Ignite 2023 – What’s New for Copilot and Microsoft 365 admins

a banner image of Microsoft Ignite 2023

As the backbone of any modern organization, your role is to ensure your users are most productive while maximizing value from your current investments. With the rapid evolution and adoption of AI, you are facing new challenges and opportunities. Microsoft Ignite 2023 brings the wealth of news and technical knowledge to help you keep up with the latest trends, best practices, and solutions for managing and optimizing your IT environment. Read on to learn about the latest announcements, for admins responsible for Copilot and Microsoft 365 overall, on becoming more productive in the daily admin work, including managing and assessing the impact of Copilot in your organization.   

Increasing efficiency of IT with the power of AI 

Managing Copilot for Microsoft 365 in one place 

To simplify management and configuration of Copilot, available controls and configurations are consolidated into a single Copilot page in the Microsoft 365 admin center and available on the left navigation menu for simple wayfinding. 

an image of the Copilot page in the Microsoft 365 admin center

Starting with the basics, you can get status of your Copilot licenses including how many are assigned and available. You’ll also be able to view the most recent Copilot-related message center posts at a glance and find links to top resources on Copilot. You will also find various controls for managing how your organization interacts with Copilot. If you are using Copilot, controls such as how your users interact with Copilot in Bing, and Copilot’s ability to access public web content are available. You can also manage plugins that work with Copilot for Microsoft 365, manage how Copilot works with sensitivity labels and protected documents, configure retention policies and communication compliance, as well as audit records and search interactions for eDiscovery by using the settings that link to the specific control in the Integrated App settings page and Microsoft Purview portal. Once licensed for Security Copilot, you can also get to the Security Copilot portal to view settings and configurations. To learn more about the Copilot page in the Microsoft 365 admin center, refer to this documentation. 

Introducing Copilot for Microsoft 365 admin 

Today we announced the Private Preview of Copilot for Microsoft 365 admin, harnessing the value of generative AI to boost IT admins’ productivity by simplifying administration of Microsoft 365 (including Copilot for Microsoft 365) and empowering you to focus on more strategic priorities. Copilot for Microsoft 365 admin helps you perform tasks across different Microsoft 365 services using natural language interactions, contextual guidance, and proactive suggestions. Copilot for Microsoft 365 admin also leverages the power of Copilot to access relevant skills across different admin centers and surfaces, helping admins stay in the flow of work.  

You will be able to experience Copilot in the Microsoft 365 admin center, as well as specialist admin centers like Teams admin center, SharePoint admin center, Exchange admin center, and more. Copilot will help surface information about your users, groups, and licenses, help with wayfinding for specific settings or controls within an admin center, provide guidance and help with troubleshooting. 

The Private Preview begins with a small group of selected Copilot for Microsoft 365 customers. To learn more about Copilot for Microsoft 365 admin, watch the What’s New for Microsoft 365 admin on-demand session. 

Measuring the impact of Copilot for Microsoft 365 in your organization 

Investing in new technologies like Copilot for Microsoft 365 requires insights into a range of areas from deployment to impact on all levels of IT.  We are bringing such information to you through the surfaces you’re already familiar with in the Microsoft 365 admin center, in the new Power BI dashboard (available in Preview today) and, in future, through Viva Insights. 

Delivering key insights to organizational leaders 

Announced earlier today, the Microsoft Copilot Dashboard (Preview) from Viva Insights* is a new Power BI app built for organizational leaders that brings key insights into a single view, including readiness, adoption, impact, sentiment, and relevant news and research. The dashboard is available as part of your Microsoft 365 or Office 365 subscription. The app can be installed by Microsoft 365 admins and shared with organizational leaders. Learn more about the Microsoft Copilot Dashboard (Preview) in the documentation, and get the dashboard today via AppSource. 

Planning for Copilot deployment, tracking usage and driving adoption with enhancements in the Microsoft 365 admin center 

Usage reports 

Usage reports in the Microsoft 365 admin center offers a growing set of metrics for you to understand usage of Microsoft 365 cloud services. Top level metrics include total enabled and active users, the active user rate, the number of first-time users, and total storage usage. As part of the new design, you can see total enabled and active users for all Microsoft 365 products and a breakdown per app. To understand how per-app usership is progressing over time, you can view these metrics as a trend line over the selected time-period. 

An image of the Microsoft 365 admin center Usage reports Overview page

The report offers two sections, Readiness and Usage, covering information you need to assess your readiness for Microsoft 365 Copilot enablement and inform your user licensing plan. 

Specifically, the Readiness section of the report covers: 

• Technical eligibility: an overview of the key requirements in order to use Copilot, including having a Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 license assigned and being enrolled in the appropriate channel for app updates. 


• License allocation: the total number of available and unassigned Copilot licenses so that you can ensure you’re utilizing every purchased license. 


• Recommended action cards: important actions to take to prepare your organization for Copilot. 


