How Microsoft 365 Delivers Trustworthy AI Blog Post

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

How Microsoft 365 Delivers Trustworthy AI Whitepaper 


 


In the rapidly evolving business landscape, corporations are perpetually in search of innovative strategies that can amplify productivity and bolster security. Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote in his blog: AI advancements are revolutionizing knowledge work, enhancing our cognitive abilities, and are fundamental to many aspects of life. These developments present immense opportunities to improve the world by boosting productivity, fostering economic growth, and reducing monotony in jobs. They also enable creativity, impactful living, and discovery of insights in large data sets, driving progress in various fields like medicine, science, business, and security. However, the integration of AI into business operations is not without its hurdles. Companies are tasked with ensuring that their AI solutions are not only robust but also ethical, dependable, and trustworthy. 


How Microsoft 365 Delivers Trustworthy AI is a comprehensive document providing regulators, IT pros, risk officers, compliance professionals, security architects, and other interested parties with an overview of the many ways in which Microsoft mitigates risk within the artificial intelligence product lifecycle. The document outlines the Microsoft promise of responsible AI, the responsible AI standard, industry leading frameworks, laws and regulations, methods of mitigating risk, and other assurance-providing resources. It is intended for a wide range of audiences external to Microsoft, who are interested in or involved in the development, deployment, or use of Microsoft AI. As Charlie Bell, EVP of Security at Microsoft describes in his blog, “As we watch the progress enabled by AI accelerate quickly, Microsoft is committed to investing in tools, research, and industry cooperation as we work to build safe, sustainable, responsible AI for all.” 


The commitments and standards conveyed in this paper operate at the Microsoft cloud level – these promises and processes apply to AI activity across Microsoft. Where the paper becomes product specific, its sole focus is Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365. This does not include Microsoft Copilot for Sales, Microsoft Copilot for Service, Microsoft Copilot for Finance, Microsoft Copilot for Azure, Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft Security, Microsoft Copilot for Dynamics 365, or other Copilots outside of Microsoft 365.  


At Microsoft, we comprehend the significance of trustworthy AI. We have formulated a comprehensive strategy for responsible and secure AI that zeroes in on addressing specific business challenges such as safeguarding data privacy, mitigating algorithmic bias, and maintaining transparency. This whitepaper addresses our strategy for mitigating AI risk as part of the Microsoft component of the AI Shared Responsibility Model 


The document is divided into macro sections with relevant articles within each:  



  • Responsible and Secure AI at Microsoft – this section focuses on Microsoft’s commitment to responsible AI and what this looks like in practice. The articles within address key topics including:  



  • The Office of the Responsible AI – read this to gain a deeper understanding of what comprises this division within Microsoft. 

  • The Responsible AI Standard and Impact Assessment – every Microsoft AI project must adhere to the Responsible AI Standard and have a valid impact assessment completed. 

  • Microsoft’s voluntary White House commitments – learn more about the commitments the White House made and how Microsoft shares these principles in our development and deployment practices. 

  • Artificial Generative Intelligence Security team – learn about Microsoft’s center of excellence for Microsoft’s generative AI security and the initiatives being driven by this team. 
     



  • Addressing New Risk – this section centers on the ways in which Microsoft is continuously improving its security practices and service design to mitigate new risk brought forth by the era of AI. As Brad Smith states in his blog, “Even as recent years have brought enormous improvements, we will need new and different steps to close the remaining cybersecurity gap.” This section addresses many actions Microsoft takes to address novel and preexisting risks in the era of AI. The articles within address salient topics including:  



  • The copilot copyright commitment – how Microsoft addresses the risk of customers inadvertently using copywritten material via Microsoft AI services.  

  • Updating the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) to address AI risk – the ways Microsoft has adapted our SDL to identify and prioritize AI specific risks.  

  • Copilot tenant boundaries and data protection with shared binary LLMs – this article describes how your data remains protected and secured throughout the data flow process to the copilot LLMs and back to your end user in this multi-tenant environment. 

  • Copilot data storage and processing – this section answers the question, “what are the data storage and processing commitments applicable to Microsoft 365 copilot today?” 
     



  •  AI specific regulations and frameworks for assurance – this section describes upcoming regulations relevant to artificial intelligence and how Microsoft plans to address each. Regulations and frameworks addressed include:  



  • European Union AI Act 

  • ISO 42001 AI Management System 



  • Cyber Executive Order (EO 14028) 

  • NIST AI Risk Management Framework 
     



  • Assurance Providing Resources – this comprises miscellaneous resources to providing customers assurance that Microsoft is mitigating risk as part of the shared responsibility model.   



