MSAI.ms #1 → Merill's weekly Microsoft AI roundup
Learn about GPT 5.5 in M365 Copilot, markdown in SharePoint and OneDrive, Agent 365 going GA and more!
👋 Hi, Merill and Joshua here with the very first issue of our new weekly Microsoft AI news roundup. We’re so excited to finally get this out into the world and can’t wait to share it with you every week!
A quick walkthrough of the newsletter. We break down the news into two main sections. The first is all the official news from Microsoft, and the second is from the Microsoft community including MVPs, consultants and the folks deploying and sharing what they do.
Under the main category we’ve then broken it down by the core domains that Satya recently outlined.
If you have any ideas or suggestions on improving this newsletter, let us know!
Enjoy!
⚡️ Microsoft
The latest from Microsoft on AI.
💼 Productivity & Work
What’s New in Microsoft 365 Copilot | April 2026 • Seth Patton
Copilot Cowork: From conversation to action across skills, integrations, and devices • Charles Lamanna
Introducing Markdown support in SharePoint and OneDrive • Arwa Tyebkhan
Microsoft 365 Copilot, human agency, and the opportunity for every organization • Matt Firestone
How we’re tackling Microsoft 365 Copilot governance internally at Microsoft • Alex Fleck
Copilot in OneNote now understands more of your notes • Daniel Beade
Word: Legal Agent in Frontier • Sumit Chauhan
(Co)work in Progress • Ilya Grebnov
Federated Copilot connectors - bringing real-time enterprise data within Microsoft 365 Copilot • Rohit Bhatia
Available today: GPT-5.5 Instant in Microsoft 365 Copilot • Nitin Agrawal
📺 Copilot in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint: Agentic Capabilities Now Generally Available
📺 Keynote - Building for the Future: Microsoft 365, Agents, & AI • Jeff Teper
RM552595 - Outlook: Draft, edit and format emails conversationally with Copilot in Outlook
RM557561 - Microsoft Edge: Auto-open Copilot side pane for Outlook links
How Frontier Firms are rebuilding the operating model for the age of AI • Jared Spataro
👩💻 Coding & Developer Tools
GitHub Copilot CLI for Beginners: Interactive v. non-interactive mode • Kayla Cinnamon
Agent pull requests are everywhere. Here’s how to review them. • Andrea Griffiths
Improving token efficiency in GitHub Agentic Workflows • Landon Cox and Mara Kiefer
GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio Code, April releases • Change log
Enterprise-managed plugins in GitHub Copilot CLI are now in public preview • Change log
Rubber Duck in GitHub Copilot CLI now supports more models • Change log
More flexible secrets and variables for Copilot cloud agent • Change log
Copilot code review comment types now in usage metrics API • Change log
🏗️ AI Apps, Agents & Platform
Validating agentic behavior when “correct” isn’t deterministic • Gaurav Mittal
SharePoint Showcase: AI-Forward Content Creation & Curation for the Modern Intranet • Sophia Peng
Scaling cloud and AI: Microsoft Azure’s commitment to Europe’s digital future • Jessica Hawk
Transforming IT support across Microsoft with the Employee Self-Service Agent • Alex Fleck
Automate agent evaluation with the Evaluation APIs • Efrat Gilboa
Work IQ API Public Preview: Build Copilot Powered Agents with A2A • Tolga Kilicli
Read-only analytics access and custom metrics now available in Microsoft Copilot Studio • Eran Manor
Introducing the Azure Resource Manager MCP Server! • Steven Bucher
New Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Cloud Developer Associate Certification • Liberty Munson
RM531911 - Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft 365): Scheduled prompts for Web tab
RM559019 - Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft 365): Work IQ APIs - Endpoints: Declarative Agent Access
Announcing the public preview of the Microsoft 365 Copilot Agent Evaluations tool • Barry Gervin
🧩 Business Apps & Low Code
New Microsoft Certified: Dynamics 365 Sales AI Consultant Associate Certification • Liberty Munson
How Frontier Firms scale agents with confidence • Michelle Lancaster
Introducing business skills: Teach agents how your organization works • Prithvi Khosla
Dataverse Is Your Agent Data Platform: Here’s What’s New • Julie Koesmarno
Case Enrichment Simulation in Dynamics 365 Customer Service • Soham Ghosh and Saurabh Gupta
Introducing Service Operations Agent in Dynamics 365 Contact Center • Lily Shelke
Consent-Based Recording for Voice AI in D365 Contact Center • Tarun Shroff
📺 Keynote - Business Apps and Agents - Microsoft 365 Community Conference • Ryan Cunningham
🛡️ Security, Governance & Admin
Microsoft Agent 365, now generally available, expands capabilities and integrations • Jason Roszak, Nirav Shah and Rob Lefferts
Sponsor group type requirements for agent identities • Microsoft Entra Agent ID team
Red-teaming a network of agents: Understanding what breaks when AI agents interact at scale • Gagan Bansal
Microsoft 365 E7 and Agent 365 are now generally available • Caroline Stanford
Microsoft CISO advice: Apply engineering fundamentals to securing AI • Rani Lofstrom
Microsoft named an overall leader in KuppingerCole Analyst’s 2026 Emerging AI Security Operations Center (SOC) report • Rob Lefferts
📺 Keynote - Securing AI: Building Trust in the Era of AI - M365 Community Conference • Vasu Jakkal
🌍 From the community
Hand-picked from MVPs and AI subject-matter experts around the globe.
💼 Productivity & Work
Microsoft 365 Copilot tasks you can try in Outlook • Imran Rashid
👩💻 Coding & Developer Tools
Automated Code Reviews in Azure DevOps using OpenAI models powered by Microsoft Foundry • John Lokerse
GitHub Copilot Learning Path on Microsoft Learn • Mahesh Joshi
Run Gemma 4 Locally With GitHub Copilot And VS Code • Chris Pietschmann
🏗️ AI Apps, Agents & Platform
Running Azure SRE Agent for AKS and Drasi Operations • Luke Murray
Integrating Microsoft Foundry AI with PowerShell for Microsoft 365 • Sean McAvinue
AI-assisted AWS to Azure migration with GitHub Copilot agents • Danidu Weerasinghe
Automating Azure Cost Calculations with GitHub Copilot CLI Custom agents ❤️ • Brian Veldman
📺 How to change model behavior! Context engineering, fine-tuning and more • John Savill
📺 Consuming an MCP server with OAuth 2.0 in Copilot Studio • Paolo Pialorsi
🎙️ 341 - Foundry Toolkit goes GA: Building agents with code | Ctrl+Alt+Azure • Jussi Roine and Tobias Zimmergren
🛡️ Security, Governance & Admin
AI Governance & Data Protection - Claude + Microsoft 365 - InfraBytes • Jonathan Blaue
Shadow AI in Microsoft 365 Detect and Block It • Mark Oldham
Microsoft Agent 365 vs M365 Agents • Jannik Reinhard
AI governance overview: stop panicking and fix the basics • Ewelina Paczkowska
Primer: bulk actions with the Agent 365 API • Vasil Michev
📺 DSPM Solves your Biggest E7 AI Security Problem! • Peter Rising
📺 Securing data in the age of AI • Julio Cesar Goncalves Vasconcelos
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🪃 Acknowledgement of Country
This weekly newsletter is created on Wurundjeri land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. We pay our respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.