Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2: Spring 2025 Release Overview

Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2 delivers the next generation of AI assistance across Microsoft 365 apps, bringing deeper reasoning, cross-app intelligence, and task-specific agents. These enhancements transform how users create, communicate, and collaborate—offering more personalized, context-aware support. This article explores the most impactful updates across Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, and PowerPoint, and provides guidance on preparing for Wave 2, including setting up the new Agent Store. 

Key cross-app enhancements 

New AI agents: Researcher and Analyst 

The introduction of two new agents, Researcher and Analyst, brings specialized intelligence to Microsoft 365. The Researcher agent helps users conduct in-depth research by gathering insights from both internal documents and the web. Common use cases include preparing executive summaries, compiling competitive analyses, building strategy proposals or creating policy briefs based on wide-ranging data sources. 

The Analyst agent focuses on data-heavy tasks and is particularly effective in Excel. It leverages Python and advanced reasoning to conduct deep analysis directly within workbooks. Practical applications include forecasting quarterly revenues, detecting anomalies in financial reports, generating trend visualizations, simulating budget scenarios, and transforming raw datasets into decision-ready dashboards.  

Both agents are available through the new Agent Store, where users can discover, deploy, and manage AI tools customized for their business workflows. 

Copilot Search 

Copilot Search is an AI-powered enterprise search tool that helps users locate information across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem and third-party platforms like Jira, Confluence and ServiceNow. By enabling natural language queries and grounding responses in organizational context, Copilot Search eliminates information silos and accelerates knowledge discovery. 

Memory and personalization

Copilot now uses memory to learn user preferences, such as writing tone, formatting style and frequent collaborators, enabling more personalized and efficient assistance across apps. It can recall how you phrase emails in Outlook, apply preferred structures in Word or PowerPoint, and streamline meetings in Teams. It's important to note that memory is user-controlled — settings can be reviewed, modified or cleared — ensuring personalization stays helpful and privacy-conscious. 

Copilot Create

Copilot Create brings generative design to Microsoft 365, allowing users to generate custom images and short videos directly in Word or PowerPoint using GPT-4. It helps teams produce branded visuals for presentations, reports, marketing materials and social media — no design expertise required. By streamlining content creation, it boosts productivity and makes professional-grade visuals accessible to everyone. 

Copilot Notebooks

Copilot Notebooks let users compile files, emails and notes into one digital workspace for AI-powered analysis and insights. Ideal for project planning, research and client services, Notebooks help organize key materials and generate summaries, updates or recommendations. They update dynamically as content changes and even offer audio briefings, making complex information easier to digest. Notebooks serve as living, collaborative hubs for smarter knowledge work across teams. 

People Skills through Skills Discovery Agent

The People Skills feature uses AI to identify internal experts based on skills and past work, making it easier to form effective teams. Managers can quickly find the right people for tasks like budgeting or compliance reviews, while HR and L&D teams can match talent to growth opportunities. It also supports organization-wide efforts like mergers by highlighting skill gaps and overlaps, streamlining collaboration and uncovering hidden expertise. 

Streamlined access and UX

Microsoft 365 Copilot's interface and accessibility have been refined in Wave 2. Notably, Windows 11 is getting a dedicated Copilot key (on new keyboards) and a universal shortcut (Win + C) that instantly brings up Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. Hitting this Copilot button lets users summon their AI assistant at any time, no matter what their actions. This OS-level integration underlines Microsoft's push to make Copilot a natural, always-available part of the user experience. 

Additionally, the Copilot interface itself has been refreshed in several apps to be more intuitive. All these enhancements reduce friction when engageing with Copilot, encouraging users to harness AI assistance more frequently for productivity gains. 

App-specific enhancements

While the cross-app features of Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2 deliver powerful, organization-wide benefits, each core application within the suite also receives targeted upgrades that enhance everyday productivity. Let's explore the new Copilot capabilities introduced in Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams and PowerPoint.

Microsoft Word: Smarter writing with Copilot

Copilot in Word streamlines writing and editing by letting you refine tone, clarity, or grammar with a simple prompt — no need to start over. The new Auto Rewrite feature applies edits in one click, while content suggestions based on recent work and referenced files ensure consistency and save time. 

The new Researcher agent assists with complex tasks like reports by gathering data, breaking down requests, and drafting content using internal and web sources. Copilot Create also lets you generate charts, photos or infographics that align with your content and brand. 

As it learns your preferences, Copilot becomes a smarter writing partner, helping you go from blank page to polished, visually rich document faster.

Microsoft Excel: Smarter data analysis 

Excel now includes a Copilot icon in the grid, offering prompt suggestions based on where you're working. You can ask things like "Summarize this data" or "Explain this formula." It also suggests fixes, like cleaning up inconsistent entries. 

The new Analyst agent can handle complex data tasks like forecasting or multi-source analysis using Python or Excel functions. It even shows the code it runs, so you understand how it works. 

Copilot also automatically cleans messy data by standardizing formats, fixing typos and organizing information for better analysis. 

It creates charts and pivot tables and explains the insights in plain language, helping teams understand trends and patterns. This makes data analysis faster, more accessible and more collaborative, even for non-experts. 

Microsoft Outlook: Smarter email writing and scheduling 

Copilot in Outlook now helps you polish emails quickly. Highlight a section and ask for edits, such as making it clearer or more professional. Auto Rewrite suggests improved versions with one click. A new interface makes these tools easier to access. 

It also personalizes suggestions based on your writing habits and offers "coaching" to improve tone. For example, suggesting a greeting if your email sounds too blunt. 

