👋 Hi folks, the Microsoft AI weekly is back after a short hiatus. I started this newsletter just a couple of weeks before I left Microsoft but promptly ran out of time to do justice to this.
The good news is that I have a new co-author for this newsletter. I’m super excited to announce that Joanne Hayek (who an ex-Microsoft colleagues) will be co-authoring this newsletter. She is an extremely detail oriented person and we both come from the cybersecurity side of the AI house.
Look forward to our return to regular weekly posts from today onwards.
Enjoy
Joanne & Merill
⚡️ Microsoft
The latest from Microsoft on AI.
💼 Productivity & Work
Copilot Notebooks now works with Markdown, plain-text, and rich-text files • Abhishek Kaushik
Co-create slides with Copilot in PowerPoint for iPad • Aparna Jethani
From AI curiosity to Copilot adoption in 30 days • Jill Armour
From AI ambition to enterprise execution: Our Customer Zero journey • Ashley Wright
Built for business: How Microsoft 365 Copilot keeps you in the flow of legal work • Caroline Stanford
Turn meetings into momentum with Microsoft 365 Copilot • Meera Ajam
Update: Domain Exclusion for Microsoft 365 Copilot • Suhel Parekh
Microsoft is named a Leader in 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Unified Communications as a Service • Johnny McCormick
Bring your organization’s data into Excel with new Copilot synced connectors • Jonathan Kahati
How Microsoft Digital Asia used AI to create human connection across continents • Ashley Wright
What’s New in Copilot in SharePoint: August 2026 • Julie Seto
From AI assistant to capable teammate: How Copilot Cowork is changing the way we work at Microsoft • Alex Fleck
👩💻 Coding & Developer Tools
GitHub Copilot app for Beginners: Managing your work • Christopher Harrison
GitHub Copilot app for Beginners: Write your first prompt • Kayla Cinnamon
🌿 Agent Terrarium: Bringing AI agents to life • Alexander Sklar
Announcing the preview of the Work IQ Developer Tools • Sébastien Levert
Microsoft named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for AI-Augmented Code Modernization Tools • Mike Hulme
Hill-climbing MAI models for GitHub Copilot and Excel • MAI Superintelligence Team
If you want a secure AI agent, start restricting its environment. • Sanchit Mehta and Vishesh Agrawal
How canvases make agentic workflows visible, steerable, and cost-efficient • Ayan Gupta
How to bring your software delivery workflow into GitHub with agent apps • Sam Zhang
TokenOps: Real-time, run-scoped cost control for AI agents • Tisha Chawla and Susheem Koul
📺 Build Reusable Copilot Workflows with Skills and Agents • Microsoft Developer
📺 .NET AI Community Standup: Routing & Failover for Microsoft.Extensions.AI • dotnet
📺 .NET Developer Productivity with AI • dotnet
📺 Build a Portfolio Website from Your Resume with GitHub Copilot • Microsoft Developer
📺 Build your personal brand with Copilot • Microsoft Developer
📺 Building Intelligent .NET Applications: From AI Features to Agentic System • dotnet
📺 Building with Kimi K3 in VS Code • Visual Studio Code
📺 Configure GitHub Copilot: Settings, Sessions, and Modes • Microsoft Developer
📺 Control GitHub Copilot Remotely from Your Phone • Microsoft Developer
📺 End-to-End Testing for Spring Boot apps with Playwright in VS Code • Visual Studio Code
📺 Expose your Spring Boot API endpoints via MCP and GitHub Copilot • Visual Studio Code
📺 Extend GitHub Copilot with Tools and MCP Servers • Microsoft Developer
📺 Fast Focus: Using Copilot to Build Migration Tools • dotnet
📺 Get Started with GitHub Copilot and the Student Developer Pack • Microsoft Developer
📺 How the Visual Studio Team Uses AI Internally • Microsoft Visual Studio
📺 .NET MAUI in 2026 - How AI has Transformed App Development Forever • dotnet
📺 Modern WinForms Development: How AI is Reshaping Your Approach • dotnet
📺 🔴 VS Code Live: Latest News, Vercel Plugin + New Feature Demos from VS Code Engineers • Visual Studio Code
📺 Microsoft Quantum Development Kit (QDK) • Microsoft Developer
📺 Modernize Your Portfolio with Bootstrap and GitHub Copilot • Microsoft Developer
📺 Optimizing GitHub Copilot: Better Results, Fewer Tokens • Microsoft Developer
📺 QDK Tutorial: Learn Quantum Computing with GitHub Copilot in VS Code • Microsoft Developer
📺 The New Brain Behind Copilot in Visual Studio • Microsoft Visual Studio
📺 The Next Generation of Developer Productivity with GitHub Copilot & Visual Studio • Microsoft Visual Studio
📺 Turn Every Idea into an AI App with the GitHub Copilot SDK • Microsoft Developer
📺 VS Gets AI Agents + MCP C# SDK 2.0 and More • Microsoft Developer
