Copilot Weekly

Two changes land in the admin center: Copilot pricing pairs the per-user subscription licence with usage-based billing for advanced AI and frontier models, an additive metered layer on top of the flat seat rather than a replacement for it, and the plugin registry introduces a Plugins page that replaces and expands on the existing Agents page, bundling agents, skills and connectors into one package an admin approves once.

Two connector changes lead the week: federated connectors gain create, update and delete actions from early October 2026, and self-serve sync connectors enter preview, where each user's own credentials decide what gets indexed.

Grok models from SpaceXAI reach Copilot in Word, Excel and PowerPoint as a Frontier preview: admin opt-in, setting off by default, SpaceXAI added to Microsoft's subprocessor list, EU, EFTA and UK excluded for now.

GPT-6 Astra is rolling out as a selectable model in Copilot Cowork and Copilot Studio from 4 September 2026; admins control availability in the Microsoft 365 admin center.

Copilot Studio's GitHub Copilot harness reaches general availability, alongside agent skills and richer context (2 Sep 2026).

Proactive push notifications for the Microsoft 365 Copilot mobile app are cancelled. Microsoft's roadmap entry 560339, updated 27 August 2026, says it has decided not to move forward with the change at this time.

Purview Data Loss Prevention for external web search in Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Chat is generally available. The roadmap states July CY2026 as its availability month.

Excel's =COPILOT function is cancelled. The roadmap entry that would have let a worksheet formula generate, classify and summarize text and data now reads cancelled, against what had been a January 2027 target date. Any plan that assumed a formula-level Copilot call in Excel has no product behind it.

Domain Exclusion for Microsoft 365 Copilot has been rolled back, and that reverses what we published. Our 2026-W30 edition reported the control generally available on the strength of roadmap 503144. Microsoft's 4 August post says the feature is withdrawn while it evaluates next steps. Any web-grounding block list plan built on it has no product behind it right now.

Microsoft Purview DLP that stops Copilot from processing sensitivity-labeled Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files now applies in all storage locations (roadmap 557255, rollout start April 2026). Corrected 7 August 2026: this edition first dated that GA to 17 July 2026, which was the roadmap entry's last-modified stamp and not a ship date.

Agents built with the Model Context Protocol reached general availability in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Catalyst, accessed through the Copilot pane.

Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 5 started rolling out in Microsoft 365 Copilot on 2 Jul 2026, first in Copilot Cowork and PowerPoint; admins control the Anthropic model family from the Microsoft 365 admin center.