{
"title": "Microsoft 365 Copilot's UI Overhaul Reinstates the App Launcher and Introduces Collaborative AI Notebooks",
"content": "Microsoft has begun rolling out a substantial interface redesign for its Microsoft 365 Copilot, addressing months of user feedback by restoring the familiar \"waffle\" app launcher and adding several new features aimed at making the AI assistant more practical and less intrusive. The update, detailed in a March 18, 2025 blog post, introduces a compact navigation bar, a dedicated Copilot Notebook for collaborative editing, agent management controls, Work IQ search, and the ability to select from multiple AI models. It marks the most significant visual and functional evolution of Copilot since its deep integration into Office apps last year.
A Smarter, Less Cluttered Copilot
The most visible change is the return of the app launcher grid—the nine-dot \"waffle\" menu that has been a staple of Microsoft 365 for years. In previous versions, when users opened the Copilot pane in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, the app launcher was buried or absent, forcing them to switch windows or use the taskbar to navigate between Office applications. Now, a dedicated app launcher button sits prominently in the Copilot toolbar, allowing quick, one-click switching to any Microsoft 365 app without leaving the AI pane. It’s a small button with a grid of dots that, when clicked, reveals a flyout with all your Microsoft 365 applications—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, OneNote, and more—just as it did for years in the browser-based Office experience. The difference now is that it resides inside the Copilot pane, so you never have to leave the AI context to jump into an Excel spreadsheet or a Teams channel.
The overall layout has been streamlined. The Copilot sidebar now features a thin left-hand rail with icons for core functions: chat, Notebooks, agents, and settings. This \"compact navigation\" reduces visual clutter and ensures the AI assistant no longer dominates the screen real estate. The chat interface itself is cleaner, with a more conversational flow and fewer UI elements competing for attention.
Alongside the waffle menu, Copilot Notebooks is a notable new addition. Notebooks provide a dedicated, shareable canvas where users can iterate on content with the AI assistant in a more structured way than a simple chat thread. Think of it as a persistent document where you and Copilot co-write, refine, and organize text, data, or outlines. Changes are tracked, and the notebook can be shared with colleagues—a feature that moves Copilot beyond one-off queries into sustained, collaborative projects. Copilot Notebooks breaks the traditionally ephemeral nature of AI chat. Instead of a conversation that disappears when you close the pane, a Notebook is a living document stored in your OneDrive, complete with version history. You can ask Copilot to draft sections, and then you or a coworker can edit directly in the Notebook, with Copilot assisting on request. It’s a blend of a collaborative document and a dynamic AI assistant, much like a whiteboard session that never ends.
Microsoft has also added agent and co-work controls. This allows users to manage autonomous AI agents (previously called \"plugins\") that can perform tasks across apps. For example, an agent might monitor your inbox for specific messages or pull data from a database into a spreadsheet. The new interface gives you a dashboard to see which agents are active, grant or revoke permissions, and define how they co-work with you. This is a clear nod toward a future where multiple AI helpers operate simultaneously within your digital workspace. The agent dashboard isn’t just an on/off switch. You can view an activity log showing what each agent has done—emails sent, files accessed, data analyzed—and set granular permissions. For instance, you might allow a travel booking agent to access your calendar and email but not your HR files. This level of detail is crucial for enterprises adopting AI at scale.
Work IQ search, another new capability, is a universal search tool that understands context across your Microsoft 365 environment. Instead of searching for \"Q3 budget\" and getting a list of files with that phrase, Work IQ can find related emails, Teams messages, and even relevant chunks of data inside those documents, all organized by relevance. It leverages Microsoft Graph to connect dots across your organization’s knowledge base. Work IQ search transforms the Copilot chat into a research powerhouse. Suppose you’re working on a slide deck about sales performance. Instead of manually gathering data from Excel, CRM, and last quarter’s emails, you can type ‘find our top 5 sales figures by region last quarter and summarize them in a table’—and Work IQ will pull the right numbers from your files, emails, and even Teams chats where the data was discussed.
Selectable AI models give power users the ability to choose which large language model powers their Copilot interactions. Initially, options may include OpenAI’s GPT-4o (the default) and perhaps other models optimized for speed, reasoning, or creative tasks. This flexibility is a direct response to enterprises that want to balance performance, cost, and capability for different workloads.
Finally, Microsoft has expanded integrations with third-party apps and services. The redesign includes a more discoverable app store within Copilot where you can connect tools like Salesforce, Jira, or custom line-of-business apps, making the assistant a true hub for all your work data.
The update is available now for Microsoft 365 Copilot commercial customers and will reach enterprise licensees through a phased rollout over April and May 2025. Microsoft hasn't specified a timeline for Education and Government tenants, though they typically follow within a few months.