📺 You and AI -- Building The Future Together • Microsoft Visual Studio
📺 ZoomIt for Mac: How AI Ported a 20+ Year-Old Windows Tool • Microsoft Developer
🐙 GitHub Changelog
🏗️ AI Apps, Agents & Platform
From Sync APIs to support for the GPT-5 model series and agentic workflows: What’s new in Azure Content Understanding - August 2026 • Peyton Fraser, Krishnakumar Muthukrishnan and Joe Filcik
From single call to agents: five new Claude capabilities now available in Microsoft Foundry • Haoran Cheng
Building Agents for Teams: Managing the noise of collaboration • Lili Du
Microsoft named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud-Native Application Platforms • Naga Surendran
MAI-Image-2.6 launches at No. 2 on Arena ahead of Google, Meta and xAI • MAI Superintelligence Team
Introducing MAI-Thinking-1 • MAI Superintelligence Team
MAI-Image-2.5 launches at No. 2 for image editing on Arena • MAI Superintelligence Team
Optimizing the frontier performance curve • Mustafa Suleyman
Resolving repetitive support tickets at Microsoft with AI automation • Diana Mivelli
The Economics of Agent Optimization: From pilots to measurable returns • Tina Schuchman
Enhancing Microsoft network reliability with AIOps and Network Infrastructure Copilot • David Hirning
📺 Bring Your Own Model Within the GitHub Copilot App • Microsoft Developer
📺 MCP Live! | A half-day livestream about the latest in MCP • Microsoft Developer
📺 Technical deep dive on modern agents and workflows in Copilot Studio • Microsoft Power Platform
🧩 Business Apps & Low Code
What’s New in Microsoft Teams • Kerry Perez Heffernan
What’s new in Power Platform: July/August 2026 feature update • Tiffany Treacy
Register now for PPCC 2026: Come for the learning, stay for the community • Bryony Wolf
📺 Action Apps transforms athlete performance with Microsoft technology | Who’s Using Copilot? • Microsoft Power Platform
📺 Are you ready for the 2026 Power Platform Community Conference? • Microsoft Power Platform
📺 Building autonomous multi‑agent workflows • Microsoft Power Platform
📺 Building highly effective business‑process agents • Microsoft Power Platform
📺 How NASA built mission‑critical apps with Power Platform | EP17 • Microsoft Power Platform
📺 How Western States Equipment moved from ten systems to ONE app! | EP16 • Microsoft Power Platform
📺 Jollof rice and building the future with Derah Onuorah | EP05 • Microsoft Power Platform
📊 Data, Analytics & Knowledge
Azure Content Understanding GPT-5 Series Guide: Model Selection, Grounding Improvements, and Confidence Enhancements • Joe Filcik and Krishnakumar Muthukrishnan
Building a trusted IT asset inventory with Fabric and AI at Microsoft • Ashley Wright
Optimizing Azure resources at Microsoft with AI and Managed Cloud Labs • Diana Mivelli
📺 Fast Focus: What’s New Across Microsoft SQL and Developer Tooling in 2026 • Microsoft Developer
📺 SQL and AI for Developers in Action • Microsoft Developer
📺 SQL MCP Server: Bringing AI Agents to Your SQL Data • Microsoft Developer
🛡️ Security, Governance & Admin
Your Company Is Racing to Deploy AI. Is Your Data Ready? • Tommy Graham
Implementing Agent 365: How we’re governing and managing AI agents at Microsoft • Alex Fleck
Secured and Governed your AI Agents: Microsoft Entra Agent ID for Dataverse • Paul Liew
🧑🎨 Consumer & Creator
An AI companion for everyone • Mustafa Suleyman
Take back-to-school tasks off your plate with Microsoft Copilot • Alyse Maguire
🌍 From the community
Hand-picked from MVPs and AI subject-matter experts around the globe.
💼 Productivity & Work
Copilot Cowork First Month: How Admins Should Check July Consumption • Josh Cook
Copilot Cowork Model Benchmark: Five Models, One Prompt, One Winner • Josh Cook
👩💻 Coding & Developer Tools
RAG in .NET: The Complete Series • Jamie Maguire
📺 .NET AI Community Standup: MCP C# SDK 2.0: Building the Next Generation of .NET AI Agents • dotnet
📺 .NET MAUI Community Standup: Inspect, Record, Create: .NET MAUI Meets GitHub Copilot Canvas 🤝 • dotnet
🏗️ AI Apps, Agents & Platform
The Declarative Agent Lifecycle, End to End with WIQD • Sébastien Levert
Building Reusable Plugins with WIQD: Skills and Connectors • Sébastien Levert
Microsoft Agent Framework: The Complete Series • Jamie Maguire
Introducing MAI-Image-2 • MAI Superintelligence Team
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🪃 Acknowledgement of Country
MSAI.ms is written between Melbourne and Dubai. Part of this work is created on Wurundjeri land, and we acknowledge 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.