Copilot Gets Expanded Role in Office, Outlook, and Security
Microsoft has doubled down on its Copilot strategy, announcing new agents and capabilities that bring deeper intelligence and automation to everyday workflows in Microsoft 365.
The biggest changes are coming to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, where new built-in agents now do more than just respond to prompts. These agents can help users draft documents, research content, format presentations, and handle other multi-step tasks — while still letting the user guide the process.
Powering these updates is Work IQ, Microsoft's intelligence layer that ties into your files, e-mails, calendars, and other data to understand how you work. Work IQ also builds memory based on your interactions, so Copilot can remember things like your preferences or recent conversations. A new feature, conversational memory, lets Copilot keep that context across sessions. Users can always see, change, or delete what's remembered.
Ryan Roslansky, CEO of LinkedIn and EVP of Office, said that Work IQ extends far beyond the capabilities of traditional connectors or agents, during a keynote speech at Microsoft's recent Ignite 2025 event. "Work IQ works across all your data real time and has full context which allow to find patters and insights, while connectors pull fragments with no real understanding of the context. "
SharePoint also benefits from tighter Copilot integration. Copilot can now reason over structured metadata in SharePoint libraries, providing more accurate and relevant answers when content is tagged with fields like category, status, or owner. This update gives organizations a stronger return on investments in content management and taxonomy.
Outlook users see expanded Copilot support too. On mobile, Copilot now includes a hands-free voice experience that summarizes e-mails and guides users through actions like replying, flagging, and deleting. Across all platforms, Copilot offers one-tap prompts — such as "Triage my inbox" or "Summarize and reply" — to help users take quick action. New features also let users schedule meetings directly through chat, including booking rooms and drafting agendas. In early access, Copilot can even resolve conflicts by automatically rescheduling flexible 1:1 meetings based on user preferences.
Microsoft also announced that Security Copilot is now included with Microsoft 365 E5 and is integrated directly into key security products including Microsoft Defender, Entra, Intune, and Purview. This update introduces a range of prebuilt agents that operate within these tools to support specific security workflows.
The new agents in Security Copilot are built to help security teams handle routine work like sorting through alerts, managing access policies, and automating common tasks tied to devices and user identities. According to Microsoft, these agents can take action on their own but still follow the organization's existing security rules and compliance standards.
Security Copilot pulls in data from across the organization — such as user behavior, system settings, and policies — to make decisions and suggest next steps. All agent activity is tied into Microsoft's auditing and reporting tools, so teams can see what actions were taken and review them if needed.
By building these agents directly into the tools security teams already use, like Defender, Entra and Intune, Microsoft is treating Security Copilot as a core part of the platform, not an add-on. These features are now generally available to customers with Microsoft 365 E5 licenses.
A roundup of news from Ignite 2025 is available here on the Microsoft site.