The Practical Impact for Different Audiences
For the average Microsoft 365 user—someone who regularly works in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams—the redesigned Copilot is a welcome relief from digital clutter. The return of the waffle menu alone will save dozens of clicks and context switches per day. If you live inside Office apps, you can now move fluidly between them while keeping the AI pane open, asking questions or refining documents without losing momentum. The compact navigation means Copilot takes up less space on your screen, which is especially important on laptops with smaller displays. The cleaner chat interface helps you focus on the task rather than the tool, and the Notebooks feature transforms Copilot from a quick Q&A bot into a thinking partner that can help draft long-form reports, project plans, or meeting summaries that you and your team can refine over time.
For power users and professionals who rely on advanced data analysis, the ability to select AI models may be a game changer. If you need a creative brainstorm, you might opt for a model tuned for idea generation; if you need code assistance or complex calculations, a different model might be more accurate. The agent controls allow you to automate repetitive workflows across multiple apps without writing code, potentially saving hours each week.
IT administrators and enterprise decision-makers will appreciate the new governance features. The agent dashboard gives admins visibility into which AI assistants are operating in their tenant, what data they access, and how they interact with users. This addresses long-standing concerns about data security and compliance. Moreover, Work IQ search can be centrally configured to respect organizational data boundaries, ensuring sensitive information doesn’t surface inappropriately.
Developers and ISVs benefit from the expanded third-party integration model, which now supports deeper embeddings into the Copilot interface. This opens the door for industry-specific agents and connectors that can pull live data from CRM, ERP, or custom databases right into the AI chat.
For home users or those on Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans, the redesign may arrive later—historically, these subscriber tiers receive feature updates after the commercial rollout. The core navigation improvements and Notebooks are likely to appear under the personal Copilot experience, though some enterprise-focused features like agent controls or Work IQ may be limited or absent.
How Microsoft Arrived at This Redesign
The journey to this redesigned Copilot started in March 2023, when Microsoft first unveiled Microsoft 365 Copilot, integrating GPT-4 into its productivity suite. Early demos showed a sidebar that could generate whole documents from a sentence, but the first general availability in November 2023 focused on a chat pane that, while powerful, often felt tacked on. Users quickly complained that the Copilot pane, once opened, took over the workspace and lacked easy navigation to other apps. The absence of the app launcher was a particular pain point; the waffle menu had been a hallmark of Office navigation since its introduction in Office 2013, and its disappearance frustrated users who relied on it for quick app switching.
Throughout 2024, Microsoft iterated with small updates—adding context from emails, improving prompt suggestions, and introducing a \"work\" tab. But the fundamental layout remained unchanged. By late 2024, competitors like Google’s Gemini in Workspace and Apple’s haptic AI features raised the bar for integrated, unobtrusive AI. Meanwhile, enterprise feedback indicated that without better agent controls and model selection, Copilot risked becoming a one-size-fits-all tool that didn’t fit many.
The March 2025 redesign is Microsoft’s answer. It’s not just a visual polish; it’s a rethinking of how AI should coexist with the apps you already know. The restoration of the waffle menu is a symbol of this shift—recognizing that AI should enhance, not replace, the existing user experience. The addition of Notebooks draws inspiration from the beloved OneNote and from Google’s AI-powered collaborative documents, acknowledging that AI work is often iterative and social.
Getting Started with the New Copilot
The redesigned Copilot is rolling out gradually to commercial customers with Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses. If you are an admin, you can check the Microsoft 365 admin center for the feature update status under Message Center. The update will appear automatically when it reaches your tenant, but you may need to restart your Office applications to see the changes. For end users, once the update is live, you’ll notice a new “Copilot” icon in the left rail of supported apps, or you can open it from the ribbon. The waffle menu will be a permanent icon in the Copilot toolbar.
To make the most of the new features:
- Explore Copilot Notebooks: Try starting a new project—like a report or a proposal—in a Notebook instead of a document. Use the “Share” button to invite colleagues and co-edit in real time with AI suggesting edits.
- Manage agents: If you have permissions, open the agent dashboard (the robot icon in the Copilot sidebar) and review which agents are active. Disable any you don’t recognize and experiment with enabling useful ones like the “Email Summarizer” or “Excel Data Bot.”
- Switch AI models: Look for a model selection dropdown in the Copilot settings or chat interface. If available, test different models on tasks that require accuracy (like data analysis) versus creativity (like drafting content) to see which works best for you.
- Customize your Work IQ: Adjust your search settings to include the apps and data sources most relevant to your role. This can be done under the Copilot settings gear icon.
What's Next for Copilot
This redesign signals Microsoft’s commitment to making Copilot more personal, collaborative, and controllable. We expect further customization options, including the ability to create personal AI assistants with specific personalities or knowledge areas. The agent ecosystem will likely grow, with Microsoft encouraging developers to build specialized agents for vertical industries like healthcare, finance, and education. And as competition heats up, we may see Copilot integrated even more deeply into Windows itself, following the example of the Windows Copilot sidebar.
For now, the redesigned Microsoft 365 Copilot feels like a mature step forward—one