Microsoft is rebuilding the Copilot surface inside Outlook and Teams. The change was announced on August 21 local time and is expected to reach general availability in September 2026. Both the full-page and side pane experiences are covered, with a layout built around chat and a new control that lets people decide whether Copilot draws on their work data.

Full page and side pane are designed around different jobs

The refresh extends the Copilot cleanup Microsoft has been rolling through its products to Outlook and Teams. Navigation is simplified so that attention lands on the conversation itself.

What stands out is how deliberately the two surfaces diverge. The full-page version closely follows the new design of the standalone Microsoft Copilot app. The side pane version, by contrast, is tuned to the context of each host application, on the assumption that people use it while reading mail or following a meeting. The same assistant needs a different shape when you sit down with it than when you keep it alongside your work.

Agent discovery and interaction are part of the review as well.

Deciding for yourself whether work data is in play

The most notable functional change is the addition of Work IQ controls.

Work IQ is the layer that lets AI understand the working context accumulating in Microsoft 365, including mail, chats, documents and meetings, and put it to use in responses. Rather than retrieving items whose words happen to match, it is meant to account for what that information means inside the organization.

The new control lets people turn that reference on or off. The material you need differs between a question that depends on months of internal history and a quick pass over the paragraph in front of you. Making the layer something you switch rather than something that always runs quietly in the background carries real practical weight.

A Tasks view for work that takes time

The full-page experience gains a Tasks view. It surfaces the kind of Copilot activity that does not finish immediately, such as agent runs and scheduled chats.

The more work you hand to agents, the more time you spend waiting without knowing where a request stands. A single place to check how far something has progressed, or whether it is running at all, lowers the cost of delegating.

For administrators, the work is mostly communication

Deployment is light. The change arrives as part of a service update and is on by default, with no action required from users or administrators. Licensing, permissions and existing compliance controls are unchanged.

That leaves notification as the remaining task. A new interface generates support questions, and internal manuals, training materials and onboarding guides written against the current Copilot will no longer match what people see. With September already named, it is worth starting the inventory of documents that need updating early.

Summary

Copilot in Outlook and Teams is shifting to a chat-centered design across both the full-page and side pane experiences. General availability is expected in September 2026, and the update adds a Work IQ control that users can toggle along with a Tasks view for tracking long-running activity. It is enabled by default and requires no action, but updating internal documentation stays on the administrator's plate.