After a month-long hiatus, I find myself back in the familiar yet ever-evolving landscape of technology. My time away was a precious opportunity to disconnect, recharge, and spend time with family and close relatives. To my surprise, I spent less time on LinkedIn during my vacation. It’s in these quiet interludes that are needed and we get renewed. And talking about renewals, I am humbled and honored to share with you that I was renewed for a Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) year. This is my 6th year in the program, and it has been a great ride. I have met and connected with so many people, that I would not have met without being an MVP. All those people spark and ignite inspiration and there is a massive amount of knowledge, insights and experiences shared! I changed a category a bit this time again, as it has been the era of AI (Artificial Intelligence), I received dual-category MVP award for Microsoft 365 (Microsoft Teams) and AI Platform (Azure AI Services). Check out my MVP profile! 

As I reacquaint myself with the bustling world of exciting tech, I am particularly focused to the advancements in Microsoft’s Cloud. The pace of innovation never stops, and it’s clear that Microsoft Copilot, Teams, and Azure AI have not stood still during July. In this post, I’ll be highlighting some selected features in Copilot and Teams (& Mesh) that have caught my attention – I will write about Azure AI later. From intelligent aid to collaborative breakthroughs, these tools are reshaping the way we work and interact. 

Don’t miss these events, where I am speaking during autumn! 

Let’s start exploring what’s new! 

Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 Catch up  Outlook Word Excel Microsoft Teams Custom emojis Turn on and off channel post notifications Microsoft Designer in Teams New Notification options Microsoft Mesh

Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 

Catch up  

I have been waiting for this one to appear. Catch up helps you get up to speed with the help of Copilot regarding documents and meetings. You can find this when you open Copilot and notice Catch up next to “Try these prompts”. 

Catch up is a new tab you can just open and see what kind of updates there are. I don’t see this yet in all tenants where I have access to the Copilot so it is still rolling in.  

My personal tenant does not have any other collaborators, so catch up will be less useful in that one. But I hope to see this in my work tenant soon. Looking at picture at Microsoft’s material we can see better what this will be when you see it in your Copilot: 

The Catch up feature displays personalized cards offering significant updates and actionable recommendations, allowing you to swiftly grasp important points from materials and recorded sessions that you did not attend or might want to review. Additionally, Copilot assists in meeting preparation by recommending associated documents.   

Outlook 

The side-panel Copilot in Outlook, can initiate now a new draft reply to an email message – using the information in email messages. For example (note: typos don’t matter 😊 ) 

It creates a new draft message in Outlook, and lets you continue working on the reply from there.  

Word 

I think the biggest news here is that Copilot’s context has increased. Now Copilot in Word can summarize documents containing (approx) up to 80 000 words – that is about 160 pages. This depends on the language as well. My guess is that Copilot in Word is now internally using GPT-4o model with 128k token context. As tokens are parts of words, it would target 80k words in document ballpark.  

Excel 

When users request Copilot to modify table data, it outlines the intended changes and presents a button to execute the alterations, giving users better insight to determine whether to go ahead with the alteration. Users can adjust the changes before applying them at their convenience.  For example, I have this (very small) sample dataset: 

When I ask Copilot to highlight months where sales are larger than opportunities it shows me what it is going to do. It is great how Copilot will be saving time when working with conditional formatting in Excel.  

After hitting Apply, it does the highlighting for me. 

Currently Copilot in Excel doesn’t have the capability to add a sum cell (like for example Sum of Sales), but it was announced during July that it will be coming soon. When I just tried it out, it is still summing it the old way: adding a pivot table to a new sheet. Fingers crossed it will appear soon! 

Microsoft Teams 

Now, let’s get to what’s new in Teams.  First, I want to highlight something fun:  

Custom emojis 

Yes, you can add your own images and gifs to Teams message reactions. You can start adding your custom emojis by selecting the emoji+ icon right before the pen-icon to edit your message. 

When the pop-out opens, click the rightmost icon on the bottom row.  

This is where you can start adding your own gifs and images by clicking + and then selecting the image (or gif) you want to use as emoji. I already have added Copilot and clippy, but there is room for more. When you have added the image, you get a window to see example uses and you need to enter a unique name to your reaction. The name needs to be lowercase and without spaces. 

And as the information box on top says: emojis you add will be visible for everyone in your organization. Your identity is also linked to your emoji. Let’s name this emoji mesh. 

After clicking Add emoji you can see mesh emoji in custom emojis.  

We can use it normally . 

We can also add custom emojis to our selected emojis to react messages. 

To edit your favorite emojis, select the smiley + pen icon next to search magnification glass on “Find something fun”.  

You can also add custom emojis to your messages. Just open the emoji-button and search for it (or navigate to custom emojis and select the one you want to use). 

Quite fun, isn’t it? Adding custom emojis is on by default for all users and admins can delete them.  

Right clicks the emoji, to open information who added it and optionally delete it, if you have delete permissions. 

Now, if you are an admin or business decision maker worried about people putting all kinds of emojis there are controls available.  

Turn the feature on/off for the whole tenant via the Messaging Settings page (on by default). 

Set which users can create new emojis via the Messaging Policy groups (on for all users by default). 

Set which users can delete emojis via the Messaging Policy groups (off for all users except admins by default). 

Read more from custom emojis Microsoft Learn article.  

Turn on and off channel post notifications 

If you want to follow-up conversation in a conversation thread in channels – or you want to mute it just click the … menu in the message to see the option. 

Turning off notifications is especially useful, when you add something to the thread but don’t want to be bothered by it anymore.  

Microsoft Designer in Teams 

What is quite fun (and also useful!), is that Microsoft Designer is now integrated directly into Teams. You can use it in both chats and channels. With Designer you can generate images without leaving Teams at all.  

Just at-mention Designer when writing a message and type in your image prompt.  

Designer then creates the image directly to the conversation 

Just click the image open, you want to use, and copy or download it. 

New Notification options 

And as the closing feature, check out new notification settings there are for notification sounds.   

It is good to have more control when sounds are played with notifications.  

Microsoft Mesh

Microsoft Mesh also got news during July. A few key picks of recent ones:

Event templates updatedPrebuilt event templates (Meadow and Oasis) have gotten updates. They automatically now include screenshare object, so these templates can be used in more scenarios without a need to make any kind of customizations. Customization is still available normally, when you want to add images, videos, etc.

Revisit event links Use past links you’ve received when you created your event, or share the link with others, to rejoin old events. Simply select the link to open the Mesh application and rejoin your past events. 

More avatar reactionsNew avatar reactions are coming both on Teams and Mesh events.

Avatar personal boundaryThis one will be useful for a plenty of people. Avatars now have a personal boundary to prevent other people from walking through avatars or standing too close. This helps to increase comfort and safety while in immersive spaces. Avatar personal boundary is available in all Mesh experiences.

Updates to network setup requirements, improved audio qualityMicrosoft Mesh is transitioning to use Microsoft Teams’ backend for spatial audio, promising improved audio quality and simpler network setup requirements for users with Mesh app versions 5.2407+. The rollout, starting now, is expected to complete by late July 2024. No admin action is required before the rollout.

Published by Vesa Nopanen

Vesa “Vesku” Nopanen, Principal Consultant and Microsoft MVP (M365 and AI Platform) working on Future Work at Sulava.

I work, blog and speak about Future Work : AI, Microsoft 365, Copilot, Microsoft Mesh, Metaverse, and other services & platforms in the cloud connecting digital and physical and people together.

I have about 30 years of experience in IT business on multiple industries, domains, and roles.
View all posts by Vesa Nopanen