Microsoft has introduced a newtool inMicrosoft 365Copilot toautomaterepetitive tasks, part of a drive to make the generative AI(genAI)assistant more useful to users.Copilot Actions, announced atMicrosofts Ignite conferenceTuesday,features a simple trigger-and-action interface that Microsoft hopeswill make the workflow automationsaccessibleto a wide range of workers.The company offered upa few examplesfor Copilot Actionsin ablog post.It can be set to create an automatic summary of important action points at the end of the workday, gather inputs from a team for a weekly newsletter, or summarize recent interactions with a client ahead of a meeting.The feature is now in private preview.A Gartnersurvey of digital workersindicatedthat 51% have customized and built their own workflows, apps and automations,so the demand is certainly there for business users (aka citizen developers) to build their own AI agents, said Jason Wong, vice president analyst at Gartner.Microsofts low-code and no-code tools,includingPower Apps and Power Automate, havealready paved the way for Copilot Studio for citizen development, Wong said.However, Copilot Studio is still an immature product, and organizations have only started to upskill their employees to understand how to build generative AI powered apps or agents.Other new features announced atIgniteinclude an update to Copilot Pages,the recently-launched document editor tool connected to M365 Copilot. Microsoft will add rich artifacts to Copilot Pages, which lets users share a wider variety of information generated in Copilot, such as blocks of code or flow charts, and share them to a Pages document.Copilot Pages is due tobe generally available in early 2025, Microsoft said.Copilot in Teams will soon be able to analyze visual content shared on-screen during a video call, and users can ask the assistant for a quick summary of files shared in Teams Chat. Both features will be in public preview early next year.Theres also an interpreter function coming to Teams that Microsoft claims will translate meeting participantsspeech in real-time during a video call. Available in public preview in early 2025, Microsoft said it will also be possible simulate a users voice in the translated audio.The feature, currently in private preview,isone of several examples of AI agents coming to M365 Copilot and M365 apps.Microsoft alsoannouncedAI agents for M365 Copilot includingthe general availability of the previously announced agent builder functionality in SharePoint; the latteressentially lets users created a tailored chatbottorespond to queries related to a specific set of files stored in the content management application. To help manage and secure data accessed by M365 Copilot, Microsoft will make the SharePoint Advanced Management add-on (which previously cost $3 per user a month) available at no extra cost starting early next year.Theres an Employee Self-Service Agent for BizChatthe chat interface for M365 Copilot whereemployees can ask HR and IT-related questions, such asrequesting a new laptop. The agent, now in a private preview, can be customized in Microsofts Copilot Studio app.Theres an agent to automate project management processes in Microsofts Planner app (in public preview now),with plans in place toopenupaccess to third-party agents from the likes of ServiceNow in the coming months.Microsoft hasstruggled to convinceMicrosoft 365customersthat its worth investing inits various genAI tools,many of whichlaunched last year.The latest updates provide an opportunity to show the business value of the genAI assistant, which costs $30 per user each month.While MicrosoftsWave 2of M365 Copilotfeaturesannouncedin Septembercan be viewed as an attempt to win overundecided buyers, Wong said the new agentic capabilitiesannounced at Ignitearereally more for their current M365 Copilot customers to extend the business value of generative AI beyond individual productivity to show greater ROI.Copilot customers[dont]just want content creation and summarization, he said.They want Copilot to replace manual work, impact team workflows and drive process improvements.