• Microsoft 365 app feature usage: a set of metrics that show the volume of users in your organization who can benefit from Copilot based on their usage of Microsoft 365 apps where Copilot brings value.


• User-level list view: a user table with a list view of individual users’ readiness information including whether they have usage on a qualified app update channel and actively use Microsoft 365 apps. Note: usernames are anonymized by default, and only a Global Admin can change this.

An image of the Microsoft 365 admin center Usage report for Copilot for Microsoft 365 readiness section

The Usage section of the Copilot for Microsoft 365 report includes: 

• Top-level metrics: enabled users and active users, and the active users rate. 


• Adoption chart: enabled and active users of Microsoft 365 Copilot with a breakdown of these numbers for each Microsoft 365 app, with the option to view these metrics as totals or trends for the selected period.

An image of the Microsoft 365 admin center Usage report for Copilot for Microsoft 365 usage section

To help you drive adoption, the Usage report includes organizational messages capabilities enabling you to reach users through the Windows 11 Notification Center with helpful resources on how to best use Copilot for Microsoft 365. Learn more here in the documentation. 

Copilot for Microsoft 365 Usage report

We’re working on a dedicated experience that will provide your admin team the ability to review activity and manage delivery of your organizational messages in a centralized way. Once your team creates a Copilot message via the Usage report experience described above, you can see interaction insights about it within a centralized experience. Additionally, you will be able to create and publish custom messages within this centralized experience, backed by an approval flow that provides oversight and control. For example, you could create a new message regarding the Windows spotlight (i.e., lock screen) that requires review and approval by other administrators before publication. This centralized experience will be available in a limited preview starting early next calendar year.  We invite you to join this program today by visiting https://aka.ms/orgmessagespreview. 

Diving deeper into Copilot for Microsoft 365 adoption by scenario in the Adoption Score AI assistance category 

Adoption Score offers a set of insights across both People Experiences and Technology Experiences. People Experiences covers how people are using Microsoft 365 to drive better communication, meetings, collaboration, teamwork and mobility. With AI rapidly entering the day-to-day experience of people in your organization, you will see a new People Experiences category called AI assistance, set to roll out in the coming weeks. 

Adoption Score AI Assistance

Adoption Score offers a score, on a 100-point scale, to quickly assess how well people in your organization are adopting Copilot in Microsoft 365. You can dive deeper into what makes up your AI assistance score by looking at the specific features and activities that drive impact, like how well your organization is using Copilot to summarize and create content in your organization, be it Teams meetings, Chat, email in Outlook, documents in Word or PowerPoint and more.  

Adoption Score AI Assistance

Here’s an overview of the various ways you can monitor usage and adoption of Copilot for Microsoft 365:

Simplifing how you manage Multi-tenant organizations 

Many organizations manage multiple tenants in their environment to support business needs including mergers, acquisitions or to maintain compliance with local or industry regulations. This can make it harder to work together and administer your environment, which is why we’ve introduced new capabilities in Public Preview and GA that will make your multi-tenant experience better across identity, collaboration, communication and security. These capabilities will enable you to: 

• Share leadership announcements and storylines across tenants and get insights on network and conversation analytics in Viva Engage (GA). 


• Form a multi-tenant organization (MTO) with Microsoft Entra ID that connects your tenants under a common identity and allows cross-tenant access and collaboration (in preview). 


• Search for co-workers in another tenant, have a single chat thread with them, and receive real-time notifications in Microsoft Teams (in preview). 


• Manage incidents and hunt for threats across tenants, and switch between single and multi-tenant views in Microsoft 365 Defender (in preview). 

These new capabilities simplify the process for organizations to arrange their tenants as secure, autonomous entities connected by common policies and foundational services to move their collective mission forward. Learn more about these enhancements here: 

• Microsoft Entra ID Multi Tenant Organizations  


• Plan for multitenant organizations in Microsoft 365 (Preview link) 


• Multi-tenant organizations in Viva Engage  


• Multi-tenant management in Microsoft 365 Defender 

Continuing the transition to cloud.microsoft 

Earlier this year we announced that Microsoft 365 apps and services would be making the transition to a new, unified domain, cloud.microsoft. The new domain is designed to simplify the user experience, drastically reduce the complexity of admin allow-lists, and lay a foundation for better and tighter integration across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Since April, all net-new services for Microsoft 365 have been deployed on the new domain – including some of the first Copilot web experiences. Copilot subscribers can now find Copilot Lab – a hub for prompts and resources to help you learn how to work with AI – at https://copilot.cloud.microsoft/prompts. 

As existing services prepare to transition, rest assured that we are committed to making these changes as seamless as possible for customers. Admins seeking to update their allow lists will find that *.cloud.microsoft has already been added to the official list of  Office 365 URLs and IP address ranges, and end users will find that existing links and bookmarks will redirect them automatically to the new domain when appropriate. To learn more, visit  Managing Microsoft 365 endpoints. 

