The sales agent engages your prospects in a two-way conversation. It leads them to a meeting or purchase. The sales agent sends outreach emails to a list of prospects from CRM or a CSV file and nurtures them until they're ready to meet.

Sales agent capabilities:

1. Research prospects deeply.
2. Send hyper-personalized emails to leads.
3. Follow up with leads if it doesn't receive a response.
4. Respond to questions, handle objections, and ask qualification questions.
5. Hand off leads to sales reps.

The sales operations manager is the primary persona for the sales agent. The sales agent works like a new sales rep instead of working on behalf of an existing sales rep. The sales operations manager decides the following information:

1. Criteria: Which leads the sales agent should prospect through a CRM object with filters or CSV upload.
2. Knowledge: What knowledge does the sales agent have about its company and value propositions? What knowledge does it have about the lead? The agent gets this knowledge by connecting to data sources and uploading files and website links.
3. Behavior: How does the sales agent behave in different situations? How many times does it follow up? What tone or length does it use for emails? What LLM-based guidelines does it follow, such as "If a customer asks for pricing, talk about our financing options"? What handover conditions and guardrails does it use?

Copilot for Sales makes meeting preparation easier by giving you AI-generated insights in a pre-meeting preparation card. You get this card through the Copilot for Sales bot or chat in Teams. The preparation card includes:

• Meeting essentials: Key details like the title, time, participant acceptance status, and agenda.
• Matched opportunity and account: Relevant CRM records and key attributes of the opportunity from CRM.
• Recent communications: Summarized insights from past customer interactions for the matched opportunity.
• Strategic insights: Key risks, follow-up actions, and crucial discussion points from previous interactions.

With this feature, you can focus on building relationships and closing deals instead of searching through meeting notes, CRM records, and information from peer sellers.

As a seller, you can save time and engage more leads with Sales Agent's AI-generated insights and personalized outreach messages. Sales Agent researches every lead in your pipeline, so you don't have to spend time searching the web or your CRM. It finds the key information you need to qualify each lead. When you're ready to contact a lead, Sales Agent creates personalized emails that use the insights it gathers. These emails engage the lead and make them feel like you know them, their business, and how you can help them achieve their goals. Sales Agent gives you the confidence that you have everything you need to know about every prospect and the ability to connect with them in a meaningful way.

For example, Mona, a seller at Contoso, gets a lead from Fabrikam. In the past, Mona might have quickly searched the web and their CRM for information about the individual and the company. However, Mona might have missed key information that helps get the lead's attention, such as Fabrikam's past lost or won opportunities with Contoso, and Fabrikam's recent expansion plans. Mona might have sent a plain form email, lacking a personalized hook that goes unanswered. With Sales Agent, Mona can save time and improve their close rate by engaging leads like Fabrikam with research-backed, personalized initial outreach and follow up. The deep research discovers and summarizes the key account details from the CRM, and the insights about Fabrikam's business needs and challenges. The email crafted by the Sales Agent incorporates those insights, so Mona's outreach feels like it's addressing Fabrikam's needs, making them more likely to respond. Sales Agent saves Mona hours of research and email writing, and Mona sees better response rates from their outreach.

Sales Agent key features:

• Performs research for all prospects in your CRM (either Salesforce or Dynamics 365 Sales).
• Uses data gathered from the web and your CRM to perform deep research and generate insights.
• Generates outreach emails based on the research that you can use to engage new leads.
• Configurable to match your unique business needs.

As an admin, you can set up and activate Sales Agent for your sellers from the Copilot for Sales admin settings.

Email summaries now show richer third-party insights. The extensibility API passes more input parameters, such as the email body and metadata, message ID and conversation ID, and CRM-related entities. Partner application developers can use this extra data to improve the quality of their insights.

Use the same extensibility API to change both the email summary on the Outlook canvas and the email summary in the side panel.

For more information, refer to Extend Copilot for Sales and Enhanced email summary extensibility API.

With the September update, Copilot for Sales silently creates connections for connector plugins that use Microsoft Entra ID for authentication when the Copilot for Sales admin enables the connector plugin for Copilot for Sales users.

As a seller, you can view data and insights from non-CRM applications that extend Copilot for Sales and use Microsoft Entra ID without signing in to them again.

