Outlook’s Contact Cards Grow Up: External Context Lands in January 2026

Coming January 2026, external information on contact cards in Outlook.

A neat feature for some organizations, but why is this important? In the background is the expansion of Copilot's knowledge of your organizational context, and, potentially with the fullness of time, one of the pillars that will support Microsoft's Work IQ promises.

More information on this specific feature is available in Message center in MC1193692, but the part I find most illuminating about what sits underneath this type of capability is the linked help document: Microsoft 365 Copilot connectors for people data.

This highlights that Microsoft 365 Copilot Connectors (aka Graph Connectors) provide the tooling that underpins ingesting this data, and that the expected surfaces where it turns up include those profile cards, alongside Microsoft Search, Org Explorer AND Copilot chat.

Organizational context continues to be a tricky problem. And I for one don't believe that for most organizations the data inside Microsoft 365 by default holds all the answers. To make Copilot and agents understand the organization in the way humans do requires more diverse context, so stringing together a web of benefits in joining all that information together in the Microsoft Graph is a logical priority.

In many really important ways, I don't think we yet know how John in the corner of the finance office knows all the things he does about the esoteric vagaries of your business, so there is no one picture of how to turn Copilot into John. But it seems reasonable that ever larger context drawn in from a more complete picture of all business data couldn't hurt.

I'm certainly excited to see where the Work IQ journey takes us in 2026. How about you?

First posted on Linkedin on 12/16/2025 -> View Linkedin Post Here