Copilot Audit Records Now Include Resources Used in Responses

In April 2024, I wrote about the appearance of audit events to capture details when Microsoft 365 applications call Copilot to process a user request (prompt). These events have an operation type of CopilotInteraction.

Since then, Microsoft announced progress in capturing records when people use Copilot in the Stream player to query video transcripts (MC720180, last updated 22 May 2024). It’s like MC720180 (also updated on 22 May 2024), which describes using Copilot to interact with meetings. In both cases, the important point is that the audit events generated for Copilot interactions capture details of resources accessed by Copilot when responding to user prompts (previously the AccessedResources property in the AuditData payload was empty).

Linked to the Change in Transcript Storage Location

Because Copilot depends on meeting transcripts to answer queries, meeting interactions are only possible when meetings are recorded with a transcript. As discussed last week, Teams is standardizing on OneDrive for Business storage for the MP4 files generated for meeting recordings and transcripts. Like many situations in Microsoft 365, developments reported in one message center notification are linked to what’s described in another, seemingly unconnected, update.

The change should be effective in most places now as Microsoft aims to complete worldwide deployment in early June 2024.

Updated Script to Handle Copilot Audit Records

To test the effectiveness of the change, I updated the script I wrote for the previous article (downloadable from GitHub) to support audit records generated by the Stream player and to pay more attention to the data recorded in the associated resources property. Figure 1 shows the output of the script as viewed through the Out-GridView cmdlet.

Please check out the updated script and let me know if it’s helpful or could be improved.

Copilot in Outlook Classic

Speaking of Copilot, for a long time Microsoft communicated the message that Copilot experiences would only be available in the new Outlook client (aka Monarch). This was no more than a thinly-disguised ploy to drive adoption for Monarch, which still isn’t close to ready for consumption by corporate users.

In any case, message center notification MC794816 (21 May 2025, Microsoft 365 roadmap item 388753) reports the availability of the Copilot for Microsoft 365 chat experience for Outlook classic (Win32). This feature joins “Summarize,” the Copilot option that extracts the major points from an email thread (my second favorite Copilot feature after meeting summarization), and the option to have Copilot draft or revise message drafts. Microsoft will roll out Copilot for Microsoft 365 chat to Outlook classic in the current channel in June 2024.

Before anyone gets too excited, let me say that Copilot for Microsoft 365 chat in Outlook is the same application as accessed as a web application and in Teams. The only difference is that Copilot has an icon in the Outlook application bar and runs in the Outlook window (Figure 2). In other words, if you’re used to Copilot chat elsewhere, you’ll find no difficulty using it in Outlook, providing you have the necessary Copilot for Microsoft 365 license.

As you can see from Figure 2, chats generated in other instances of the client are available in Outlook.

Change, Change, and More Change

Change is ongoing within Microsoft 365. Some changes are dependent on other changes, such as Copilot audit records capturing associated resources for the Stream player. Others are the delivery of incremental functionality within an application. The trick is to keep an eye on what’s happening and to recognize what kind of change each message center notification represents. That’s sometimes hard to do based on the way Microsoft describes a change. Oh well, into every life a little rain must fall…

So much change, all the time. It’s a challenge to stay abreast of all the updates Microsoft makes across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Subscribe to the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook to receive monthly insights into what happens, why it happens, and what new features and capabilities mean for your tenant.

Making Stream Recordings Even Better

On May 2, Microsoft issued an update about plans to enhance video in Microsoft 365, mostly concentrated on Stream, including “video-first SharePoint pages.” Intriguing as this prospect is, my attention was taken by some new features to improve the recording capabilities of the Stream web app like a Stream teleprompter. I last covered Stream recording capabilities in September 2022 and was impressed at the ease of recording. Stream is not the tool for making the next great film classic, but it’s more than capable of making videos covering topics like product announcements and internal news, albeit limited to 15 minutes length.

The Stream Teleprompter

While we might all think that we will deliver perfectly formed words in a recording, there’s no doubt that very few can speak off-the-cuff in a way that makes sense. Enter the Stream teleprompter, a panel that scrolls through some previously entered text as you speak (Figure 1). Text can be inserted directly or (more likely) copied from another source. I find it best to prepare text in a Word document before pasting the text from Word into Stream.

The idea is that seeing the words in front of you makes it easier to speak confidently and not forget anything important. Whether it reduces the number of retakes depends on the speaker.

The teleprompter comes with a scroll speed control (beside the X in the menu bar). The default speed is a reasonable pace for talking, and you can slow down or increase the scroll speed to match your delivery. Naturally, the teleprompter doesn’t appear in the video that viewers see (Figure 2).

Video Background

As noted in my previous article, for a video background, Stream supports the use of the standard Teams background images, background blur, and a custom image. Unfortunately, you still can’t save a custom image for reuse. What’s new is that you can project your workstation screen (window or browser tab) as the video background, a feature that I’m sure will be popular with those who produce teaching videos.

Figure 3 shows the idea. I wrote a PowerShell script to extract and report Planner data for Microsoft 365 groups using the Planner Graph API. The video explains how to use PowerShell to work with plans, tasks, and buckets with the PowerShell console as the background. Another Stream recording feature places some text on-screen to point the viewer to a follow-up article. Regretfully, hyperlinks are unsupported, and formatting of the text is less flexible than it could be (setting font size is not available). But overall, Stream delivers easy-to-use recording functionality that’s improving over time.

Other Stream Updates

In the same blog post, Microsoft said that they plan to add automatic transcript generation for videos later this year. Today, Stream only processes automatic transcripts when Teams meeting organizers enable transcription for recordings. Stream generates transcripts for other videos if a video owner requests this through the transcript and options section of the Stream web app. Transcripts are now downloadable in Word (docx) format, which is a nice change because it’s a lot easier to edit Word to fix any hiccups in the transcript due to the AI not fully understanding what people say.

A change coming in June 2023 is that Stream will insert the profile picture of people in video transcripts to replace the initials of people who speak that now appear alongside their contributions. If the Azure AD accounts for tenant members and guests don’t have thumbnail photos, Stream will revert to initials. Time to check Azure AD to make sure that photos are available for user accounts and guest accounts.

Finally, Microsoft says the Stream web app now has a moveable captions box. This avoids the problem that occurs when captions appear over critical parts of the video. If this happens, click on the captions box and drag it to wherever you want the captions to appear (or repositioned, to use the formal term).

Maturing Stream

I really like the teleprompter feature in Stream web app. It’s a simple idea that makes lots of sense, just like making captions moveable. Both are evidence of the increasing maturity of the new Stream. Now if all of those pesky migrations from Stream classic could just finish…

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