As a Copilot for Sales admin, use Microsoft Copilot Studio to:

• Enable in-house or third-party connector plugins for users of Copilot for Sales when connecting to specific CRMs.
• Disable connector plugins that you already enabled.

As a Copilot for Sales customer or partner, use Microsoft Copilot Studio to:

• Author Power Platform connector plugins to bring data and insights from any sales application into chat and non-chat experiences in Copilot for Sales.
• Test the connector plugins you author for Copilot for Sales.
• Publish connector plugins for use with Copilot for Sales within your tenant.

In November 2023, we introduced the preview for bringing data and insights from partner applications into Copilot for Sales. To view insights from partner applications, you needed to browse through a list of available certified connector plugins in the plugin portal, select the partner application you use, and then sign in to the application.

With 2024 release wave 1, you get a more streamlined experience that's enabled by default.

• For every partner plugin enabled for Copilot for Sales, you see an action card in the Copilot for Sales Outlook experience that prompts you to sign in to the partner application.
• You can quickly sign in to the partner plugin connector from the Copilot for Sales Outlook experience.
• When you sign in to the partner application, you can see data and insights from the partner application in Copilot for Sales.

Copilot for Sales uses AI to help you create email drafts. Previously, the drafts didn't include references to CRM records, so you needed to add that information yourself.
With this feature, you can include CRM data, like account or opportunity details, in AI-generated email drafts based on your prompt. When the prompt or email content clearly states your intent, Copilot for Sales adds relevant CRM information to the email. This information appears when you save the email to a CRM record. The feature enriches your draft with valuable context and saves you time.

You don't need to turn on this feature. To start using it, add instructions in the custom prompt for generating an email draft. You can include any of the available Account or Opportunity record fields.

This feature supports:

• Available fields on Account and Opportunity records that you can include in email drafts. Custom fields aren't supported yet.
• This feature works for both email drafts on the Outlook canvas and email drafts in the Outlook side panel.
• You must save the email to an account or opportunity first.

All users of the Microsoft Outlook app on Android and iOS devices automatically get mobile features. As a seller, you can use key features from the mobile app by selecting the ... menu in an email to open the Copilot for Sales app. This app gives you access to features available on the desktop, such as:

• AI-generated email responses
• AI-generated email and opportunity summaries
• Tracking Outlook activities to CRM
• Creating and editing contacts or other CRM objects

Sharing records is turned off by default, but CRM administrators can turn it on within the Copilot for Sales settings in Outlook, Teams, or other Microsoft 365 applications.

You can use the existing Outlook forward slash (/) support to show a dialog box with recently used Copilot for Sales CRM records. As you interact with Copilot for Sales, those records are added to the available list to show within Outlook emails for quick access. When you select a record, a rich adaptive card displays the CRM record information for quick access.

Recipients of the adaptive card see details only if they have CRM access to the CRM record. The adaptive card auto-refreshes to show any changed CRM content, keeping the card from showing any stale data.

Find this capability in:

• Copilot for Sales product area: Microsoft Outlook

Email summaries and drafts displayed on the Outlook canvas are enhanced with the following features:

• Suggested meeting time slots based on email conversations when you use a custom prompt while creating the first draft.
• Copilot responses in localized languages that respect language nuances.
• Email drafts created in a requested language when you provide a custom prompt in that language or specify a certain language for the drafted responses.
• Concise email summaries for faster understanding of the email thread context.

Actionable message banners give you the following capabilities:

• Each actionable message banner gives you access to high-value CRM actions that match the context of the email where the banner appears.
• Quick actions include adding new contacts or leads from the customer email to the CRM platform, or saving the email to CRM.
• When you select an action, you can quickly complete it through the Copilot for Sales side panel in Outlook.

This feature includes the following fields as part of CRM record creation and record editing using Copilot for Sales in Outlook:

• Start date
• End date
• Start time
• End time

In June, we released a Recent communication card in the side pane in Outlook that shows recent emails and meetings with an external customer. The Recent communication card also gives sellers the ability to see summaries of recent emails. Now, we’re providing a similar ability for recent meetings. From the Recent communication card, you can go directly to recaps of Teams meetings that involve the customer. This release also supports recurring meetings.

Teams meetings shown in the Recent communication card that have a recap available now show a View recap button. This button opens the meeting recap in Teams. You can quickly catch up on recent discussions with the customer.

