Microsoft 365 Copilot App Gets a New Design and Performance Improvements

Microsoft 365 Copilot, the enterprise version of Microsoft’s AI chatbot, has just received a fresh coat of paint and some performance improvements. The Redmond giant also improved how the chatbot is integrated into Microsoft 365 apps, allowing it to suggest relevant actions to customers when needed.

“Shaped by your feedback, the new designs shift Copilot toward a more connected, adaptive system by turning a once static text box—the prompt line—into a task-aware workspace. Now, within the Copilot app, the prompt line gives you more space to express your needs, while below it, Copilot surfaces tools and controls to assist with the task at hand,” explained Jon Friedman, Microsoft’s new Chief Design Officer.

Overall, the redesigned Copilot app still uses a left navigation panel with quick access to search, recent chats, AI agents, and Copilot notebooks, the AI‑grounded collaborative workspaces where users can organize information. However, the prompt box will now expand to suggest relevant features to use, and the chatbot will now offer up to 50% faster responses across its different models.

If Microsoft 365 Copilot can still intelligently pick up the best model for the task at hand, users can still manually choose between the “Quick Response” and “Think Deeper” options. Anthropic’s Opus models are also available as an alternative to OpenAI’s GPT models. Friedman said that the quality of responses has also been improved, with “more structured outputs that are easier to scan and better aligned to your intent.”

Across Microsoft 365 apps, the enterprise chatbot now appears as a floating button. When invoked, Microsoft 365 Copilot now understands the context of the document, and it will suggest relevant actions that will still be performed in a side panel. Copilot can also be invoked right from a paragraph, cell, or slide.

“Since rolling out the new in-app experiences, Copilot usage has increased by 27% in Word, 33% in Excel, 43% in PowerPoint, and 30% in Outlook,” Friedman said yesterday. The redesigned Microsoft 365 Copilot app, however, should start rolling out soon on desktop and mobile.