Microsoft is broadening Microsoft 365 Copilot into a more agent-driven platform. The update, called "Copilot Wave 2," adds new reasoning agents, company search, image-generation features, and tools for organizing workplace knowledge.
The direction is clear: Copilot is being positioned less as a single assistant and more as a central hub for agents that can gather information, analyze it, and help execute business workflows across Microsoft 365 and connected third-party services.
Two new agents for research and analysis
The biggest change is the introduction of two agent types: Researcher and Analyst. Both are powered by OpenAI’s latest o3-models, and both are designed to support more advanced work than simple prompt-and-response interactions.
The Researcher agent is based on OpenAI’s o3 Deep Research model. It can draw on emails, meetings, files, chats, and the web to produce outputs such as market analyses, strategy documents, and customer reports.
Microsoft says third-party information can also be included through connectors. The source article names Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Confluence as examples. That matters because much of a company’s useful knowledge sits outside Microsoft 365, and a research agent becomes more useful when it can connect those systems.
Additional agents can help collect relevant information. One example named in the source is "Sales Chat," which supports data gathering for sales-related work.
The Analyst agent has a different role. It runs on OpenAI’s o3-mini model and focuses on data-driven analysis. It applies "chain-of-thought" reasoning for multi-step analytical workflows and can execute and display Python code.
Its goal is to help extract insights from unstructured data. The examples given include segment analyses, demand forecasting, and sales projections.
Copilot becomes a hub for agent work
The new Researcher and Analyst agents will be available to Copilot license holders through Microsoft’s "Frontier" program. A broader rollout is planned through the Microsoft 365 Copilot app in the near future.
Microsoft is also expanding Copilot Studio, the platform used to build and automate agents with reasoning models. According to Microsoft, these agents are meant to "execute complex and multi-faceted business processes."
Users will be able to design multi-step workflows using what Microsoft calls "agent flows." In practical terms, that means Copilot Studio is being framed as a place where business users can create agent-driven processes rather than relying only on standalone prompts.
The updated Microsoft 365 Copilot app is set to become the central location for agent-related functions. It will also include a new "Agent Store" for bringing in external agents from platforms such as Jira, Miro, and Monday.com.
The same hub will also support management of custom-built agents. That combination points to an environment where companies can use Microsoft’s own agents, connect outside agents, and manage internal ones from a single app.
Search expands across company tools
Another major addition is Copilot Search, described as a contextual AI-powered enterprise search tool. It is designed to provide cross-platform answers by pulling information from multiple sources.
The source article lists Slack, Google Drive, Jira, and ServiceNow as examples of services Copilot Search can draw from. This makes the feature broader than a search box limited to Microsoft files or messages.
For businesses, the important point is not just that search is becoming AI-powered. It is that Microsoft is trying to make search work across the fragmented software stack where company information is often spread out.
Copilot Search fits the same pattern as the new agents: connect more sources, apply reasoning, and return a useful answer or output instead of asking users to manually assemble information from separate tools.
New tools for content and knowledge
Microsoft is also adding image generation through integration with OpenAI’s multimodal GPT-4o model. The feature is called "Create" and can be used to generate marketing content, including brand-compliant images and videos.
This adds a creative-production layer to Microsoft 365 Copilot. Instead of limiting Copilot to writing or analysis, Microsoft is extending it into visual and marketing content generation.
Another feature, Copilot Notebooks, is aimed at knowledge curation. It organizes content from texts, files, and meetings into automatically updated knowledge collections.
Those collections can also be accessed as audio summaries. That gives users another way to consume workplace knowledge without manually sorting through every source document or meeting record.
Why this update matters
The update brings several Microsoft 365 Copilot features under one larger theme: agents that can reason over company information and help perform multi-step work.
The main pieces are:
- Researcher, for gathering information and producing business documents such as market analyses, strategy documents, and customer reports.
- Analyst, for analytical workflows involving unstructured data, Python code, and outputs such as demand forecasting or sales projections.
- Copilot Studio, for building agents and "agent flows" that automate more complex business processes.
- The Microsoft 365 Copilot app, positioned as the central hub for agent functions and custom-built agents.
- Copilot Search, for contextual company search across sources including Slack, Google Drive, Jira, and ServiceNow.
- Create, for generating marketing content through GPT-4o.
- Copilot Notebooks, for automatically updated knowledge collections and audio summaries.
Microsoft’s expansion of Copilot shows a shift from chat-based assistance toward workplace systems that can combine search, reasoning, content generation, and workflow execution. The success of that shift will depend on how well these tools connect to the information employees already use every day.