This capability is available in:

• Copilot for Sales product area: Outlook

With this enhancement, you get:

• A streamlined design that makes it easier to get AI-based summaries of recent email threads.
• Previews of emails and meetings.
• Changed the open email and open meeting interaction pattern to click on the title for a cleaner user experience in Outlook.

This capability is available in:

• Copilot for Sales product area: Outlook

When you save an email to your CRM platform from Copilot for Sales, the solution automatically saves any attachments with the email. This feature helps you stay informed on both the email content and the useful information in the attachments.

• As a Copilot for Sales admin, you can define extra fields that sellers need to fill in when they save emails and events from Outlook to your CRM platform.
• As a Copilot for Sales user, you can enter values for the extra fields that the administrator configures when you save Outlook events and emails to your CRM platform.

As a seller, you can view your recent email threads and Teams meetings with an external contact in the Recent communications card in the Copilot for Sales pane in Outlook. You can perform the following actions:

• Select Summarize to get an AI-based summary of the recent email.

• Select Open email to open the recent email in Outlook.

• Select Open meeting to open the recent meeting in Teams.

• Select See all to see up to three recent emails and meetings in the last 30 days that are related to the contact.

  Note

  Contact refers to the first external email address in the list (for emails: sender + To + CC; for meetings: organizer + required + optional). If the email or meeting is in Compose mode, the list doesn't include the sender or organizer.

As a seller, you can search for any CRM record you have access to directly from the Copilot for Sales app in Outlook. You can also save emails to any CRM records displayed in the search results.

With Copilot in Microsoft Outlook, powered by Copilot for Sales, you can generate email content using sales information from the CRM system. The feature considers the specific sales situation it detects. To use this capability, your environment must enable Copilot for Sales, and you must have a Microsoft 365 license.

With Copilot in Microsoft Outlook, powered by Copilot for Sales, you can summarize long email threads by using sales information from the CRM system and taking into account the specific sales situation. To use this capability, your environment must enable Copilot for Sales, and you must have a Microsoft 365 license.

Copilot for Sales delivers a post-meeting notification card in Teams. The card gives you a concise summary of your customer meeting and seamless follow-up actions. The notification includes:

• Meeting highlights: AI-generated summary that captures key discussion points.
• Direct link to Teams recap: Access to the full meeting recording, transcript, and detailed insights.
• One-click CRM save: Ability to save AI-generated meeting notes directly into your CRM, such as Salesforce, without switching apps.

When you add the Copilot for Sales app to your meeting and record and transcribe the meeting, you get the post-meeting notification card after your meeting ends.

With this feature, sales professionals can quickly capture and save key insights in CRM. This capability ensures that every conversation contributes to a well-documented and actionable sales pipeline.

As an admin, you control which users can share their stored meeting insights, such as AI notes, sentiment, and follow-up tasks, with other users. You control this sharing through a new access control setting on the admin settings screen in the Copilot for Sales personal app. Shared data powers other Copilot for Sales features, such as the Roadmap card that shows past meeting insights you share against a CRM opportunity.

By default, the admin setting is disabled for all users in the organization. You can turn the setting on or off for all users. Or, you can choose specific security groups that you allow or don't allow to share their meeting insights.

As an admin, you control which users can store their meeting insights (AI notes, sentiment, follow-up tasks, and more) in Dataverse. You set this control through a new access setting on the admin settings screen in the Copilot for Sales personal app.

Previously, the system stored meeting insights in Microsoft Graph. This feature gives your organization more control over insights data. By default, all users in the organization enable the setting. You can turn storage on or off for all users. Or, you can choose which security groups can save their insights data.

Previously, only users with a premium Copilot for Sales license could access the Sales pill. With this update, all Copilot for Sales users, including users with Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise licenses, can access the Sales pill. The Sales pill now includes sentiment analysis and meeting highlights when Teams AI meeting notes aren't available because users don't have a Teams premium license. The Sales pill now provides all the data that the older Copilot for Sales tab offered, so the Copilot for Sales tab is retired in post-meeting. The Sales pill holds all post-meeting insights, including the action items list, task list, question detection, keyword detection, sentiment analysis, and participant statistics.

