Artificial intelligence (AI) is a term on everyone’s lips at the moment, and this was most certainly the case at the Microsoft Ignite conference in Florida at the end of last year. It was at this event that new innovations in Microsoft 365 were announced across six pivotal investment areas: management, compliance, security, workflow, knowledge, and productivity. AI is at the center of the interesting new experiences Microsoft Teams can expect, which we will discuss below.
Changes to Cortana
One of the major announcements is that Cortana is going to become a personal productivity assistant, using AI to bring more personalized experiences in Outlook. Cortana will be able to read out new emails and share changes to your day thanks to improved language and natural voice recognition. This will enable businesses who rely on Microsoft 365 to run their business a lot more efficiently.
Project Cortex
Another exciting announcement is the launch of Project Cortex. This utilizes AI to generate a knowledge network, which analyses your business’s data, automatically organizing it into shared topics like customers and projects. It also ensures people across your business receive relevant knowledge through topic pages and topic cards in the apps they use on a daily basis. Project Cortex also facilitates process efficiency, turning your content into an interactive knowledge repository. This represents one of the key areas whereby Microsoft is using AI to make its offering much more powerful and to deliver a more personalized experience to users.
Security features
Security is a huge concern for all businesses, and AI-powered features make it easy for you to secure valuable assets while enabling your employees to collaborate freely. This includes the Microsoft Authenticator app, which delivers passwordless yet secure access to both non-Microsoft and Microsoft apps. Implement multi-factor authentication for improved security. You can also make the most of container-based and hardware-level protection through Application Guard for Office while Microsoft Defender ATP endpoint detection and response (EDR) capabilities are now available. Of course, rely on Microsoft security alone is not enough for businesses. Instead, you need an expert security company that can ensure you are getting it right. You can get experts in different industries, such as professional teams for cloud computing for law firms, medical businesses, and so on. Therefore, it is advisable to choose a company that also understands your sector.
Productivity improvements
Finally, Microsoft 365 has focused on two key areas in terms of productivity. The first is breathing new life into familiar experiences and apps with powerful cloud services while the second is creating entirely new experiences. Microsoft Teams will benefit from task integration with Planner and To Do, as well as pinned channels, meetings and calls, Multiwindow chats, and Private channels. Fluid Framework, which Microsoft announced at Build 2019, will also be incorporated, ensuring seamless collaboration between apps.
To conclude, Microsoft is constantly making changes to their 365 product to ensure that it delivers more. These are some of the improvements that have been made over the past 12 months.