Copilot can find the best time for meetings by checking calendars and proposing options, saving you from back-and-forth scheduling. It can also summarize long email threads and pull in relevant information from files or chats. 

The AI assistant is available on Mac, mobile and web versions of Outlook, ensuring everyone gets the same experience.

Overall, Copilot saves time and improves communication, helping you focus on the message rather than managing email logistics. 

Microsoft Teams: Better meetings and collaboration 

Copilot in Teams now provides real-time meeting summaries, identifies who said what and suggests action items. You can ask questions like "What decisions were made?" and get instant answers, along with detailed post-meeting summaries. 

After meetings, Copilot can answer follow-ups, surface next steps or locate mentioned files. It summarizes long threads in chats and channels for quick catch-up and helps integrate content into Notebooks. 

New agents connect Teams to tools like Jira and Miro, enabling actions like creating tickets or whiteboards directly in chat. The Skills agent helps find internal experts and pull them into conversations. 

Admin controls offer customization, and an upcoming "Interpreter" mode may enable live translation, making Teams a more intelligent, connected workspace.

Microsoft PowerPoint: Easier slide creation and design 

Copilot in PowerPoint now includes Narrative Builder, which turns documents into slide decks. Upload a report and Copilot will generate a presentation based on the key points. You can guide the focus with a prompt. 

It can also summarize long decks (up to 150 slides) into a shorter version or a paragraph summary, making dense information easier to digest.

With Copilot Create, you can generate on-brand images, icons or short videos inside PowerPoint. This helps make professional-looking presentations without needing a design background. 

Copilot also acts as a speaker coach, preparing talking points or reminders based on your audience. Simple prompts allow you to make quick formatting changes, such as adjusting font size or adding a disclaimer to all slides. 

It also supports better collaboration by pulling in data, notes and content from others to build a unified deck. 

Ultimately, Copilot makes presentations faster to build, easier to polish and more impactful, helping teams share knowledge more efficiently. 

  Summary Table of Wave 2 Features 

How to prepare for Wave 2 features and agents 

To support the new features in Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2, including the Researcher and Analyst AI agents, organizations must ensure that their Microsoft 365 environment is properly configured to enable Copilot extensibility and agent support. Here is a high-level summary of what needs to be in place: 

1. Enable Microsoft 365 Copilot licensing and prerequisites:
   1. Ensure that users have Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 (or Business Standard/Premium) with the Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on licenses assigned.
   2. Confirm that your tenant is in a supported region and that Microsoft Graph connectors, Loop and OneDrive for Business are active.
2. Set up the Agent Store: The Agent Store is a central hub within Microsoft 365 that allows organizations to publish, manage, and activate Copilot Agents (including built-in and custom ones like Researcher and Analyst). Requirements:
   1. Admin Center configuration: Ensure the Microsoft 365 admin has access to the Copilot Admin Portal to manage agent availability and permissions.
   2. Copilot lab access: Users (especially researchers and analysts) should have access to Copilot Lab to explore, test, and pin agents for daily use.
   3. Data access governance: Configure proper Microsoft Purview policies, DLP, and sensitivity labels so agents can safely access data.
3. Set up Microsoft Graph and the Semantic Index: These AI agents rely heavily on the Microsoft Graph API and the Semantic Index for Copilot to retrieve organizational context.
   1. Enable Microsoft Graph Connectors for:
      1. SharePoint
      2. Exchange
      3. OneDrive
      4. Teams
      5. Additional external data (CRM, ERP, etc.)
   2. Ensure the Semantic Index is built across user content to allow context-aware AI interactions.
4. Enable custom plugin and agent capabilities (via Copilot Studio): While Researcher and Analyst are built-in, your environment must support their extensibility and orchestration features.
   1. Copilot Studio deployment: Ensure Copilot Studio is available to solution developers/admins to customize or extend AI agent workflows.
   2. Plugin management: Allow integrations with external data sources (e.g., via APIs, Power Automate, Azure Functions) so agents can pull additional signals.
   3. Memory and personalization: Enable agent personalization via user memory, which must be turned on in the admin portal (with consent options managed).
5. Assess data security and compliance readiness: AI agents interact with potentially sensitive data, so you must ensure:
   1. Conditional access policies and information barriers are configured properly.
   2. Audit logging is enabled for agent interactions.
   3. Role-based access control (RBAC) is enforced to govern which users can access which agents or datasets.
6. Provide training and spread awareness: 
   1. Provide internal training for Analyst agent users (e.g., data teams, finance) to understand its capabilities around data summarization, trend analysis and predictive insights.
   2. Provide onboarding resources for Researcher agent users to guide them in multi-step content creation, literature scanning or internal data exploration.

How WWT helps your workforce become Copilot-ready 

The Spring 2025 release of Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2 represents a transformative leap in how generative AI enhances workplace productivity. With powerful new agents like Researcher and Analyst, cross-app intelligence, and personalized experiences across Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams and PowerPoint, Copilot is no longer just an assistant — it's an embedded collaborator reshaping how work gets done. 

But realizing the full value of these advancements requires more than licensing and technical setup. WWT and Softchoice partner to help large organizations become truly Copilot-ready. By combining Softchoice's deep Microsoft expertise with WWT's global delivery, advanced lab ecosystem and implementation services, we deliver comprehensive support across employee workflow optimization, licensing strategy, cloud modernization, AI integration and organizational change management. From enabling the Agent Store and Microsoft Graph to driving user adoption and secure governance, we simplify complexity and ensure Copilot delivers measurable business impact across your digital workspace.