Plan and prepare for Microsoft Copilot for Sales in 2024 release wave 2

Overview

Microsoft Copilot for Sales is an AI assistant that brings the power of Copilot for Microsoft 365 together with seller-specific insights and workflows, helping sellers save time, focus on the most important activities, generate innovative ideas, build stronger customer relationships, and ultimately close more deals. 

In 2024 release wave 2, we're focused on the following capabilities:

• Empowering sales managers with insights about their sales pipeline.
• Helping sellers find high quality leads using AI-powered insights.
• The end-to-end meeting experience for sellers as they talk to customers and leads.
• Deepening the integration of Copilot for Sales into Copilot for Microsoft 365, specifically in Outlook and Teams,
• Suggested next actions for sellers directly in Outlook and Teams.
• Natural language capabilities that allow sellers to ask questions about the data in their CRM.

Updates to Microsoft Copilot for Sales 2024 release wave 2

Investment areas

Cross-application experiences
Copilot for Sales is an AI assistant designed to empower sellers with insights, recommendations, actions, and up-to-date CRM data directly from within the Microsoft 365 applications they already use daily. Copilot for Sales is a Copilot-first application built atop Copilot for Microsoft 365. It works with both Dynamics 365 Sales and Salesforce. The cross-application experiences span multiple Microsoft 365 applications and their CRM systems so that sellers can stay productive within the flow of work.

Sellers use different applications for various aspects of their work, such as Outlook for email, Teams for meetings, and Dynamics 365 or Salesforce for CRM. Copilot for Sales connects these applications and enables sellers to do their tasks more efficiently within the same workflow. For example, sellers can update their CRM from Outlook or Teams without switching applications. Copilot for Sales also provides insights from other applications that can help sellers communicate better with their customers, build trust, and close more deals.

Extensible experiences
Extensibility for Copilot for Sales is the ability to customize and enhance the functionality of the add-in by integrating data and insights from external sources. Copilot for Sales can be extended using no-code or low-code solutions to connect to data from partner applications or code-based solutions to interact with data from any external sources. By extending Copilot for Sales, you can empower your sellers to be more efficient, productive, and personalized in their sales engagements, reduce the need for app switching and manual data entry, and improve the accuracy and quality of your customer records.

Microsoft Outlook experiences
Microsoft Copilot for Sales is an AI assistant designed for sellers. The Microsoft Copilot for Sales app in Outlook provides recommendations and information to help you stay connected to your customers, minimize data entry, and personalize your engagements to close deals faster with higher win rates. Get related information from CRM such as contact details, account history, and opportunities, save activities (such as emails and meetings) to CRM, get an overview of recent interactions with your customers, such as email summaries, meeting notes, and action items, and use AI capabilities to draft emails, summarize conversations, and generate follow-ups. The Microsoft Copilot for Sales experience within Microsoft Outlook is delivered through an integrated app experience and by enriching the Copilot in Microsoft Outlook capabilities with sales-specific skills, data, and actions.

Microsoft Teams experiences
Copilot for Sales is an AI assistant designed for sellers. The Copilot for Sales app in Teams provides recommendations and information to help you stay connected to your customers, minimize data entry, and personalize your engagements to close deals faster with higher win rates. Collaborate on deals with colleagues, prepare for and run effective sales meetings, get a deeper understanding of your customers' needs from transcribed call summaries, and take the right action at the right time with automatically generated follow-ups. The Microsoft Copilot for Sales experience within Microsoft Teams is delivered through an integrated app experience and by enriching the Copilot in Microsoft Teams capabilities with sales-specific skills, data, and actions.

To learn more about the entire set of capabilities being delivered during this release wave, check out the release plan for Microsoft Copilot for Sales below:

For application administrators

User-impacting features to the user experience enabled automatically
User-impacting features should be reviewed by application administrators. This facilitates release change management and enables successful onboarding of new capabilities released to market. For the complete list, look for all features tagged "Users, automatically" in the release plan.

Features that must be enabled by application administrators
This release wave contains features that must be enabled or configured by administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their users. For the complete list, look for all features tagged "Users by admins, makers, or analysts" in the release plan.

Get the most out of Microsoft Copilot for Sales