Enhancements to provide more insights to network provider data

Other enhancements include the new network provider data and insights, which helps you understand how your network provider(s) affects the performance of Microsoft 365. These enhancements help admins make sure their users are getting the best possible performance and experience with good network connectivity, measuring network performance and availability between client applications on user machines and Microsoft’s network. 

This new network traffic feature gives you additional insights into network provider performance and offers you the awareness of network providers used by your users connected to Microsoft 365, by detecting them via ASN, IP addresses, certificates, and virtual interface names.  

We’ll also help you assess the performance and availability of network providers at both the tenant and branch office level by showing signals we detected between your end user and Microsoft, including the network path taken, the network devices handling the traffic, and how these are influencing network metrics that in turn impact user experience.  

Finally, insights into the top performing network providers in each location will help you understand how your users’ network providers compare to other options, to help guide future network provider decisions. 

Enhancements to Microsoft 365 Monitoring 

Lastly, Microsoft 365 Monitoring Preview is available in M365 admin center’s Service Health dashboard with over 40 monitoring scenarios across 6 core services. It allows you to use dashboards to monitor the health of various Microsoft services for your organization’s Microsoft 365 subscription. We’ve recently added enhancements and new additions to scenarios, listed below, to help IT admins and IT decision makers increase their observability, triangulate faster and minimize downtime.  

• Exchange Online Organizational: “Mail loops”, “Slow transport rules”, “Auto-expanding archive”, “Mailbox storage limits” 


• Exchange Online Priority Account: “Mail delivery” 


• Microsoft Teams Organizational: “UDP Stream Establishment”, “Quality of Experience” 


• Microsoft 365 apps for the web Organizational: “Word”, “Excel”, “PowerPoint”, “OneNote”, “Visio” 

To learn more about near-real time real-user usage telemetry with aggregated data and enriched alerts, visit Microsoft 365 monitoring – Microsoft 365 Enterprise. 

Catching up on the rest of Ignite 

For the latest content and announcements from Ignite related to Copilot for Microsoft 365, check out this blog at the Copilot Tech Community. Our Ignite Preview blog for Microsoft 365 admins gives a rundown of our recommended sessions to learn more! As always, stay current with the latest updates Microsoft 365 admin center from the Microsoft 365 roadmap and the message center.  

Footnotes: 

*The Microsoft Copilot Dashboard (Preview) includes licensing and usage data from your Microsoft 365 tenant. The report does not include data from Viva Insights and you are not required to have a Viva Insights subscription in order to implement the report. 

Unlock organizational knowledge with Topics in Copilot

Microsoft Viva Topics enables your organization to discover, explore and easily contribute knowledge proactively inside of Microsoft 365 apps such as Outlook, SharePoint and Microsoft Teams. Today we are excited to announce that we are extending Topics functionality into Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365. Topics will ground your Copilot experience with knowledge from inside your organization, to bring the best of AI and crowdsourced knowledge & expertise to your flow of work. 

Ground, verify and discover knowledge & expertise 

With Copilot interoperation, Topics uses people and AI to create a powerful knowledge index for your organization that grounds Copilot. Organizations can update, augment, and create new topics to make it easier to connect to information and expertise. Topics enables users to understand what information is organizationally important through the use of a verified badge, while also providing guiderails for Copilot to find relevant content and conversations that enable a meaningful response:   

Guide & curate knowledge 

Organizational controls are available to select roles, scope and exclusions of knowledge indexing, compliance, and sensitivity. Like Copilot, Topics respects all existing privacy and permissions on your content. Knowledge managers in Topics can be assigned by administrators to manage topics and deliver curated topic cards ensuring the desired expertise and knowledge is available for users. Analytics to understand engagement, contribution and health of your knowledge network will also be available.  

Licensing 
Topics in Viva will remain available for users to purchase and use in the same way they do today. Organizations that have purchased Copilot will get access to Topics, which will show up for Copilot users inside of Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, Engage, profile cards and search to provide a blended experience organizations can have confidence in when using generative AI solutions. Organizations with Copilot can learn more about Topics here.  

Roadmap 

Bringing Topics into Copilot represents the beginning of how knowledge and expertise is unlocked with the power of AI and people. Stay tuned for more information in the coming months via the Microsoft 365 roadmap as we discuss the next steps for Topics integration, proactive, personalized discovery and search improvements within Copilot. 

New Copilot & Microsoft Teams innovations for a secure, simple, and smart frontline workplace

Frontline workers are vital for every business, interacting directly with customers and managing on-the-ground operations daily. However, they face a digital deficit challenge – spending more time on finding information from siloed paper-based processes, legacy systems, and the various devices than on meaningful work like customer service and operational efficiency.  

