Copilot has been a game-changer not only for its users but also for the tech giant Microsoft. It has now announced an expansion of Copilot for Microsoft 365 with the new Team Copilot. This innovation, announced during Microsoft Build 2024 in Seattle, transforms Copilot from being a behind-the-scenes, personal AI assistant to a ‘new, valuable member of your team.’
Organizations are already using Copilot in their daily work to enhance productivity, and with the new Team Copilot, it would be interesting to see how AI can transform team dynamics.
What is Team Copilot, and what can it do?
With the latest announcement, Microsoft has now introduced an entirely new set of capabilities for Copilot. It appears that Microsoft is bringing Copilot where people collaborate, in an attempt to drive wider adoption and facilitate smooth collaboration. Team Copilot will be available exactly where teams collaborate – in Microsoft Teams, Loop, Planner, and more - and will be available in preview by the end of 2024.
Team Copilot can do a lot of tasks, but most importantly, Microsoft wants you to treat it as your fellow co-worker, who serves three major roles:
- Meeting facilitator
- Group collaborator
- Project manager
Team Copilot can be a facilitator in meetings, managing the agenda, tracking time, and taking notes. What this does is free up time and space for team members to focus on more creative and strategic topics rather than administrative tasks.
In chats, Team Copilot can act as a collaborator by searching and providing important information, tracking action items, and addressing unresolved matters. The purpose of a group collaborator is to make information sharing as easy as possible, ensuring that all the relevant team members have all the information they need about projects and their progress. The result is a well-informed and engaged team with no room for miscommunication. Lastly, it can also prompt team members to take certain actions on projects and notify them when their input is needed, thereby assuming the role of a project manager.
Users can also ask Team Copilot questions in a chat based on shared files, and this ‘new valuable member of your team,’ as Microsoft puts it, will sift through those shared files to provide you with an answer. In short, Team Copilot covers pretty much all the aspects of effective collaboration. Apart from improving productivity and efficiency, it also marks a significant shift in how organizations use and engage with AI-assisted tools.
How does Team Copilot work?
The Team Copilot preview, introduced at Microsoft Build 2024, will roll out later this year and be available in Teams. In its meeting facilitator role, the host can invite Team Copilot to summarize the meeting. Members in the meeting can then edit or add pointers to the notes themselves. During these meetings, Copilot will be just as present as any other team member.
To know more about how Team Copilot works, watch this introductory video:
Copilot governance
The innovations around AI and Copilot are all great and welcome, but do organizations fully understand the impact of these tools on their teams? Organizations need to think about Copilot governance, not when they’re neck deep in the tool already, but well in advance. What should organizations consider before implementing Copilot, and what best practices can they rely on to ensure confidential company information remains out of Copilot’s reach?
When controlling Copilot’s real-time intelligent assistance, Rencore Governance is packed with automated policies, reports, and actionable triggers that prevent and resolve internal data oversharing, cloud sprawl, unwanted access, and over-licensing.
If you are looking to implement Copilot in your organization, we recommend downloading our Copilot Readiness Checklist to better understand the security-related pointers you should know.
