What’s New in Copilot | May 2025

Welcome to the May edition of What’s New in Microsoft 365 Copilot.

This month brings an exciting wave of updates focused on deepening Copilot’s integration across Microsoft 365, enhancing usability, and making AI an even more natural part of daily workflows. What more could we ask for?

These developments demonstrate Microsoft’s commitment to redefining productivity, from improvements to the Copilot app experience to new capabilities in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and beyond.

Here’s everything you need to know about the latest updates to Microsoft 365 Copilot this May.

 

A New Look for the Microsoft 365 Copilot App

The Microsoft 365 Copilot app is being enhanced with a refreshed experience that better surfaces users’ most important tools, apps, and files.

Whether you are working on desktop or mobile, you will notice changes that make it easier to access what you need, when you need it.

On desktop, users can now instantly open Copilot by pressing the new Copilot key or using the shortcut Win + C on a Windows 11 device. This launches a modernised experience where you can chat with Copilot, upload files for AI assistance, or call an agent when required. This streamlined access is designed to keep workflows moving with minimal disruption.

On mobile devices, OneDrive will be renamed ‘Search’, and the Copilot experience will be branded simply as ‘Chat’. A new ‘Create’ module is also being introduced, making generating documents, emails, and other content directly from your mobile device even easier.

This will all be rolling out in May.

 

Expanding People Skills Across Microsoft 365

Microsoft is rolling out People Skills, a new intelligent data layer across Copilot in Microsoft 365.

People Skills analyses signals from meetings, documents, chats, and searches to infer organisational skillsets. This makes it easier to:

• Discover colleagues with specific expertise
• Facilitate cross-functional collaboration
• Empower leaders with better visibility of skills across teams

People Skills is integrated across Copilot, Skills Agent, Viva Learning, Org Explorer, and more.

It brings a people-first approach to organisational knowledge management and enhances opportunities for talent development and team building.

 

Copilot Pages Updates

Copilot Pages, Microsoft’s AI-driven workspace for capturing and organising knowledge, is expanding its functionality:

• Users can now export Copilot Pages directly into Word documents, making it easier to polish, format, and publish content created collaboratively within Copilot Pages.
• Copilot Pages are becoming more mobile-friendly, with the ability to create, edit, and share pages from mobile devices.
• The Copilot mobile app is introducing a new module for Copilot Pages, which will provide a unified place to manage ideas and outputs on the move.

These updates ensure that Copilot Pages remains a flexible, accessible tool for teams to capture knowledge and insights in real time.

 

Audio Overviews, It’s A New Way to Stay Informed

Audio Overviews are a new feature enabling users to consume information from documents, meetings, and files in a podcast-style audio format.

Rather than reading through lengthy content, users can now listen to summaries presented as dynamic conversations between two hosts. These overviews incorporate commentary and connections between topics, making it easier to absorb complex material while on the go.

Audio Overviews are initially available in OneDrive, Outlook, Teams, Word, and Copilot Notebooks. They offer a practical alternative for knowledge consumption in today’s busy working environments.

 

Enhancements to Copilot in Outlook

Managing email continues to be a core area of focus.

This month, Copilot in Outlook gains new inbox prioritisation capabilities. Copilot now helps users surface their most important emails by generating a Priority list, making it simpler to focus attention on the most pressing communications.

This functionality is designed to help reduce email overload and ensure that critical messages are not missed, particularly in busy or high-volume inboxes.

 

Streamlined Content Upload from Mobile

A new feature enables users to upload images from their phone directly into documents being created or edited in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint via Copilot.

This enhancement makes it easier to incorporate real-world visuals into documents without needing to transfer files manually, speeding up the content creation process across devices.

 

Smarter Teams Meetings with Copilot

Copilot in Microsoft Teams meetings now features:

• Multilingual support, making meetings more inclusive for global teams
• Onscreen content analysis, enabling Copilot to understand what is shared during meetings and provide more relevant assistance

These updates strengthen Copilot’s role in making meetings more productive, helping participants more effectively capture key points, follow-up actions, and decisions.

 

Improvements to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

Copilot continues to deepen its integration across core Microsoft 365 apps:

• Word: Copilot can now generate higher-quality drafts and better assist with document refinement, helping users produce polished outputs more quickly.
• Excel: New capabilities enable Copilot to more easily create tables, analyse datasets, and generate charts based on natural language prompts.
• PowerPoint: Users can generate complete presentations faster, with Copilot suggesting slide layouts, summarising source documents, and ensuring visual consistency.

These enhancements are aimed at making content creation across Microsoft 365 faster, more accurate, and more intuitive.

 

Advancements in Agents

Two new agent capabilities are being introduced:

• SharePoint Agents for Copilot Chat: Users can now interact with SharePoint agents within Copilot Chat, helping them find information, understand site content, and complete SharePoint-related tasks more easily.
• Project Manager Agent for Planner: A new Project Manager agent automates status reporting within Microsoft Planner, enabling teams to stay on top of project progress with minimal manual effort.

These intelligent agents extend Copilot’s usefulness into specialised business processes, reducing administrative overhead and improving team visibility.

 

Innovations in Copilot Studio

Copilot Studio is receiving further enhancements to support creators and developers:

• Expanded customisation options for building secure, enterprise-ready AI agents
• Introduction of the Copilot Control System to help IT administrators govern, manage, and monitor agent use across the organisation
• Improved tools for managing data connections, security configurations, and deployment settings

These updates allow organisations to build more tailored Copilot experiences while maintaining governance and compliance standards.

 

Growing Access to Copilot Academy

Copilot Academy, the training platform for maximising AI adoption within organisations, is expanding availability.

More users will now have access to resources, courses, and best practices to help them make the most of Copilot’s capabilities in their daily work.

Copilot Academy aims to accelerate learning curves, encourage innovation, and help organisations realise value from their Copilot investments faster.

 

Enhanced Admin Insights and Governance

Finally, Microsoft is strengthening reporting and insights for administrators:

• New dashboards in Viva Insights and the Microsoft 365 Admin Centre now provide deeper visibility into Copilot adoption trends and usage metrics.
• Admins can track progress against goals, identify adoption barriers, and make informed decisions about further deployment and support needs.

These governance improvements ensure that organisations can manage Copilot responsibly while driving widespread engagement and success.

 

Our Final Thoughts

The May 2025 updates to Microsoft 365 Copilot represent significant strides toward deeper integration, smarter workflows, and more accessible AI across the Microsoft ecosystem.

Whether you draft documents, analyse data, manage projects, or collaborate with colleagues worldwide, Copilot continues to evolve as an indispensable part of modern work.

If you would like support adopting Microsoft 365 Copilot across your organisation, please get in touch with the team at Changing Social. We would be delighted to help you realise the full potential of AI within your workplace.