ability to handle large documents that previously might have been challenging to work with. Now, when you reference a substantial document like a lengthy report, technical manual, or complex legal document, Copilot can provide more thorough and useful summaries of the content.
Rather than being limited to partial analysis of large files, you can now get complete insights from even your most extensive documents. This update complements the local file upload feature, and gives you more flexibility in how you work with documents of all sizes in your Copilot interactions.
Give your files a professional look: Create images with Copilot using natural language in Copilot Chat or leverage a pre-built agent like Visual Creator to create AI-generated images, designs, and soon, videos!
This new capability lets you enhance your documents, presentations, and communications with custom visuals by simply describing what you need. Instead of searching for stock images or struggling with design software, you can generate professional-looking visuals directly within your Copilot conversations.
The upcoming video generation feature promises to extend these creative capabilities even further, giving you more tools to make your work stand out.
Generate summaries based on multiple emails, presentations, and Teams chats
Save time by referencing multiple files and let Copilot handle the rest. This powerful feature allows you to consolidate information across different application types with simple prompts like:
This cross-application intelligence means you no longer need to manually compile information from different sources. Copilot does the heavy lifting for you, providing comprehensive summaries that incorporate data from across your Microsoft 365 environment.
By providing persistent workspaces, smarter interactions, robust file handling, image creation, and cross-application summaries, Copilot Chat continues to evolve from a simple assistant to an integral part of your productive workflow.
In our next installment, we'll explore the latest updates to Word and PowerPoint that make document and presentation creation faster and more intuitive than ever.
If you're interested in learning more about implementing these Copilot features across your organization, reach out to our Managed Services team today!
Learn more about Microsoft Copilot here.