  • Defense-in-depth: controls preventing model compromise in the production environment – this article outlines an entire Microsoft control set designed to mitigate model compromise through defense-in-depth.  


As with everything Microsoft does, this whitepaper is subject to continuous update and improvement. Please reach out to your Microsoft contacts if you have questions regarding this content; thank you for your continued support and utilization of Microsoft AI.  


 


Download the Whitepaper 


We hope this whitepaper has provided you with valuable insights into how Microsoft delivers trustworthy AI across its products and services. If you want to learn more about our responsible and secure AI strategy, you can download the full whitepaper here: https://aka.ms/TrustworthyAI. This document will give you a comprehensive overview of the Microsoft promise of responsible AI, the responsible AI standard, industry leading frameworks, laws and regulations, methods of mitigating risk, and other assurance-providing resources. You will also find detailed information on how Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 adheres to these principles and practices. Download the whitepaper today and discover how Microsoft can help you achieve your AI goals with confidence and trust. 

Microsoft Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service are now generally available

Microsoft Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service are now generally available

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Microsoft is dedicated to helping organizations transform the way people work using secure, enterprise-grade AI capabilities, no matter which business applications teams depend on. Starting today, you can seamlessly integrate role-specific Copilot capabilities into Microsoft 365 applications and popular customer relationship management (CRM) and contact center systems for sales and customer service professionals.  

Now generally available, Microsoft Copilot for Sales and Microsoft Copilot for Service bring together the power of Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 with role-specific insights and actions to streamline business processes, automate repetitive tasks, and unlock creativity. Both provide flexibility to integrate with your existing contact center and CRM systems, such as Salesforce and ServiceNow, to get more done with less effort.

Transform sales productivity with Copilot for Sales

Sellers today face more challenges than ever. A recent survey revealed that 79% of sellers are supporting more customers and accounts than the previous year.1 Gartner® research recommends that to drive better sales impact, “sellers must relinquish some control over customer interactions and give AI-powered technology—generative AI, emotion AI and digital humans—more responsibility to execute core selling activities…Let salespeople focus on where they excel: engaging buyers on a human level to understand their needs, motivations and objections, and ultimately validate that a purchase is right for them.”2

At Microsoft, we have been working hard to deliver an AI solution that would address these needs. Last fall, we announced our vision for Copilot for Sales, an AI assistant designed for sales teams to maximize productivity and close more deals. We’re excited to announce that Copilot for Sales is now generally available. Copilot for Sales builds on Copilot for Microsoft 365, enhancing it with connectivity to CRM platforms like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Salesforce Sales Cloud to bring sales-specific insights and recommendations to apps like Outlook, Microsoft Teams, and Word.

Today, Copilot for Sales helps sellers and sales managers:

  • Generate sales meeting preparation briefs in Word.
  • Summarize emails and surface relevant buying intent and budget, authority, need, timing (BANT) analysis in Outlook.
  • Generate emails in Outlook with relevant product, account, relationship, and opportunity information from their CRM system and Microsoft Graph.
  • Add leads and update CRM records directly from Outlook.
  • View meeting preparation notes and real-time sales insights during calls in Teams.
  • View sales meeting summaries in Teams with conversation analysis, sales keywords and KPIs, and suggested tasks.
  • Create collaborative deal rooms in Teams that sync with CRM data.
Product image of sales call insights in Teams.

Copilot for Microsoft 365 is also included in Copilot for Sales, providing sellers with additional productivity enhancements, like:

  • Generate presentations in PowerPoint.
  • Generate plans and organize team information in OneNote.
  • Ask questions in natural language to catch up on customer interactions using Microsoft Copilot’s chat experience.

Late this month, Copilot for Sales will also bring CRM connectivity to the Microsoft Copilot chat experience, allowing sellers and sales managers to get quick insights on conversion and win rate, sales cycle, and pipeline. Later this year, we plan to enhance Copilot experiences in Microsoft PowerPoint and OneNote as well, tailoring them to address seller-specific needs with CRM connectivity.

Early adopter customers of Copilot for Sales are already seeing an impact in their sales organizations. Avanade employees have been previewing Copilot for Sales capabilities like updating Dynamics 365 Sales records from Outlook, summarizing email threads, generating email drafts, and summarizing meetings with conversation intelligence. These AI capabilities have helped Avanade employees show their clients that they are top of mind, while helping them work more productively.

When we interviewed Copilot for Sales users at Avanade, they reported that Copilot minimizes the need to jump between different interfaces, and the email summary feature saves them 30 to 60 minutes per week. And the impact goes beyond just time savings; Copilot for Sales is improving the quality of sellers’ interactions with their customers as well.

