Microsoft just changed the game from ‘Chatbots’ to ‘Digital Employees.’ AI Agents are just tools that write emails anymore. They can do the work: research leads, update CRMs, and manage projects.

As a top Microsoft AI solutions partner, Quisitive was at Microsoft Ignite 2025. We gathered our top takeaways from the announcements made at the conference and what these mean for your business.

Top 6 Announcements from Microsoft Ignite 2025

1. Microsoft 365 Copilot

What it is: The AI inside Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

The Upgrade: Microsoft 365 Copilot now has Agents! Microsoft announced dedicated Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Agents, enabling users to create and refine high-quality content directly from Copilot Chat or within apps using Agent Mode.

These agents leverage web data and organizational knowledge for advanced reasoning and multi-turn collaboration, supporting tasks like research, formatting, and layout design.

Outlook Copilot is also gaining new features for voice-driven email triage, one-tap prompts, and smart scheduling.

2. Work IQ

What it is: The feature that lets Copilot “remember” previous chats and understand the specific context of a company’s files.

The Upgrade: Work IQ now has Conversational Memory. This will enable Copilot to retain context across sessions, meaning it will stop asking the same questions over and over.

3. Copilot Studio

What it is: A drag-and-drop tool that enables anyone to build their own custom AI agents, regardless of their expertise.

The Upgrade: Agents can now “see” screens and click buttons on legacy apps, meaning you get more context-rich interactions.

Other key updates include automated testing to benchmark agent quality, new options for secure virtual environments to enable task automation across apps and websites, and integrated real-time security monitoring during agent execution. Additionally, unique enterprise identities for agents ensure full visibility, lifecycle control, and compliance with organizational policies.

4. Microsoft Foundry

What it is: The heavy-duty tool for software developers. Foundry is for building complex AI that connects to big systems, like SAP, Oracle, or custom apps.

The Upgrade: New Logic Apps connectors and other tools are being added to make connecting to old data much easier. With new prebuilt AI services and more custom tool extensibility, developers are better able to create and manage connections from one central interface in Microsoft Foundry.

5. Microsoft Fabric

What it is: The place where all the data lives.

The Upgrade: Agents will now be able to search through the data intelligently. Fabric IQ brings all your data together under one connected model, giving teams and AI a live, unified view of the business to make smarter decisions across apps, analytics, and agents.

6. Security

What it is: Defender, Entra, and Purview.

The Upgrade: New features in Defender are improving security across the full app lifecycle, leading to real-time visibility, critical alert prioritization, and a reduction in remediation time. Defender will also be getting improved attack disruption tooling, including predictive shielding and a threat-hunting agent.

Microsoft has announced the Entra Agent ID, which basically gives ID badges to robots, strengthening identity protection and reducing the risk of phishing and impersonation attacks.

Finally, Purview is getting enhancements designed to address challenges like managing fragmented tooling and compliance management across regions, including data security and compliance capabilities for agents.

Want to Go Deeper?

These are only 6 of many announcements to come out of Ignite this year. To dig deeper into every single feature announced at the conference, check out the Microsoft Ignite 2025 Book of News.