Microsoft is democratizing technology for this essential workforce, empowering them with new innovations to help improve productivity and business processes. And our customers are at the center of the innovation we’re delivering. Customers like Conagra Brands are driving digitization at their manufacturing facilities and modernizing their shop floor operations with Microsoft Teams. With real-time communication and data sharing, Conagra is enhancing collaboration across facilities and removing information barriers to ensure business success.  

Let’s look deeper into how Copilot, Microsoft Teams, and the entire Microsoft 365 platform are innovating to help frontline workers and the organizations they serve to be successful: 

1. Increase frontline operational efficiency with smart and automated features.  


2. Secure and manage your business with new deployment and authentication products.   


3. Connect and engage your workforce with new push-to-talk innovations. 

Increase operational efficiency 

Over 60 percent of frontline workers struggle with having to do repetitive or menial tasks that take time away from more meaningful work (Work Tend Index Special Report, 2022). Now, new AI and automated features give frontline workers time back so that they can spend more time on operational excellence. 

Microsoft Copilot coming to all Entra ID users, starting with Microsoft 365 F3 on December 1, 2023 

Starting December 1, 2023, Microsoft 365 F3 users will be able to access Copilot (formerly Bing Chat Enterprise) with commercial data protection so frontline workers can use AI-powered web chat while keeping business and customer data protected. For example, store associates can assist customers in complex product comparison requests when shopping by using Copilot to make a table to compare the potential products against each other, or to summarize long manuals and onboarding documents into a few digestible bullet points for quick reading.  

When signed in with Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory), Copilot adds commercial data protection so workers can make requests knowing that confidential data stays private and isn’t being used to train the AI model. Over time, we will also expand the eligibility of Copilot with commercial data protection to even more Entra ID users at no additional cost.   

An image demonstrating Copilot with commercial data protection on a mobile device

Shifts plugin for Copilot for Microsoft 365 and new Shifts features  

Now Copilot for Microsoft 365 can pull from not only data sources like Microsoft Teams chat history, SharePoint, and OneDrive, but also from the Shifts app in Teams. The Shifts plugin for Copilot uses prompts to retrieve insights for frontline managers, leveraging data from the Shifts app in addition to user and company data it has access to. 

Frontline managers can quickly get a list of important items specific to their team and location to speed up time-consuming tasks like covering shifts and onboarding new employees. This helps reduce the burden of repetitive and menial tasks that take time away from meaningful work for frontline workers. This feature will be generally available in December 2023. 

An image showing Microsoft Shifts plugin for Microsoft Copilot pulling schedule information to confirm open shifts

We are also excited to share three new Shifts in Teams features that will be generally available in December and click here to learn more about Shifts in Teams. 

Import and export time offs and open shifts via Microsoft Excel 

Many customers use external tools to create schedules and need a convenient way to import those schedules in the Shifts in Microsoft Teams application. Shifts offer frontline managers (schedule owners) the ability to upload schedules via Excel through the web and desktop applications. With this feature, frontline managers will also be able to upload open shifts – enabling them to use the frontline workers’ self-serve capability to fill in unassigned shifts, and time offs – ensuring that data in Shifts app is in sync with the time-off data in human resources (HR) or workforce management (WFM) source of record systems. 

Improved Shifts in Microsoft Teams privacy settings 

Shifts app digitizes schedule management capabilities and creates efficiencies for organization by making the team’s schedule information available on every frontline worker’s device. However, some customers may want to limit the scheduling information that is shared with frontline workers due to privacy or business concerns. With this feature, frontline managers (schedule owners) will be able to precisely control what information is visible to the frontline workers: such as teammates’ time offs reasons & notes, shift notes, break duration, activities, and how far back frontline workers can view coworkers’ schedules 

Marketplace controls in Shifts settings 

The Shifts in Teams application offers multiple self-serve capabilities for frontline workers. For example:  

• “Open shifts” enables frontline workers to sign up for unassigned shifts. 


• “Swap and offer shifts” enable workers to cover each other’s shifts. 


• “Time off requests” allows workers to request days off. 

Organizations can now pick which of these features to enable for their team in the Shifts settings page. These marketplace control settings, which can be changed at any time, give customers control over how they deploy Shifts within their organization.  

An image showing Shifts marketplace control settings

New task publishing enhancements to support workflow management 

Task management is essential for frontline organizations that operate in multiple locations. We are constantly developing new features to help you manage your work more efficiently. For instance, we have recently added a feature that lets you choose which frontline workers will receive notifications when you publish or unpublish a task list for their team. This month, you will also be able to filter tasks by department or area on your mobile device. Watch Task Publishing in Planner to learn more about the newest task publishing features. 

An image showing filtering tasks by department on mobile

New Microsoft Planner in Teams to centralize task management 

Starting today, Tasks by Planner and To Do app in Teams will be renamed Planner and the new app experience in Teams will be generally available in Spring 2024.The new Planner app in Teams will continue to include our task management features for frontline organizations and will become the new central place for frontline workers to track what needs to be done, delegate tasks to the right workers, and monitor progress all from one platform. Frontline features such as task publishing will still be accessible in Planner app in Teams, and we’ll be introducing more features soon as well.  

