Important M365 Sales Agent features coming in 2026 Wave 1 you need to know!
If you thought the 2026 Release Wave 1 story stopped at Dynamics 365, think again, because the Sales Agent (previously known as Copilot for Sales) is where things start to get really interesting. In my previous articles, I walked through what’s coming for Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and Contact Center. Those updates are powerful on their own, but they only tell part of the story. The real transformation happens when you layer in AI capabilities like Copilot for Sales, bringing AI directly into the tools sellers live in every day, like Outlook, Teams, and beyond. This wave is less about adding more features and more about reshaping how sellers actually work. We’re seeing deeper contextual insights, more proactive AI-driven assistance, and tighter integration across the Microsoft ecosystem. The result? Less time spent on admin work, and more time focused on building relationships and closing deals. Let’s dive into what’s coming and what it means for your sales teams.
Link meetings to CRM records automatically with AI
Yes you read that right! What used to be a manual step will now be handled by the Sales Agent! When a seller schedules a new meeting, the Sales Agent looks at the details, (who’s invited, what it’s about) and soft-links it to your CRM. It’ll try to match it to the right open opportunity first. If nothing’s a strong enough fit, it links it to the account instead. Either way, sellers will get the right context without lifting a finger. And don’t worry, they’re still in control. They can confirm the CRM record the meeting is linked to, swap it, or remove it anytime. This is one of those features that sounds small, but it’s fixing a real problem. Manual linking gets skipped all the time, which means missed insights. Now, opportunity and account data just show up in a seller’s meeting prep automatically, so they can spend less time searching for CRM records and more time selling. And yes, it gets better over time. The matching is AI-driven and confidence-based, starting with soft links and only locking in when you confirm. The more you interact with it, the smarter it gets. And to make it easier on admins, this is not a feature that will need to be enabled, this functionality will become available automatically!
Capture opportunity notes using voice in Sales Agent
This seems to be a small feature but it’s one of my favorites! How often are sellers on the road, driving from one customer to the next? And how much time is spent on updating CRM? Most of them probably say “I’ll do it later!” Well guess what! You can now use Sales Agent in Outlook Mobile to update your opportunities by just talking. This is all about speed and accuracy. With this feature, sellers can capture notes while they’re still fresh, no longer trying to remember what was said three hours (or three days) later. And because the agent is matching the input to the right opportunity, data stays clean without having to think about it. This is not just dumping raw notes into CRM. The Sales Agent structures everything, like meeting context, key points, next steps, etc. so opportunity records stay consistent and useful for the whole team. The matching is smart too. Sellers don’t need to say the exact opportunity name. It can figure things out based on partial names, the account, or even just what sellers say conversationally. And if there’s any confusion, it’ll ask before saving, so you’re not accidentally updating the wrong deal. I believe this is one of those features that’s going to drive real adoption. Updating CRM will now feel like a quick conversation sellers can have between meetings, in the car (safely, of course), or wherever your day takes them.
Access and analyze sales data with Sales agent chat experiences
This feature has been in preview since December 2025 and I’ve written an article about this which you can access here. This feature gives sellers a conversational way to access everything across your sales tools; CRM, Teams, meetings, all of it. You just ask, and it pulls together the insights for you. Need to prepare for a meeting? Get a full account summary in seconds. New account? Quickly see who’s worked with them and what matters most. Stuck deal? Surface risks, past follow-ups, and even find teammates who’ve solved similar issues. Sellers won’t have to spend time digging for information anymore, they can just ask for it!
View AI-powered opportunity summaries in Sales agent
Getting a good understanding of an opportunity usually means spending a lot of time digging through CRM, emails, Teams chats, meeting notes… trying to stitch everything together and hoping you didn’t miss something important. This is the problem that this feature is fixing. Instead of sellers having to piece all of this information together, this gives them a complete, structured view of their deal in one place. It pulls in CRM data, customer interactions, recent activity, etc. and turns it into a clean, easy-to-digest summary so they can immediately understand what’s going on and what to do next. And this isn’t just a basic recap. It’s extremely useful!
The agent provides a full breakdown of the opportunity including details from the account, deal information, products, quotes, and more, all organized in a way that makes sense. On top of that, it brings in data from emails and meetings, like customer questions, requests, engagement trends, and even sentiment.
Besides providing a summary, the agent also creates clear, prioritized actions on what to do next with details like who owns the actions, when they’re due, and where they came from. Overdue items, things due this week, what’s coming up, it’s all laid out. And if sellers want more information, they can just ask questions like: “What are the risks on this deal?” or “How engaged is the customer?” and they’ll get instant answers based on everything happening across CRM and recent interactions!
Administrators can configure how these summaries are structured, what data shows up, and how it aligns to a sales process so that it fits to how the team sells.
Configure record summaries easily in Sales Agent
We’ve already had the ability to customize an account summary in Sales Agent. Unfortunately, the problem was that setup wasn’t always in one place, which could lead to inconsistencies in how those summaries showed up. With this update that issue has been resolved. Admins get a single, unified configuration experience to control both the data and the AI instructions that generate the summary. And this is where it gets really powerful: you can now reference CRM data directly in your AI instructions. So instead of generic summaries, you’re guiding Sales Agent to use the business context that matters to your organization. Admins can also have control over how fresh the data needs to be. For example, they can define how recent notes and past insights must be before they show up in the summary. Think about this: no more outdated or irrelevant information cluttering the summary.
