Pollinger’s Productivity : April 2026

Copilot gets major model upgrades

Microsoft 365 Copilot has had two major model upgrades in quick succession. GPT-5.3 Instant arrived first, bringing faster and sharper day-to-day responses, followed by GPT-5.4 Thinking (more on this below), designed for deeper reasoning, coding, and more complex work. For users, that means Copilot Chat is becoming much more capable for both quick tasks and tougher thinking work.

Insights: This is important because better output is no longer just about prompting better, it is increasingly about choosing the right mode for the job. This is a key aspect of good training – knowing when to use a quick response model and when to switch to something that can think more deeply. Hint: Most of the time you should use a thinking model.

Agents and Edit with Copilot in Microsoft 365

Microsoft has released new chat‑based agents for Excel, Word, and PowerPoint that turn natural‑language prompts into complete, high‑quality documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. These agents are designed to remove the blank‑page problem, ask clarifying questions, and let you refine the work conversationally.

Alongside this, Edit with Copilot in Excel (formerly Agent Mode) is rolling out to let Copilot plan and run multi‑step tasks directly in the grid. It can clean and reshape data, build PivotTables, and create charts and dashboards from a single natural‑language prompt, while showing the steps it takes so you can review and adjust them. Every change Copilot makes is standard Excel content, so you can still edit formulas, ranges, formatting, and chart designs as usual, with the full “edit in the grid”. Available to Microsoft 365 Copilot Premium users although a limited version is available to those without a licence.

Insights: Big tip! Use the new chat‑based agents in Copilot Chat to generate rich first‑draft workbooks, documents, and slide decks, then use Edit with Copilot (and in‑app agent modes) inside Excel, Word, and PowerPoint to iterate and refine. Right now, Edit with Copilot is live for me in Excel, but the equivalent in‑place editing experiences for Word and PowerPoint have not yet appeared, but hopefully there’ll be here soon.

Smarter meetings and scheduling with Copilot

Copilot is also becoming more useful around meetings. In Outlook, it can now help schedule meetings by recommending suitable times and working from email threads. You can also set up focus time and apply other rules. In Teams, recaps are getting richer, including visual meeting recaps and custom recap templates. This makes follow-up, preparation, and review a lot more efficient.

Insights: Clients and delegates love using Copilot to help with meetings and these enhanced features make it even more useful Meetings create a lot of admin and friction so anything that reduces that without making the process harder is where AI starts to earn its keep.

Connectors and live business data are becoming central to Copilot

Copilot is moving further into genuinely connected work. Microsoft’s new Copilot connectors let you bring live data from tools such as Canva, HubSpot, Notion, Linear, Intercom, Google Calendar, Google Contacts and more directly into Copilot features like Researcher. That means Copilot can ground its answers and outputs in your actual business data and context, not just generic web knowledge or standalone files. Available only on Copilot Premium.

Insights: This is where Copilot becomes really valuable. Generic AI is useful but Copilot connected to your real files, systems, and live business feeds is much more useful. Note that it also makes governance, permissions, and good data setup significantly more important.

ChatGPT pushes ahead with more connections

It’s not just Copilot that has become more ‘connected’. You can now connect to specific sources such as SharePoint, OneDrive, Google Drive, and Slack. This makes ChatGPT more practical for research-heavy work and longer, more structured tasks.

Insights: Connecting to services like Sharepoint means you can run proper research, write drafts, and structure longer pieces directly against your real documents and conversations instead of endlessly copy‑pasting. A real time-saver.

GPT-5.4 Thinking is now the flagship reasoning model

GPT‑5.4 Thinking is now the flagship “reasoning” model in ChatGPT (and Copilot), designed for multi‑step logic, coding, and complex research rather than quick one‑shot answers. The headline change is that it can now show an upfront thinking plan before it executes, and let you interrupt and steer that plan mid‑response so you can adjust scope, focus, or approach while it is still working.

Under the hood, GPT‑5.4 Thinking brings stronger deep‑web research and much better context handling for long, complex tasks, especially when combined with Deep Research. It is also more token‑efficient than earlier reasoning models, which means it can tackle larger, more involved workflows without feeling as slow.

Insights: A handy change! One of the biggest frustrations with AI has been that it can head off confidently in the wrong direction. Giving users more visibility and control during the process is a real improvement. Rather than wait till the end to change your instructions, you can do so at anytime. It makes AI feel less like a black box and more like something you can guide properly.

ChatGPT becomes more useful for building apps and working with large files

ChatGPT’s interactive code blocks now make it possible to write, edit, and preview code, diagrams, and mini apps directly inside chat. The context window for GPT 5.4 Thinking mode (see above) has also expanded, which helps with large documents and more complex tasks. Projects continues to improve too, becoming more useful as working spaces as you can now connect directly to Google Drive and Slack.

Insights: ChatGPT is becoming less of a one-shot chatbot and more of a working environment. That is a big deal for anyone creating content, building resources and apps, analysing information, or prototyping ideas.

ChatGPT Go adds a cheaper paid option

OpenAI’s Go plan is now available in the UK at roughly £8 per month, giving users a lower-cost route into paid ChatGPT. At the same time, OpenAI has simplified the model picker into clearer tiers, helping users choose between faster responses and more capable reasoning.

Insights: I think this is a smart move. Not everyone needs Plus or Pro, but many people do want more than the free plan. A lower-priced entry point should help more small businesses and solo users start using ChatGPT more seriously.

Data processing and governance improve for UK organisations

Some good news for UK organisations. Microsoft now offers UK in-country data processing for Copilot interactions, which removes a barrier for some businesses and regulated sectors. On top of that, Microsoft has added more governance tools, including readiness reporting, security posture management, and better visibility into usage and adoption.

Insights: This matters more than many headline features. Lots of organisations are interested in AI, but still cautious about privacy, control, and compliance. Better governance and UK data handling make adoption easier, especially for larger organisations and sectors where those questions come up early.