An image showing the new Planner experience on Teams desktop

Secure and manage your business 

At the foundation of a frontline experience, is a secure device and a simple Teams structure deployed for collaboration from day one. We are committed to making it easier for IT admins to deploy and manage Teams for your frontline workers. Given the large size of the frontline workforce and the high turnover rates, simplicity is key to the admin experience. 

Deploy and manage frontline dynamic teams and shifts at scale  

Whether due to seasonality or the natural turnover seen on the frontline, simplifying user membership is key to easing management needs. Generally available in December, Microsoft has added new capabilities in the Teams Admin Center to deploy frontline dynamic teams at scale for your entire frontline workforce. Through the power of dynamic teams, team membership is automatically managed and always up to date with the right users as people enter, move within, or leave the organization using dynamic groups from Entra ID.  

This deployment tool streamlines the admin experience to create a Teams structure that maps the frontline workforces’ real-world into digital world and makes it easy to set up a consistent channel structure to optimize for strong frontline collaboration on day one.   

An image showing the new frontline deployment capabilities in the Teams Admin Center

Available in public preview in December, admins can deploy and manage shifts for the entire frontline workforce in the Teams Admin Center. This capability allows admins to centrally deploy and manage the Shifts app across their frontline locations. As part of the centralized deployment and management, admins can standardize time off reasons, scheduling groups, and shift settings across all frontline locations.  

An image showing the shifts management capabilities in the Teams Admin Center

New support for Entra ID Shared Device Mode on iOS and Android 

Previously, frontline workers who use Microsoft 365 applications on shared devices had to individually sign-in and sign-out of each application at the beginning and end of their shifts. This made it difficult for frontline workers to quickly start their shift and ensure their device was fully wiped when they gave the device to another employee.  

To address this challenge, Microsoft developed Entra ID Shared Device Mode that allows a user to sign-in and sign-out once for all apps that support the feature. And when used with Intune’s Application protection policies, you can provide additional data protection so other parts of the device do not leave data behind. 

On Android, we have previously shared that the core apps including Microsoft Teams, Managed Home Screen, Outlook, Edge, Viva Engage, and Power Apps have general availability support for Shared Device Mode. Joining the portfolio of supported Android apps, Power BI will be generally available and Microsoft 365 will be in public preview starting December.  

We know many customers also use shared Apple devices and we are excited to unlock key scenarios on iOS. We are announcing the general availability of Intune zero-touch provisioning of Entra ID Shared Device Mode on iOS and iPadOS as well as additional iOS apps support. In addition to Outlook, Power Apps, and Power BI in public preview, Microsoft 365 will be in public preview starting December. Viva Engage will now be generally available and Microsoft Teams and Power BI will be generally available starting December.  

an animated image showing sign-in and sign-out once for all apps, using Teams and Power BI as examples, that support this feature. 

Simplify authentication with domain-less sign-in on Microsoft Teams  

Since a single device is often shared among multiple frontliner workers, they need to sign-in and out multiple times a day throughout a shift or across shifts. Typing out the long username with domain is prone to mistakes and time consuming. With domain-less sign-in, frontline workers can now sign-in to Teams quicker using only the first part of their username (i.e., without domain), then enter the password to access Teams on shared and corporate-managed devices. For example, if the username is 123456@microsoft.com or alland@microsoft.com, users can now sign in with only “123456” or “alland”, respectively. This feature will reduce sign-in time to help frontline workers get to work faster and be available in public preview starting January 2024. 

 An animated image showing domain-less sign-in on Microsoft Teams

Connect and engage your workforce

Communication on the frontline can be difficult to reach the right people at the right time. We created a foundation of communication that applies to every worker with capabilities like chatting and calling. But we have also built specific frontline capabilities natively in Teams like push-to-talk communication for them to do their work, their way.  

Walkie Talkie in Teams: listen to multiple channels and new headsets support  

Frontline workers using Walkie Talkie in Teams will have the option to automatically hear incoming transmission from any of their pinned favorite channels. With this new feature, users can easily stay connected to multiple channels without needing to switch channels manually. This feature will be generally available starting January 2024. Learn more on how to get started.  

An animated image showing listen to multiple channels on Walkie Talkie in Microsoft Teams 

Walkie Talkie support on Jabra Perform 45 and all Klein wired push-to-talk USB-C Headsets 

In addition, frontline workers often need to instantly communicate with each other even when their phones are locked. This experience is possible with the dedicated push-to-talk (PTT) button on headsets that instantly brings up Walkie Talkie for clear and secure voice communication. We are excited to add Jabra Perform 45 support on both Android and iOS as well as all Klein wired push-to-talk USB-C headsets (such as Drift USB-C) support on Android to our frontline walkie talkie audio accessories ecosystem.   

