Microsoft Ignite 2023 – Key Announcements

What is Microsoft Ignite?

Microsoft Ignite is a showcase of the best of what’s next for Microsoft and its partners, technical decision-makers and information technology implementers.

The products and updates unveiled during Microsoft Ignite are designed to help customers, partners and developers get the full value of Microsoft’s technologies.

In this blog, we will outline the key announcements for the 2023 event.

SharePoint Premium

Microsoft’s Ignite 2023 showcased the unveiling of SharePoint Premium, an advanced content management platform promising transformative AI-powered solutions for content handling.

All capabilities of Microsoft Syntex will seamlessly merge into the SharePoint Premium suite and its licensing model.

SharePoint Premium is set to be available in the first half of 2024.

Powerful Capabilities

  • Content Experiences and Solutions: Elevate productivity and streamline business processes by enabling seamless collaboration across various file types. Leverage AI, security, and workflow to optimise essential document processes, from contracts to invoices and more.
  • Content Processing: Organise and maximise content value through AI-driven automation. Utilise classification and tagging tools to prepare content for Copilot, Microsoft 365’s next-generation AI assistant.
  • Content Governance: Take control of the content lifecycle. Manage oversharing and sprawl efficiently, controlling access with robust yet user-friendly tools.

AI Powered Advantages

  • Enhanced Structure and Security: SharePoint Premium reinforces content structures and advances security measures, ensuring a robust foundation for content management.
  • Automated Tagging: Seamlessly tag content using learned templates, streamlining organisation and retrieval processes.
  • Insightful Site Usage Overview: Leverage AI-powered insights into site usage for efficient administration tasks. Identify inactive sites, rectify document library structures, and address storage concerns proactively.
copilot in teams meetings

What’s new in Microsoft Teams?

Copilot for Teams Meetings

One of the most anticipated additions to Microsoft Teams is the integration of Microsoft Copilot, a revolutionary AI assistant redefining collaboration and productivity within the platform.

Copilot seamlessly integrates into meetings, calls, chats, and channels, providing real-time contextual assistance. It empowers users by presenting relevant data and documents accessible within Teams.

In meetings, Copilot becomes an invaluable aid by facilitating various tasks. For instance, users can request information with simple queries like “Highlights from Conversation” to receive a comprehensive summary.

Leveraging Copilot during meetings dramatically speeds up missed meeting summarisation, reducing cognitive drain and enhancing efficiency by fourfold compared to non-Copilot users.

During meetings, Copilot takes live notes alongside user inputs. It captures quotes, integrates them into notes, and allows seamless transition of these notes into Microsoft Loop, enabling cross-application accessibility.

AI in Microsoft Teams

  • Voice Isolation: Teams introduces voice isolation, a unique feature that recognises your voice amidst unscheduled calls and meetings, suppressing other noises. Unlike other noise-cancellation solutions, Teams’ AI filters out additional voices, ensuring only your voice is heard.
  • Decorate Your Background: Adding a touch of personalisation and fun to meetings, Decorate Your Background utilizes AI-generated background effects within Teams. This feature allows participants to enhance their real-world surroundings virtually, cleaning up clutter or adding elements like plants to their backdrop. Set for release in early 2024, this capability will be accessible to users with a Teams Premium license.

Microsoft Fabric

Microsoft Fabric, now available for purchase, offers a unified, AI-powered platform designed for the AI era.

Its centerpiece, OneLake, creates a unified, multi-cloud data lake wired into every Fabric workload.

OneLake simplifies data management by eliminating duplication, allowing virtualisation from various sources without altering metadata or ownership.

Key Capabilities:

  • Unified Data Lake (OneLake): Enables data virtualisation across clouds and domains without duplication or metadata changes.
  • Logical Data Mesh: Organises data into logical domains and workspaces, facilitating intuitive search and access through a personalised data hub.
  • Minimised Data Duplication: Once loaded into OneLake, data can be utilised across Fabric workloads and engines, significantly reducing data duplication and sprawl.
Microsoft fabric onelake

Microsoft Copilot Studio

Microsoft Copilot Studio, unveiled at Ignite, introduces a powerful low-code tool designed to customize Copilot for Microsoft 365 and create standalone copilots.

Copilot Studio is available for immediate use, allowing organisations to dive into customisation.

Features of Copilot Studio

  • Custom Conversational Abilities – Customise Copilot for Microsoft 365 with tailored GPTs, AI plugins, and manual topics.
  • Enterprise-Specific Solutions – Build, test, and publish standalone copilots aligned with your organisation’s needs.
  • Robust Management Tools – Manage and secure customisations and copilots with granular controls for access, data, and analytics.
  • Unified Lifecycle Management – Streamline the entire lifecycle—build, deploy, analyse, and manage—within a single web-based interface.
  • Flexible Data Integration – Connect Copilot to diverse data sources like SAP, Workday, and proprietary solutions for seamless integration.