A daily meeting prep notification gives sellers a summary of their upcoming meetings in a structured format. The daily card holds key insights for the next five sales meetings, organized by meeting date. Each meeting shows the title, agenda, date and time, and meeting length. Sellers can select a link to open the Teams meeting. A link to help prepare for the meeting sends a new adaptive card with pre-meeting details for that meeting.

Admins set the daily time for sending the meeting digest. They can also turn the digest on or off for the whole environment.

Copilot for Sales automatically handles your meeting recordings, so you never miss a moment. As an administrator, you can turn on this feature for your organization through the Copilot for Sales admin settings page. When you turn on the feature, it applies to all users. Any meeting with Copilot for Sales added automatically records the meeting for the seller. Sellers don't need any extra setup. The feature automatically starts recordings for eligible meetings. Copilot for Sales doesn't record meetings that you mark as private.

This release for Copilot for Sales enhances your productivity by improving the thank-you email generated after a Teams meeting:

• Enhanced email draft quality: AI-generated email drafts better align with the meeting action items and notes, with an improved tone for effective customer communications.
• Key details from the meeting: The solution automatically adds info such as participants’ email addresses to the To and Cc fields, streamlining the steps for sellers to just click Send.
• Improved email draft management experience: The email draft opens in the seller’s default email client, which makes it easier to quickly edit and send.

This feature includes the following capabilities:

• Dynamics 365 and Salesforce users can sign in to any environment with Copilot for Sales while using Teams.
• Users can switch environments and disconnect from their environment.

For this release, we provide two card types:

• Brand analysis: A CRM-based competitor analysis card that's powered by Azure Open AI and Bing knowledge graph-based information cards for brands and organizations. It doesn't involve large language model.
• Opportunity summary: A concise overview of the status, progress, and potential of a prospective sale or deal that allows for quick decision-making. Opportunity summary leverages generative AI to summarize the key details to improve stakeholder collaboration.

Copilot for Sales picks up these business-critical insights if spoken during the conversation, and users can query them directly throughout the meeting.

• Automated prompting: The Copilot for Sales bot in Teams channels automatically scans conversations for relevant discussions and action items. When it identifies potential tasks, it prompts you and other sales team members with a notification, seeking your agreement to create the tasks.
• Task creation and assignment: When you agree, the solution automatically creates Teams tasks (planner tasks) based on the identified action items. You see a preview of the tasks. The solution assigns the tasks to relevant users to ensure accountability.
• Planner app integration in Teams: Sales team members get a centralized view of all the tasks by pinning the planner app to the Teams channel. Users can also access these tasks from the planner app.

This solution works for both Dynamics 365 and Salesforce CRM users.

As a seller, leverage these main features:

• Message extension for searching CRM records and sharing them with your colleagues in a chat message.
• Personal app experience with quick links to key documentation and admin settings.

• Unifying tabs in the Copilot for Sales side panel in Teams gives you a simpler and seamless way to access contextual CRM information during customer meetings.
• Unified tabs provide a foundation for better integration with Microsoft Copilot experiences.

Sellers can share CRM records as adaptive cards with colleagues within a Teams conversation or an Outlook email. These cards now contain an AI-generated summary of the record along with the field data. With this summary, colleagues can quickly catch up on the details of the record within their flow of work. This section isn't shown if your organization disables Copilot features.

Sales Chat gives you a conversational way to access sales information that lives in different apps. This information includes customer and deal data in CRM, meetings in Teams, pitch decks and product documentation in SharePoint, and much more. Use natural language to search through the data, summarize the information, and run analysis that combines data from different sources.

As an admin, you can:

• Select which users in your organization get Sales Chat. If sellers use Copilot for Sales, the system automatically deploys Sales Chat for them.
• Set up your organization's Copilot experience to use CRM customizations and terminology specific to your company.

As a seller, you can use Sales Chat to:

• Understand your customers: Whether you're preparing for a customer meeting or an account plan, you need a comprehensive view of the account. You need to see the current business, open opportunities, and past engagements. With Sales Chat, you can get this information by using natural language.
• Ramp up on newly assigned accounts: Go beyond the customer data in CRM. Find colleagues who engaged with the customer in recent months and have the most context to share. Quickly get the topics that interest the customer and appear in recent engagements.
• Grow your business and find new opportunities: Use Sales Chat to discover open issues in stalled deals. It checks emails and meetings for these issues. Find colleagues who faced similar issues in other deals to help unblock your deals.