An image showing a Jabra Perform 45

Learn more about Walkie Talkie and check out the list of walkie talkie rugged devices and audio accessories partners. For any other partners interested to be validated by Walkie Talkie in Microsoft Teams, please reach out to wtpartner@microsoft.com for more information.  

These new capabilities create a secure, simple, and smart workplace for the frontline workforce, so they can spend less time trying to access the right information, people, and processes to do their work and more time on meaningful work like delivering great customer service and operational excellence. Want to see all this innovation in action and headed to Ignite in person? Come check out our frontline session.  

Missing Ignite this year? Don’t worry, we will link to the on-demand session starting November 20th so check back here! 

New! Create videos and images at work with Clipchamp and Designer

In a world where videos and images have become a critical part of how we express ideas and consume information, it only makes sense that everyone in an organization is empowered to embrace this powerful form of communication.

With Microsoft Clipchamp and Microsoft Designer, we are democratizing video and image creation. By creating simple and intuitive user experiences, enhanced by AI, and complemented by the Microsoft 365 apps and services, we are making it easy for anyone to confidently harness the power of videos and images in their work, regardless of skill and experience.

After beginning this journey in the consumer space with tens of millions of users worldwide, we are thrilled to now include Clipchamp and Designer in our Microsoft 365 commercial offerings.

Clipchamp now available to commercial customers

Whether you need to explain a process to your teammates, onboard new employees, send an update to clients, or level up your organization’s newsletters, now you can turn to Clipchamp to deliver an impactful message through video at work.  

The commercial rollout process which began over the summer is complete and we are proud to announce Clipchamp is now generally available to anyone licensed for Microsoft 365 Enterprise (E3 and E5) and Business (Standard, Premium) suites.

Clipchamp’s simple user interface and rich array of features make it easy to create professional-looking videos at work.

We have developed these tools in close partnership with many customers, including Advent Health, Amadeus, Murex, and Renaissance, which have helped us ensure that Clipchamp meets the unique needs of companies and organizations. With Clipchamp, their organizations are already seeing evidence of sparked creativity, improved communications, and more efficiency across their user base.

Advent Health, Amadeus, Murex, and Renaissance have all been early adopters of Clipchamp.

Clipchamp has an array of features which make it quick and easy to create and share professional-looking videos in minutes. As part of Microsoft 365, Clipchamp is built on OneDrive and SharePoint and works seamlessly with your other everyday Microsoft productivity apps. The videos you export from Clipchamp can be shared through Microsoft Stream, embedded and played in Microsoft Teams, in emails with Outlook, and on Microsoft Viva Engage, making it easy for you to incorporate videos in your work.

It’s easy to get started with Clipchamp from the Apps page at microsoft365.com.  In 2024, Clipchamp will become available as a Windows app as well for Microsoft 365 Enterprise and Business licenses.

Introducing Clipchamp Premium

Next month we are introducing Clipchamp Premium which offers additional value for creating high-quality videos with ease and efficiency. Starting December 1, 2023, commercial customers will be able to purchase Clipchamp Premium to access additional features including:

• 4K exports – Crystal-clear UHD resolution up to 30fps helps your videos to look their best


• Brand kit – Your company’s specific fonts, colors, and logos loaded into Clipchamp make it easy to align with your organization’s branding and ensure consistency across projects.


• Premium stock content – Top-tier images, video, and audio help you produce professional-looking videos that resonate with people.


• Advanced analytics with Microsoft Stream – Visibility to crucial video-level metrics help you engage and improve your output by tracking your user behavior and performance for your video.

Clipchamp Premium includes features such as Brand kit, 4k exports, and Premium stock content.

Clipchamp Premium will be available as a Microsoft 365 Enterprise or Business add-on with an introductory price of $5 per user per month* through June 30, 2024. After that, the price will be $7 per user per month.*

Next month Clipchamp will be offered as a standalone license for non-Microsoft 365 subscribers. The Clipchamp Standard SKU will be $3 per user per month. The Clipchamp Premium standalone SKU will have an introductory price of $7 per user per month* through June 30, 2024, and $10 per user per month* thereafter.

Table with Clipchamp Premium pricing.

Designer app integrations now in Preview for commercial customers

With Designer, all you need is an idea to create amazing images and designs. Just simply describe what you want to create and Designer uses AI powered by Dall-E 3 to generate great looking designs. You can even incorporate your own images, add text, and customize the results with simple commands to ensure you get just the image you’re looking for. It’s a tool anyone can use with confidence to add the right visual impact to their communications, presentations, and announcements.

Designer is coming first to commercial customers through integrations in various Microsoft 365 apps so users can create and customize images within the flow of work. Designer will initially be available as a Preview to users licensed for the Microsoft 365 Enterprise (E3 and E5) and Business (Standard and Premium) suites through the following integrations, with more on the way in the coming months: 

• Designer in Edge is available now.


