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 making use of Copilot in their daily work to enhance productivity but with the new Team Copilot, it would be interesting to see how AI can transform team dynamics in organizations.
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 comes 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, who manages the agenda, tracks time and takes notes. What this does is free up time and space for team members from doing administrative tasks, but rather focus on more creative and strategic topics.
In chats, Team Copilot can act as a collaborator by searching and providing important information, tracking action items and addressing unresolved matters. The purpose as 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 without any possibilities 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 preview of Team Copilot - introduced at Microsoft Build 2024 - will be rolled out later this year and will be available within Teams. In its meeting facilitator function, the host of a meeting will be able to invite Team Copilot to come in and 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 AI tools including Copilot on their teams? Organizations need to think about governing Copilot 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 faced with controlling Copilot’s real-time intelligent assistance, Rencore Governance is packed with automated policies, reports, and actionable triggers that prevent and resolve internal oversharing of data, 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 get a better understanding of the different security-related pointers you should know.
