Copilot Weekly14 to 21 August 2026

Microsoft is moving Viva Glint's topic assignment onto Copilot, which it says will categorise survey comments into topics more accurately. Microsoft updated the entry on 18 August 2026 to plan the rollout for the end of August through early September. (Status change: generally available -> rolling out; roadmap target is August CY2026; a backwards move: the roadmap listed this entry as Launched when this brief recorded it on 10 Jul 2026 and lists it as Rolling out today.)

Microsoft is updating the entry point user interface for Copilot Chat. The Copilot Chat entry point button moves out of the app ribbon and onto the app canvas, which Microsoft says makes it easier to find and to use while working in the file. (the roadmap gives December CY2025 as its general availability month; it therefore shipped well before this window and appears here because Microsoft updated the roadmap entry, not because the feature is new.)

Model Context Protocol (MCP) agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat will be able to surface interactive UI widgets directly within chat, which Microsoft frames as a way for developers to return structured output rather than text alone. (Status change: in development -> rolling out; roadmap target is August CY2026.)

Copilot in PowerPoint can now take an attached image as a reference when it builds a presentation, using Agent Mode. (Status change: rolling out -> generally available; the roadmap gives July CY2026 as its general availability month.)

The Work IQ endpoint gives applications programmatic access to first-party and tenant-defined declarative agents, so an application can trigger a specialised agent as one step inside a wider workflow. (the roadmap gives June CY2026 as its general availability month; it was therefore already available before this window; the roadmap entry was updated, the capability is not new.)

Microsoft's support page states that "Deep Research is being retired in the Copilot app for consumers starting August 18, 2026". The scope is the consumer Copilot app rather than a Microsoft 365 Copilot change, and the page describes Deep Research as one feature within the broader Copilot. (scope is the consumer Copilot app; Microsoft 365 Copilot tenants are not affected and Researcher remains the enterprise equivalent.)

Microsoft Copilot Studio is extending its Evaluations experience for agent makers. New capabilities include richer evaluation explanations, agent reasoning traces, cited knowledge sources, evaluation run comparison, support for larger datasets, customizable test generation, and dataset generation from knowledge sources. (roadmap target is September CY2026.)

A conversational assistant inside the Viva Glint admin experience answers configuration and how-to questions and returns step-by-step guidance, with deep links into the configuration pages it names. It reaches only Viva Glint users who hold admin permissions. (Status change: in development -> rolling out; roadmap target is August CY2026.)

Microsoft is expanding Microsoft Purview DLP for Microsoft 365 Copilot to safeguard web searches containing sensitive data. The control prevents Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Chat from using sensitive data for external web search. (Status change: rolling out -> generally available; the roadmap gives July CY2026 as its general availability month.)

eDiscovery users will be able to view and select SharePoint Embedded content containers owned or created by a selected person. These containers store content from apps such as Microsoft Loop, Copilot Pages, and Copilot Notebooks. (roadmap target is October CY2026.)

This creates the ability to apply Retention to each SharePoint or OneDrive item based on when it was last accessed by a user. (roadmap target is December CY2026.)

The entry described interactive agents joining Teams meetings and 1-on-1 calls, addressable by the whole meeting or privately, with zero-state prompts and history carried across turns. After further review, Microsoft is not able to continue rolling this out at this time. (roadmap target is September CY2026; cancelled 17 Aug 2026, 15 months after Microsoft created the entry in May 2025; cancelled entries leave the roadmap within about a week, so the linked entry may stop resolving.)

Federated Copilot connectors let users connect Microsoft Copilot to third-party sources and retrieve data from them in real time over the Model Context Protocol (MCP). The entry names no specific source. (roadmap target is September CY2026.)

Microsoft's entry says organization prompts, which let admins upload custom prompts for their organization to the Copilot app home screen, are already available. This release will let admins delegate publishing of those prompts to users, AAD security groups and distribution groups. (roadmap target is September CY2026.)

Self-serve sync connectors enable users to securely connect their own external data sources, such as Jira and Confluence Cloud, to Microsoft 365 Copilot. (roadmap target is September CY2026.)

Copilot's file skills in OneDrive Web are being extended so that work on a file can be started and finished from the chat pane rather than by opening the file first. (roadmap target is December CY2026.)

Copilot will generate a summary of the unread messages in a Teams chat, so someone returning to a busy conversation does not have to read all of it. (roadmap target is February CY2027.)

Microsoft's entry says Microsoft 365 Copilot will render code blocks inline in Chat, covering code, charts and diagrams. The entry says that preview currently opens side by side in a separate code canvas. (roadmap target is September CY2026.)

Microsoft's entry says Microsoft 365 Copilot will support writing blocks, which keep a draft, memo or email editable inline in Chat instead of requiring a move to the document to iterate on it. (roadmap target is September CY2026.)