• Designer in Teams for creating announcement banners will become available in the coming weeks.


• Designer in Copilot for use in Word, PowerPoint and Whiteboard will be available by the end of 2023.

A Preview of the Designer app will become available to enterprise and business customers in the coming months, followed by a general release later next year. Commercial customers interested in participating in a private preview of the app can provide their contact information through this form and we will follow up with you about potential inclusion in that release.

Designer in Edge makes it easy to create compelling designs within the flow of work.

What makes Clipchamp and Designer different?

With visual content becoming more and more prevalent in today’s world, we know there are an increasing number of tools to choose from. But we believe that Microsoft 365 has a unique opportunity to make video and image creation a common part of how people work in three key ways:

1. As part of Microsoft 365, Clipchamp and Designer are easy to find and right where you need them – whether that’s through microsoft365.com or through integrations in the apps where you utilize visual content.


2. We’re focused on making it easy for anyone to use these tools. With the power of AI and intuitive user interfaces, these tools simplify complex tasks, save time by automating work, and stimulate creative thinking. Creative work that once seemed intimidating and complex now feels simple and achievable.


3. We’re tailoring Clipchamp and Designer to the needs of businesses and organizations. With features that ensure consistent brand alignment, enable collaboration among colleagues, and are backed by the security and compliance you’d expect with Microsoft 365, these are tools you can count on for work.

What’s next?

We have plans to drive innovation within Microsoft 365, including new  horizons made possible by AI. Check out this video to get a sense of our vision for what video and image creation in Microsoft 365 will look like:

Learn more and get started

• Check out our Visual Content Creation On-Demand Session from Ignite to learn more and see demos of the products themselves.


• Start using Clipchamp at work.


• To use Designer in Edge, enable the Designer app by clicking on the + sign in the side bar on the right.


• Get a sense of the app experience at https://designer.microsoft.com using your personal Microsoft Account (not enabled for enterprise or business accounts at this time).

No matter what you are creating or why, Microsoft 365 makes it easy for you. Start using Clipchamp and Designer at work – you’ll be amazed by what you can create.

* All prices are in US Dollars

Microsoft 365 Backup and Microsoft 365 Backup Storage at Ignite 2023

You have critical data stored in Microsoft 365 which means business continuity is more essential than ever in this era of rising ransomware attacks and security threats. Recovering large volumes of content is difficult when copying data at a scale from a remote air gapped location requiring weeks or even months to get your business back up and running.   

To address these challenges, we have developed Microsoft 365 Backup—a new storage architecture for backup and data protection inside Microsoft 365. This storage lives inside the Microsoft 365 trust boundary, so you manage the security of your Microsoft 365 data in one place. 

Microsoft 365 Backup allows us to accelerate large scale backup and recovery times by an order of magnitude. Preliminary testing has shown recovery speeds with this new approach are more than 20 times faster than traditional backup architecture. Your data is kept in its native format, encrypted, geographically distributed, and secured within Microsoft 365.  

Microsoft 365 Backup provides these capabilities:  

1. Backup all or select SharePoint sites, OneDrive accounts, and Exchange mailboxes in your tenant.     

2. Restore OneDrive accounts, SharePoint sites, and mailbox items to a prior point in time for your entire tenant.  

3. Search or filter content in your backups using key metadata such as site names, owners, subject, creation/modification dates, and event types restore point date ranges. 

Microsoft 365 Backup Demo

 
The paid public preview of Microsoft 365 Backup will begin later in 2023 and will reach General Availability in the first half of 2024. Backup for other Microsoft 365 sources, such as Teams chat and other Microsoft 365 services, and granular file-level recovery are part of our post-GA roadmap.  

Partner Solutions 

You can get the benefits of Microsoft 365 Backup by adopting a partner’s application built on top of our  Backup Storage. Our partners can provide unique and powerful experiences within a single pane of glass integrating your Microsoft 365 and non-Microsoft 365 data sources. By leveraging the Microsoft 365 Backup Storage, partner apps can deliver the same exceptional backup and restore speeds provided by Microsoft assurances – all while keeping that Microsoft 365 data within the trusted Microsoft security and compliance domain.  

Our partners who are dedicated to bringing the advantages of Microsoft 365 Backup Storage to our customers are AvePoint, Cohesity, Commvault, Rubrik, Veeam, and Veritas. We appreciate their support on this journey. 

AvePoint Cloud Backup Express

Cohesity DataProtect

Commvault Cloud Backup and Recovery for Microsoft 365

Rubrik Data Protection for Microsoft 365 Backup Storage

Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365

Veritas Alta™ SaaS Protection

Conclusion

Microsoft 365 Backup uses our new Backup Storage platform to provide protection for Microsoft 365-based data sources. It backs up and restores your OneDrive, SharePoint, and Exchange data at scale – while also keeping multiple redundant backups within the Microsoft 365 trust boundary to maintain business continuity.

