🟢 Just shippedGA 2026-09-14
Brand Kit gives Copilot an organization's approved templates, imagery, icons and fonts, with a strict brand adherence mode that limits Copilot to approved template layouts and slide masters so it cannot create new layouts or alter placeholders. Skills package multi-step workflows into reusable capabilities: @Prepare for Questions, @Review Presentation and @Visualize Slide ship prebuilt, users can author personal Skills, and admins can publish approved Skills to users, groups or the whole organization. MC1470415 adds notes steering, letting Brand Managers put instructions in template speaker notes to steer slide inclusion, content preservation and audience. Both are "generally available today with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license".
Why it matters: brand-compliant deck generation is one of the few Copilot asks that survives a procurement review intact, and Skills give a partner a packaging unit to sell beyond one-off prompts.
techcommunity.microsoft.com
GA 2026-09-14
MC1470885 puts a prompt box on the Copilot button itself, so users can type or dictate a request and reference Microsoft 365 content without opening the full Copilot pane. Contextual inputs appear when content is selected in Word or PowerPoint, suggested actions such as Rewrite and Shorten surface when applicable, and the shortcuts are Alt + C on Windows and Command + Control + I on Mac. Covers Word, Excel and PowerPoint on Windows desktop, macOS and web. General Availability (Worldwide) begins September 2026 and is expected to complete by the end of December 2026, enabled by default for eligible users with no separate admin control.
Why it matters: a four-month rollout with no admin toggle means the entry point shifts under users mid-adoption, so training material showing the old button needs a planned refresh.
m365admin.handsontek.net
GA 2026-09-14
MC1470425 lands six admin center changes: spending policies can auto-apply to newly released UBB Copilot services and agents, admins can set email alerts when users approach spending limits, consumption dashboards open to the AI Reader and Global Reader roles, reporting gains Prepaid and Pay-as-you-Go credit visibility plus capacity pack breakdowns, custom request policies can route Cowork credit requests to alternate approvers, and user consumption carries forward when a user moves between policies. The "Auto-apply new services setting is enabled by default for all spending policies". Rollout began early September 2026.
Why it matters: auto-apply is on by default, so a tenant with a capped spending policy silently extends that cap to Copilot services it has not evaluated yet.
m365admin.handsontek.net
🟡 Coming soonPlanned Sep 2026
MC1470417: selecting text in a PDF in the OneDrive iOS app surfaces an Ask Copilot context menu that can explain, summarize, translate or answer questions about the content. Rollout runs late September through late October 2026 across Worldwide, GCC, GCC High and DoD.
Why it matters: GCC High and DoD coverage at launch is unusual for a mobile Copilot surface and worth raising with public-sector customers who normally wait months for parity.
m365admin.handsontek.net