Inspire 2023: Viva Sales makes way for Microsoft Sales Copilot

Microsoft has revealed Microsoft Sales Copilot, the new brand name for Viva Sales that aims to improve seller productivity by making business data and processes more accessible in context of work.

"Microsoft Viva Sales, announced in June 2022, kickstarted our work of transforming seller experiences, and these capabilities are now part of Sales Copilot," wrote Microsoft CVP Emily He in a blog post announcing Sales Copilot.

In addition to existing capabilities of Viva Sales, Sales Copilot moves forward with new features including auto-generated opportunity summaries within Dynamics 365, the ability to create contextual emails based on data in Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft 365, summary views of customers based on data across systems, and real-time tips and answers served up during Teams meetings based on prompts like competitor or brand mentions by customers.

Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise and Premium customers get Sales Copilot at no additional cost, He explained. It is also available as a standalone subscription, and both are now generally available.

Microsoft first announced Viva Sales in June 2022 as the first role-based module in the Viva lineup. It reached GA in September 2022. Generative AI capabilities in Viva Sales first arrived in preview in early 2023 as one of the first business applications of Microsoft OpenAI Service and the GPT 3.5 language model. The service has been on a monthly cadence for rolling out enhancements.