Calls to Action

The paid public preview of Microsoft 365 Backup will begin later in 2023. You can access the user guide now to learn about setup and activation for Microsoft 365 Backup.

Visit our adoption page for additional information.

Partners can learn more about applying to our Content AI Partner Program to get preview access to Microsoft 365 Backup Storage and more.

Sign up for ongoing information about Microsoft 365 Backup and the rest of our content management solutions management solutions.

Backup is one part of our growing set of solutions for advanced content management across Microsoft 365. Learn more from this week’s announcement of the new SharePoint Premium at Microsoft Ignite.

Microsoft Loop’s November 2023 Ignite summary for IT Admins

It’s November 2023, and we’re making the Loop app generally available for customers with Business Standard, Business Premium, E3, and E5 work accounts on web and mobile.

As a Compliance Manager or IT administrator, it’s important to keep current on governance, data lifecycle, and compliance for your organization’s software solutions. We’re pleased to announce that as of November 15, 2023, Microsoft Loop is now generally available! Loop is a multi-player application that’s designed to help your teams think, plan and create together. 

We’ve put together this brief roadmap of upcoming governance, data lifecycle, compliance, and admin management capabilities so you can make an informed decision on Loop in your organization. We welcome your questions and feedback in the comments section as we embark on this journey together, and we hope the timelines for anything that looks critical are close enough to give Loop a try today! And if you need to enable or disable these experiences, that’s documented too for Loop app and workspaces, Loop components. 

Also, we have recently updated our full list of supported capabilities, which can be found here: Summary of governance, lifecycle and compliance capabilities for Loop. Please give that a read!

Loop Storage 

First, a quick aside on where Loop content is stored, as the admin management, governance, data lifecycle, and compliance capabilities are a function of the storage location. Putting that a different way… 

Think of Loop more like you do Word, Excel or PowerPoint. Loop is an app that integrates with the SharePoint platform, Purview, and other Microsoft management capabilities in your organization. And like Word, Excel or PowerPoint, Loop experiences create files in SharePoint – in fact, Microsoft Loop is built on top of SharePoint, OneDrive, and Microsoft Syntex repository services, which means Loop content is just like the existing files in your ecosystem. 

To help you understand how Loop content is stored in the Microsoft ecosystem, here’s a high-level diagram showing where the Loop content was originally created determines its storage location: 

Summarizing the created in A > stored in B: 

• Let’s say that with a summary statement. Created in the Loop app > Microsoft Syntex 
  


• Created outside the Loop app in places that have dedicated shared storage (e.g. Teams channels) > SharePoint 


• Created outside the Loop app in all other places that don’t have tightly associated collaborative storage (e.g. Teams chat, Outlook email, Word for the web, Whiteboard) > OneDrive

Roadmap for governance, data lifecycle and compliance capabilities not yet available 

If you’re looking for the big picture, the full list of all capabilities, refer to: Summary of governance, lifecycle and compliance capabilities for Loop. In this section, we’ll put the capabilities listed in that article as not yet available in roadmap format so you can plan for their availability. 

Targeting early 2024

Data Loss Prevention, Information Protection

• Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policy tips displayed for ALL Loop content, whether it’s stored in OneDrive, SharePoint or Microsoft Syntex


• Sensitivity Labeling (MIP/CLP) for ALL Loop content, whether it’s stored in OneDrive, SharePoint or Microsoft Syntex

Targeting mid 2024

Admin Management for Loop workspaces

• Third-Party tools for export and eDiscovery, migration, etc. to programmatically access Loop workspaces and content


• PowerShell ability to
  
  
  
  • View storage in the enumeration list of loop containers
  
  
  • Multi-Geo re-home of Loop workspaces and .loop files as needed
  
  
  • get and set conditional access policy, block download policy
  
  
  
  


• SharePoint Admin Center
  
  
  
  • Enterprise management capabilities in Admin Center for Loop workspaces
  
  
  • Capability to delete, recover & permanently delete workspaces
  
  
  • Capability to add and update sensitivity labels in the Admin UX
  
  
  • New admin role integration with Admin UX and PowerShell
  
  
  
  

Data Lifecycle Management for Loop workspaces 

• Setting or overriding the all SharePoint sites Retention policy on an individual Loop workspace 


• Retention labels 

Conclusion 

By reviewing the above information, you can make an informed decision on whether Microsoft Loop is ready for use as a software solution in your organization. Up to date and full documentation can be found here: Summary of governance, lifecycle and compliance capabilities for Loop to help you make the best decisions for your organization. 

Related topics 

• Overview of Loop components in Microsoft 365


• Manage Loop components in OneDrive and SharePoint


• Overview of Loop workspaces storage and permissions


• Manage Loop workspace experiences in Microsoft Syntex repository services