Microsoft Ignite 2025 showcased further innovation within the business apps we use every day and revealed the exciting direction things will take over the next few months. This article covers the key headlines and what it all means for SMEs.
What is Microsoft Ignite and what was the main takeaway this year?
Microsoft Ignite is the main annual Microsoft conference which introduces major product updates and future roadmaps, and this year’s theme was all about the deep integration of AI across workflows, with a strong focus on agentic AI and Copilot capabilities to boost productivity and customer engagement.
What areas did this year’s event cover?
This year’s event focused on these key areas:
- Microsoft Agent 365 (for managing AI agents)
- New AI Agents
- Microsoft 365 Copilot Enhancements
- Sora 2 integration for AI-powered video creation
- Power Platform
- Copilot Studio
- Security Updates
- Azure Innovations
- Windows Updates
- Edge for Business
This blog post looks at announcements focused on Dynamics 365, Copilot, Microsoft 365, and Power Platform.
Microsoft Agent 365
Microsoft Agent 365 is a new framework for managing agents responsibly and at scale. Available now through the Frontier programme, Microsoft Agent 365 gives IT teams visibility and control over every agent in the organisation. Key features include:
- Registry – A complete view of all registered agents, including shadow agents.
- Access control – Risk-based conditional access policies to prevent compromise.
- Visualisation – Real-time monitoring of agent behaviour and impact.
- Interoperability – Seamless integration with apps and data for human-agent workflows.
- Security – Built-in protection against threats, oversharing and other risks.
Several new AI agents
The amount of AI agents unveiled at Ignite 2025 was staggering, so we’ll cover just a few of the heavy hitters here:
Sales Development Agent
Now available through the Frontier programme, this fully autonomous agent helps sales teams scale their selling capacity. It researches prospects, qualifies leads and engages them with personalised outreach, ensuring no opportunity is missed.
New agents for workforce and learning
Three new agents powered by Work IQ (the intelligence layer powering Microsoft 365 Copilot and agents) aim to aid employees on a bigger picture level:
- Workforce Insights Agent – Provides leaders with real-time organisational data across roles, tenure, location and other attributes for faster decisions.
- People Agent – Helps users find colleagues by role or skill and suggests ways to connect based on previous interactions.
- Learning Agent – Delivers personalised microlearning and curated courses to accelerate upskilling.
These agents are available in the Frontier program.
Agents for IT teams
The Teams Admin Agent in the Microsoft Teams admin centre, allows IT admins to automate and streamline administrative tasks. The SharePoint Admin Agent in the SharePoint admin centre will use AI-driven insights and automation to help IT admins maintain a secure, compliant and cost-efficient environment. IT teams will also benefit from an Agent Dashboard, showing usage. You can read more about those here.
Agents for Office apps
Microsoft 365 Copilot will feature Excel Agent, Word Agent and PowerPoint Agent, designed to create high-quality content directly from Copilot Chat. These agents handle tasks such as research, formatting and layout design, and can iterate through multi-turn conversations before transitioning into the apps for further editing.
Each agent is grounded in web data, with Word and PowerPoint agents enhanced by Work IQ for deeper reasoning across organisational files, meetings and emails. Early access is available through the Frontier programme. In addition, Agent Mode, previously introduced in Word and Excel, has now been expanded to PowerPoint, enabling users to co-create presentations using branded templates, rewrite and format text, insert tables and images, and draw context from work data combined with web sources.
Cross-app agent collaboration
Agents in Microsoft Teams channels can now integrate with third-party apps like Jira and Asana via Model Context Protocol (MCP). This means an agent can pull risk data from Jira and schedule a meeting in Teams all in one workflow.
Copilot enhancements
Microsoft Copilot continues to evolve with features that make work more intuitive and connected.
- Conversational memory – Copilot now retains context across sessions, combining work data with previous interactions for more personalised responses. Users can review, update or delete conversational memory at any time.
- Reasoning over structured metadata in SharePoint document libraries – Enables more accurate, context-aware and precise answers when a prompt is grounded in SharePoint content.