“When our sellers can reduce the time spent on sifting through multiple channels to find what matters with Copilot for Sales, we can be more focused so that we can deliver with clients and drive our business strategy faster.”

—Jennifer Ferrara, Global Business Lead, Avanade

Product image of email summary with key sales information in Outlook.

Read more about Avanade’s adoption of Copilot for Sales.

Copilot for Sales

Maximize productivity and close more sales.

Executive presenting sales results to team.

Transform the agent experience with Copilot for Service

In December 2023, we introduced Copilot for Service—the next step in our journey to help organizations realize the benefits of generative AI by extending their existing investments in CRM and contact center solutions. We are excited to announce that Copilot for Service is now generally available.

Often, an organization’s knowledge is distributed across disparate systems—customer records and case histories in one or multiple CRM systems, along with information scattered across knowledge base articles, public websites, offline files, and more. As a result, agents are tasked with navigating multiple apps to not only access critical insights, but also then manage their engagement with customers, collaborate with internal teams, and take action. According to Gartner, “43 percent of (customer service) reps reported they were overwhelmed by the number of systems and tools needed to complete work.”3

Copilot for Service unlocks an organization’s trusted knowledge to accelerate onboarding and case resolution, improve efficiency, and automate tasks for agents in their flow of work. Without costly development time, organizations can simply point to their data and, in a few minutes, unlock generative AI-powered conversations across their knowledge bases. And for agents, they can tap into this knowledge with a copilot embedded directly in their desktop software of choice such as Salesforce, as well as the other tools they already use every day like Outlook and Teams.

a person looking at a laptop

Today, Copilot for Service can help organizations:  

  • Enable generative AI-powered conversations across all of their data with simplified point-and-click access to public websites, SharePoint, knowledge base articles, and offline files.
  • Access knowledge sources with pre-built integrations for Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Zendesk.
  • Embed a copilot in agent desktops from Salesforce and other channels to support agents where they work.
graphical user interface, text, application, Teams

Copilot for Microsoft 365 is also included in Copilot for Service. We will introduce additional features in Microsoft 365 apps beginning later this month that will integrate data from CRM systems like Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Salesforce Service Cloud including:

  • In Outlook, use Copilot to summarize and draft emails, access case summaries, browse and update CRM records, and schedule meetings informed by case summaries and other relevant information from CRM records.
  • In Teams, use Copilot to browse and update CRM records during a meeting, as well as recap meetings, suggest follow-up action items, and create tasks that can all be saved to CRM systems directly from Teams.
  • In the Microsoft Copilot chat experience, use Copilot to ask questions over cases and contacts, as well as summarize cases—all from CRM data.
graphical user interface, text, application, email
a couple of people posing for the camera

We’re thrilled to see the initial impact that our early adopter customers and partners are having with Copilot for Service. RSM, the leading provider of assurance, tax, and consulting services for the middle market, is equipping agents with the information they need to support customers without changing applications or searching through hundreds of knowledge articles.

Still frame of video that clicks through to the video on YouTube.

“Six months ago, we launched a pilot focused on leveraging Microsoft Copilot for Service and Microsoft Copilot Studio, which provides a framework to build AI-enabled business processes. We have been working to execute against use cases for our own business with a focus on practical AI, and we are thrilled to now be in a position to bring this productivity enhancing technology to help clients implement AI for their businesses.”

—Christian Hutter, RSM’s Microsoft practice leader

Woman working in a café receiving credit card payment from her customer.

Copilot for Service

Modernize your contact center with Copilot designed for service.

Take the next step

Both Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service are available now for $50 per user/month, which includes the Copilot for Microsoft 365 license. If you already have Copilot for Microsoft 365, you can purchase Copilot for Sales or Copilot for Service for an additional $20 per user/month.

Learn more about Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service.


Sources:

1. Microsoft. “Sellers’ attitudes about AI.” June 2023. An Ipsos study commissioned by Microsoft. Study included 700 participants who use professional CRM systems at organizations of at least 300 people. Industries include Financial Services, Professional Services, Manufacturing, Retail, Technology, and Healthcare.

2. Gartner Article, Focus Your Sellers on the Critical Art of Being Human, September 2023, https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/focus-your-sellers-on-the-critical-art-of-being-human
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

3. Gartner Ebook, Gartner for Customer Service The Connected Rep Deliver better customer service by enabling reps with technology, 2023, https://www.gartner.com/en/customer-service-support/trends/the-customer-service-customer-rep

The post Microsoft Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service are now generally available appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.