Add custom insights to record summaries in Sales Agent
As mentioned above, the Sales Agentalready gives sellers great summaries from your CRM but for most organizations that is not the only place where all the sales context resides. Usually there is valuable insight sitting in other tools like conversation intelligence platforms, third-party apps, and previously that meant jumping between systems to get the full picture. This feature changes that! We can now bring insights from any sales application directly into account and opportunity summaries in Sales Agent. So instead of switching back and forth between tools, everything shows up in one unified view. This will allow sellers to see the whole story, not just what’s tracked in CRM, but what’s happening everywhere else too.
Administrators can configure exactly what gets pulled in and how it’s presented, so it aligns with sales process and the tools the sales team uses.
Configure Sales Agent starter prompts across applications
Out of the box, the Sales Agentgives sellers starter prompts, a set of predefined prompts sellers can use when talking to the agent. With this feature admins can take full control and tailor these prompts to how the sales team works. Admins can centrally configure all the starter prompts in one place, and customize them based on where sellers are working, whether that’s CRM, Outlook, or Teams. For example, in Outlook, prompts can focus on emails and meetings. In CRM they can guide sellers toward account insights or deal progression. It’s the same Sales Agent, but the experience adapts to the context. Because it’s all managed from a single admin experience, you get consistency across the board while still keeping things tailored to each app. The impact here is simple: sellers don’t have to think about how to use Sales Agent, they’re automatically guided right away. Now that’s how you drive real adoption!
Control AI insights generation by meeting sensitivity labels
This is a must have features that solves a big concern that a lot of organizations have: AI + sensitive data. With this update, we will get full control over which meetings can be used for AI-powered insights. So organizations will not be stuck choosing between using AI or locking everything down. This allows organizations to strike the right balance. Admin will be able to decide which meetings are allowed to be used for things like meeting prep, recaps, customer communication summaries, and Sales Agentchat. And just as important, meetings that should be excluded. For example, if a meeting is labeled something like ‘Highly Confidential’, we can automatically prevent it from being used for any AI insights. This is all managed in one place, right in the Sales app admin settings and this will be enabled automatically. This allows organizations to enable AI where it adds value, while still protecting the conversations that need to stay locked down and that’s how you scale responsibly!
Engage prospects faster with Sales Agent-enriched leads
This feature is solving a pretty simple but expensive problem: sellers don’t have time to thoroughly research every inbound lead. And because that research is scattered across CRM data, emails, the web, and third-party sources, a lot of leads either get delayed or don’t get the right level of attention at all. Sales Agent changes that completely. Instead of sellers digging through systems, the agent reviews leads, pulls together data from CRM, external sources, and business context, and turns it into a clear, structured summary. Sellers get a quick view of who the leads are, what they care about, and whether it’s worth engaging. And more importantly, they get the insight needed to personalize their outreach instead of sending generic intro emails that (usually) go nowhere. Because here’s the difference: Sales Agent isn’t just summarizing data, it connects the dots! It can surface things like past wins or losses with that account, recent company activity, expansion signals, and business challenges that matter right now. As I mentioned earlier, that’s the kind of context that normally takes hours to assemble! Then it goes one step further: it helps sellers act on it. When they’re ready to reach out, the agent can generate a personalized email based on all that research. Not a template. Not a generic ‘Hi {First Name}’ message, but actual context-driven messaging that makes the prospect feel like sellers already understand their business. Under the hood, it’s doing three key things:
- Researching leads using CRM + web + external data
- Generating insights that help you qualify faster
- Creating personalized outreach you can send immediately or refine
From an admin perspective, this functionality is fully configurable so it aligns with organizations’ business rules and sales motions.
Scale your sales team to grow your pipeline with Sales Development Agent
The Sales Development Agent is (currently in preview): The Sales Development agent is an autonomous AI seller that works 24/7 to engage and qualify leads. Instead of waiting for a human seller to manually review and contact every new lead, it works in the background using leads from CRM or assigned lists of contacts and accounts. It then proactively engages those leads in real conversations (not just scripted responses) where it can answer common questions, gather context, and ask qualification questions to understand whether there’s real potential. As the conversation progresses, the agent evaluates whether the lead meets defined qualification criteria. If it does, the lead is handed off to a human seller along with the full conversation history, key insights, and context gathered during the interaction. This ensures the seller isn’t starting cold; they already know what the prospect cares about and where the opportunity stands. Below is a video of the Sales Development Agent.
View Sales Development agent metrics in Sales agent
This update builds on the previous feature. This feature gives agent managers clear, built-in visibility into the performance of the Sales Development agent mentioned above, right inside M365 Sales agent. This means we can instantly see how the Sales Development agent is performing and what impact it’s having on the business. We’ll get key metrics like how many leads were contacted, how many were escalated, and how many were successfully handed off to sellers. But it doesn’t stop at dashboards. We can also drill into individual leads the agent is actively working on. That means we can see the full activity history, conversation context, and engagement details behind each lead so we’re not just looking at numbers, you’re seeing the why behind them. Everything is surfaced in one place, making it easier to spot what’s working, where the agent is strong, and where it might need tuning or support.
Use Sales agent in Outlook mobile
This feature makes the Sales agent available where sellers already live; inside the Outlook mobile app. That means they can access their Dynamics 365 Sales or Salesforce CRM data directly in Outlook mobile using natural-language chat, without switching between apps. If a seller needs context fast they can pull up key account details and opportunity info in seconds, like deal status, health, ownership, and customer profiles. All from CRM, right from your phone. If a seller is heading into a customer meeting they can quickly catch up on past discussions linked to that account or opportunity, so they’re not walking in blind or trying to remember what was said last time. When it’s time to meet the customer, they get mobile-friendly meeting briefs that highlight what matters most so they can focus on the conversation, not the prep scramble. I hope you enjoyed this article! Be sure to check in again soon or subscribe here to never miss another post!
