Microsoft Ignite 2024 takes place this week in Chicago, bringing together technology leaders and innovators from around the world. The event explores how the latest updates to Azure, Copilot, Microsoft 365, Windows and other Microsoft tools are designed to share the future of business technology.
More than 80 new products and features have been revealed across the Microsoft product portfolio. It’s no surprise that, like last year, AI will take center stage at this year’s event, with a focus on agentic AI. Here’s a look at some of the key announcements from the event.
Co-pilot actions
Microsoft’s new Copilot Actions, now in private preview, use AI to automate repetitive tasks. This includes everything from automating meeting summaries and generating weekly reports to automatically preparing for meetings and managing other routine workflows.
The tech giant has introduced AI agents on several of its platforms. This includes SharePoint Agents that help users get information about specific content, Employee Self-Service Agent for HR and IT tasks, and Facilitator Agent for effective collaboration and note-taking in Teams meetings.
There’s also a new Project Manager agent in Planner that Microsoft says can handle everything from plan creation to task execution. Users can also customize agents, giving them names and defining behaviors tailored to specific business needs.
“Agents can operate around the clock to review and approve customer returns or review shipping invoices to help businesses avoid costly mistakes in the supply chain,” Microsoft explained in a statement. blog post. “They can reason through tons of product information to give field technicians step-by-step instructions or use context and memory to open and close tickets for an IT help desk.”
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft has unveiled an interpreting agent for Teams that offers real-time AI-powered speech-to-speech translation in multiple languages. Participants can speak or listen in the language of their choice. AI agents take notes during Teams meetings in real time and summarize Teams discussions as conversations occur. A public preview will be available in early 2025 and will include up to nine languages.
Microsoft has announced that its AI-powered workplace app, Places, is now available to everyone. This tool integrates location data into Teams and Outlook, helping users with office planning. With Places, users can suggest ideal office days based on in-person meetings based on key collaborators’ schedules. It also provides a tool for administrators to analyze planned occupancy versus actual space occupancy.
Azure AI Foundry
On the opening day of the event, Microsoft revealed new IT security and governance features available in public preview in Azure AI Foundry.
The upgrades include a new Azure AI administrator role, a new identity-based option to access storage by default, and a management center that provides cross-functional teams with a hub and centralized governance experience. Users gain more granular control over their network security by being able to select IP addresses to access Azure Machine Learning workspaces.
“Now AI development, operations, and compliance teams can easily create, manage, and audit their organization’s hubs, projects, and resources from the Azure AI Foundry portal, reducing the need to visit the Azure portal or different areas of the Azure AI Foundry portal. for daily administrative tasks,” Microsoft wrote in a blog about this announcement.
Co-pilot control system
At this year’s Ignite event, Microsoft unveiled the new Copilot control system, designed to help IT teams manage copilots and AI agents within Microsoft 365. The system provides tools to control access data, security and governance, as well as to track usage and adoption. .
Copilot in Microsoft 365 admin centers is now in private preview. A full release is planned for early next year. This feature is designed to help IT administrators automate routine tasks, analyze trends, and resolve issues like call quality via natural language commands. Additionally, Copilot Analytics offers a dashboard to monitor the effectiveness of these tools. Microsoft has announced plans to integrate Viva Insights with Copilot Analytics in 2025 as a business results measurement tool.
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Regarding the Copilot Analytics functionality, Microsoft explained“Copilot Analytics is designed to enable every IT manager and business leader to measure the adoption and business impact of Copilot and agents – with out-of-the-box experiences (Copilot dashboard and admin center Microsoft) and customizable reports for deeper analysis against your KPIs. .”
“With Viva Insights included, IT admins and analysts can now customize pre-built advanced Copilot reports with their business data or create custom reports with organizational attributes, longer usage data sets and more granular controls. »
Power platform
New features have been introduced for Power Apps that will help users create smarter, more efficient low-code apps, according to Microsoft. A key addition is Copilot in Power Apps, which helps users define business problems and review solutions. For example, the tool can help users create agent-based applications or tasks. Additionally, AI-generated record summary cards and new form-filling features enhance the app’s functionality.
The new Snowflake Power Platform connector will allow Snowflake data to be imported into Dataverse. This will allow sales teams to analyze purchasing patterns in Snowflake and track leads in real-time in Dataverse. This two-way integration between Snowflake and Dataverse is now in preview. In the coming months, Microsoft plans to make Dataverse data available in Snowflake, giving customers access to Snowflake’s powerful analytics.
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