Copilot for Microsoft 365 to Support Outlook Classic

Outlook Win32 Copilot Support Coming. Teams Gets a Better Integration

After removing the major barriers blocking adoption of Microsoft 365 Copilot last month, Microsoft has quietly dropped its insistence that Copilot would only support the Outlook Monarch client. The latest version of the Microsoft 365 Copilot requirements documentation (2 February 2024) says that Copilot works with the new Outlook client on Windows and Mac (Outlook mobile is also supported) and then notes that “Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 will be supported on classic Outlook for Windows (Win32 desktop app) in the future.”

A link to the Microsoft 365 roadmap lists three items relating to the introduction of Copilot functionality in the classic Outlook client together with dates when the rollout is supposed to start:

• Coaching by Copilot (190927) –February 2024
• Draft by Copilot (190937) – March 2024. Figure 1 shows the draft created by Copilot in OWA.
• Summarize by Copilot (180900) –November 2023

According to the items, Microsoft added 190927 and 190937 on 6 December 2023, and 180900 on December 10, 2023. Don’t pay too much attention to the purported rollout dates until you see a Microsoft 365 message center announcement describing when the new functionality will be available in the preview and other Office channel. Even then, announced dates are often optimistic and end up being delayed. I’m pretty sure that Outlook Win32 support will only extend to the subscription version of Outlook packaged in Microsoft 365 enterprise apps, but we’ll see when Microsoft shares more details.

No Formal Announcement for Outlook Win32 Copilot Support

Speaking of details, I can’t find a formal Microsoft announcement about the change in direction. Ever since the original Copilot for Microsoft 365 announcement in March 2023, Microsoft held to the line that Monarch was the only supported Outlook desktop client. As I noted in August, this position applied despite the fact that Microsoft’s One Outlook program includes the ability for Outlook desktop to use code developed for Monarch/OWA. The only logical conclusion is that Microsoft hoped to use Copilot to drive customers to embrace Monarch.

The sad fact is that Monarch is still not fit for purpose in the eyes of many Outlook users. The lack of offline access and PST support are just two issues that must be addressed before Monarch has a chance to replace the classic client.

Although they’re rolling Monarch out as a replacement for the standard Windows mail and calendar client, Microsoft knows that the software lacks many features needed for success in commercial environments. All the missing functionality is on a list for development, but the fact remains that it’s very hard to force people to change to a client that doesn’t do what they need, and this became a blocking factor for Copilot adoption.

Given that making it easy for customers to use Copilot is much more important for Microsoft than achieving an earlier switchover to Monarch is, the choice for senior management must have been simple, and that’s probably why the restriction is gone. Customers will applaud the new reality.

New Copilot Experience in Teams

Meanwhile, on February 12, Microsoft announced a new Copilot experience in Teams. Like the rest of Teams, the experience is in the form of an app that administrators can control through setup policies. According to Microsoft, the major changes are better prompts, access to Copilot Lab to see prompts that you might use, and a list of your Copilot chat history.

The app delivers a chat experience, so it should come as no surprise that Teams can store and reveal previous interactions with Copilot. The chat messages are captured for compliance purposes, just like personal and group chats, and can be retrieved by content searches for eDiscovery.

Just to be sure that Copilot support for Outlook Win32 is a reality, I asked Copilot in Teams (Figure 2) about Outlook Win32 Copilot support. After thinking for a bit, Copilot duly responded to confirm support and noted two references, one being the requirements documentation, the other a document stored in a SharePoint Online site. Website content is only available to Copilot if enabled for the tenant and the user chooses to enable it for searches.

More Change Coming

I suspect that the Copilot for Microsoft 365 journey will have other ups and downs as customers identify and Microsoft removes barriers to adoption, problems, bugs, and other issues. Like the initial development of Teams in the 2017-2020 period (albeit accelerated in some part by the Covid pandemic), I expect lots of change. Stay tuned.

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