- Voice in Copilot – Voice interaction is now generally available, allowing users to start a voice chat on desktop or mobile and switch seamlessly between voice and text. This capability will first roll out to Word, Excel and PowerPoint agents with availability in Microsoft 365 Copilot app, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook and more apps to follow.
- Video Generation with Sora 2 – Copilot will bring OpenAI’s Sora 2 video model into the Create experience, enabling users to generate short video clips from natural language prompts. Sora 2 in Create is available for commercial users in the Frontier program.
- Copilot in Outlook – Introduces interactive voice experiences for summarising emails and drafting replies hands-free, one-tap prompts for quick actions like “Triage my inbox” or “Summarise and reply”, meeting scheduling from chat, plus automatically rescheduling double-booked meetings.
Copilot Business for SMBs
Microsoft 365 Copilot Business is a new plan for small and midsize businesses with fewer than 300 users. For $21 per user per month (UK pricing to be announced), SMBs can access Copilot’s full capabilities, including summarising emails, drafting documents and analysing data, all within their Microsoft 365 environment. Microsoft 365 Copilot Business will be generally available in December.
Expanded Copilot Chat for users without a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence
Starting March 2026, Microsoft will expand Copilot Chat in Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint for users without a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence. Outlook users can manage their entire inbox and calendar, while Agent Mode in Word, Excel and PowerPoint will help create and refine documents using web data and files you provide.
However, these free features won’t access your organisation’s work data or Microsoft Graph, and they lack enterprise-grade security and compliance controls. Paid plans like Microsoft 365 Copilot or Copilot Business remain essential if you need Copilot to reason over your company’s emails, files, meetings and Teams chats, enforce governance, and deliver fully integrated workflows.
Copilot in Power Apps
Power Apps introduced a new maker workspace, combining planning, data modelling and app building into one intelligent canvas. Makers can chat with Copilot to generate multipage apps and refine them with point-and-click editing.
The Power Apps MCP Server standardises communication between agents and app services, making it easier to integrate AI into business apps (such as submitting approvals, filling out forms, retrieving records or requesting user input). Unified Copilot Chat will also roll out to model-driven apps, reducing context switching and improving productivity.
Microsoft Edge for Business
Edge is evolving into the first secure AI-powered enterprise browser with Copilot Mode, combining public web data with organisational context without compromising security. This feature will be broadly available from February 2026.
Dataverse and Security
Microsoft Dataverse now supports agentic workflows via the Dataverse SDK for Python and MCP Server, enabling natural language queries and real-time responses.
Security also remains a priority. Microsoft Purview DLP for Copilot prompts will block responses that include sensitive data, while new Security Copilot agents in Microsoft Defender, Entra and Intune will streamline threat detection and compliance.
What will impact SMEs the most?
We felt that one of the biggest announcements which will impact SMEs was Microsoft 365 Copilot Business, a paid version of Copilot for SMBs with fewer than 300 users. It’s just $21 per user monthly, so smaller businesses will benefit from an AI companion which has access to all their business data without leaving their Microsoft 365 tenant or relying on third-party apps.
With more agents being created every day, there’s also a real need for the new Microsoft Agent 365 to ensure security teams can stay on top of which agents have access to what information.
It’s also worth noting that while the free Copilot Chat update is great for basic productivity, businesses that want secure, work-grounded AI and admin oversight will still need a Copilot licence.
Users have been asking for conversational memory in Microsoft 365 Copilot and it’s great to see it on the roadmap. Imagine being able to draw from work data as well as data from your previous chats, without having to repeat everything or paste the same prompts.
If you’ve ever used an AI video maker, you’ll know how powerful such a tool can be for SMEs looking to make their content stand out. Now Microsoft 365 Copilot users are getting Sora 2 and will be able to generate short video clips. This feature is only available to Frontier users at the moment, but it will be released soon.
If you are an existing Strategy 365 client and wish to discuss any of the announcements in this blog post with one of our experts, feel free to get in touch.