Last Monday, 9 March 2026, Microsoft announced Wave 3 of Microsoft 365 Copilot. Wave 1 put an assistant beside your work and Wave 2 added Pages and the first agents. Wave 3 goes further: Copilot now does the work, with agents that run multi-step tasks, work directly inside your documents and are governed like any other identity in your tenant. Microsoft calls this “Frontier Transformation.” Here’s what was announced and what it means for your licensing.
1. Copilot Cowork: delegate work, not just prompts
The headline feature is Copilot Cowork, which handles long-running, multi-step work across Microsoft 365. You give it a goal and it breaks the goal into tasks, works through your email, files, calendar and Teams conversations, and shows its progress as it goes. You can watch, step in and redirect it at any point. A task can take minutes or hours.
Cowork is built with Anthropic. It uses Claude’s reasoning and the same kind of “agentic harness” as Anthropic’s own Cowork product. The important difference for enterprises is that Microsoft’s version runs in the cloud, inside your Microsoft 365 tenant. It respects existing permissions and sensitivity labels, saves files to OneDrive and SharePoint, and has enterprise data protection by default.
Availability: a research preview with a limited group of customers, opening to the Frontier program (Microsoft’s early-access program) from March 2026.
2. Agent Mode inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
Copilot no longer lives only in a side panel. With the new agentic capabilities it creates, edits and refines content directly in the document:
- Excel: builds analyses with real, working formulas you can inspect.
- Word: drafts and restructures documents grounded in your organization’s content.
- PowerPoint: creates decks that follow your company’s brand kit.
- Outlook: coordinates email and scheduling, with agents that can schedule meetings and send email.
Every change is visible and can be undone. Availability: Word and Excel are generally available. PowerPoint and Outlook will roll out over the coming months, with the scheduling and email agents expected this spring.
3. Chat becomes the starting point
Copilot Chat is now a place to create and get work done, not just ask questions. From one conversation you can call the Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook agents, and third-party agents from Dynamics 365, Power Apps, Adobe, monday.com and Figma. You can also modify a document, spreadsheet, deck or email directly from chat.
4. Work IQ: the context layer
Under all of this sits Work IQ, the intelligence layer that gives Copilot the context of your work: files, meetings, chats, email and how you collaborate. Work IQ is what lets Cowork and the in-app agents produce work that fits your organization rather than generic output.
5. Multi-model Copilot: Claude and GPT side by side
Copilot is officially multi-model. Anthropic’s Claude models are now available in mainline Copilot Chat through the Frontier program, alongside the newest OpenAI GPT models. Copilot picks the best model for each task automatically. For IT, this is another setting to review: check whether Anthropic models are enabled in your tenant and whether that fits your data-processing policies.
6. Agent 365: govern agents like users
As agents multiply, you need to manage them. Agent 365 is Microsoft’s control plane for observing, securing and governing agents across the organization. It provides an agent registry, visibility, access controls and lifecycle management, and integrates with the Microsoft 365 admin center, Entra, Defender and Purview. In practice, agents get managed the same way you already manage users and devices.
Availability and price: generally available on 1 May 2026 at $15 per user per month (≈ €13.07).
7. Microsoft 365 E7: the Frontier Suite
The licensing news: a new top-tier suite, Microsoft 365 E7 “The Frontier Suite”, available on 1 May 2026 at $99 per user per month (≈ €86.27), with and without Teams. It bundles:
| Component | Standalone list price (per user / month) |
|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 E5 | $60 (€52.28) |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot | $30 (€26.14) |
| Agent 365 | $15 (€13.07) |
| Microsoft Entra Suite | $12 (€10.46) |
| Total if bought separately | $117 (€101.95) |
| Microsoft 365 E7 | $99 (€86.27), a saving of $18 (€15.68) per user |
If you already have E5 and Copilot and plan to govern agents seriously, E7 is worth modelling. If you only need Copilot for part of your users, keep E5 plus Copilot add-ons for those users and compare the cost.
What should you do now?
✅ Join the Frontier program with a pilot group to try Cowork and Claude in Copilot Chat early.
✅ Review permissions and sensitivity labels. Agents that act on your behalf can reach anything your users can, so oversharing becomes a bigger risk.
✅ Decide your multi-model policy: whether to allow Anthropic models, and for which users.
✅ Inventory your existing agents (Copilot Studio, SharePoint, third-party) before Agent 365 arrives, so you know what you’ll be governing.
✅ Model E7 against your current licensing before your next renewal.
Wave 3 moves the question from “How do we get people to use Copilot?” to “How much work are we comfortable delegating to agents, and how do we govern them?” Organizations that sort out governance now will get the most from it.
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