Copilot Monthly Blog — Screenshots & Vision-QA Playbook¶

Read this BEFORE capturing/placing screenshots for any monthly "What's New in M365 Copilot" recap blog. Distilled from the July 2026 recap (a ~40-image, 31-section session, 23 Jul 2026). Companion to whats-new-copilot-pack-playbook.md (the PPTX pack) and deployment-playbook.md. Sibling deliverable: the recap blog post (this doc) → then the pack + LinkedIn carousel are built from the same shots.

0. The workflow that works (Sush's preferred rhythm)¶

Go section-by-section in blog order (1→N), one feature at a time: 1. Atlas states what the feature is + what's changing (so Sush confirms understanding). 2. Sush captures a new shot OR Atlas reviews the existing one. 3. Atlas fixes/tweaks the notes if reality differs from the draft text. 4. Place → annotate → vision-QA → validate → move on.

Track progress in a SQL table (blog_sections: num, title, img_status, existing_imgs, review_verdict, notes) — gives instant "X of N done" visibility and a clean handoff. Worked great.

Deliver in small confirmable steps. Sush drops shots as he captures; grab the newest Downloads\*.png after a timestamp, don't re-scan everything.

1. Capture & verification (Rule #8 — never skip)¶

🔴 Filenames LIE. Greenshot names files with the stale/active window title (e.g. ...-Notepad.png for a Copilot shot). ALWAYS view the actual pixels; never judge by filename. This bit us repeatedly — it's the #1 rule.
After placing every webp, view it and write a one-line pixel observation + verdict (✅ MATCH / ⚠️ PARTIAL / ❌ MISMATCH) to the session's image-audit-<date>.md. The written artifact is the compliance proof, not a verbal "I checked."
Large webps (>~1500px wide) fail the view tool ("Failed to view"). Render a downscaled PNG first: python -c "from PIL import Image; im=Image.open(r'<src>').convert('RGB'); w,h=im.size; im=(im.resize((1200,int(h*1200/w))) if w>1200 else im); im.save(r'$env:TEMP\_qa.png')" → view _qa.png.
Find newest captures fast: Get-ChildItem Downloads\*.png | Where LastWriteTime -gt <ts> | Sort LastWriteTime. Exclude your own temp files (_annot*, _comp*, _zoom*, _inspect*).

2. Annotation house style¶

Red = (222,45,38), width 3px, rounded (ImageDraw.rounded_rectangle([x0,y0,x1,y1], radius=8, outline=(222,45,38), width=3)). Box the single key element the section is about (the new model, the "Submit" option, the setting name, the toggle).
Verify placement by viewing the annotated PNG BEFORE converting to webp. Boxes often need 1–2 coordinate iterations (a box landed one text-line too low; a crop cut the icon in half). Cheap to redo, ugly if shipped.
Convert: Image.open(src).convert('RGB').save(dest,'WEBP',quality=88,method=6).
Tiny shots (taskbar icons, ~180px): don't ship them raw. Inspect at 6× zoom first to find the exact icon bounds (I cut the running icon in half by cropping x62 when it started at x40), then build a labeled composite — two states side-by-side (e.g. "Running — live gradient" / "Complete — green tick") on a dark canvas with Segoe UI labels (C:/Windows/Fonts/segoeui.ttf). Scale icons to equal height with Image.LANCZOS.
Paint out distractions (an error toast, an MCP-connection-failed banner) by sampling the bg pixel (im.getpixel()) and filling a rectangle with it — blends seamlessly on flat backgrounds.

3. PII discipline (tenant shots leak real data)¶

Mask corp emails (paint white/bg rectangle over user@microsoft.com), neutralise avatars (grey ellipse over the face), crop names off people-result lists. Watch for the signed-in real account appearing in Copilot Studio / share dialogs.
Demo-tenant fictional names (Emily Davis, Contoso, Zava, agent names) are fine. First name in a greeting ("Ready when you are, Susanth") is fine (author's own).
Never bundle full name + email + role in one visible shot.

4. When the feature ISN'T in Sush's tenant¶

Order of preference: 1. Search internal first — glob prior monthly-recap image folders (static/images/blog/copilot-<month>-2026/, m365-agent-builder/, etc.). We reused the scheduled-prompt config dialog and found a share-agents-teams shot from past blogs (Sush's own content — zero copyright risk). 2. Search external for an OFFICIAL Microsoft image — Microsoft-owned/marketing images (recognisable by the Zava/Contoso demo brand, "Preview" badges, marketing polish). Use with an official-* filename + alt="Official Microsoft image…". 3. Add an honest disclaimer caption when using a borrowed/official shot because the feature isn't in the tenant: <p style="font-size:0.9rem;opacity:0.8;border-left:3px solid var(--border);padding:… "><em>…hadn't rolled out to my demo tenant yet, so the screenshot is Microsoft's own — not one of mine.</em></p> - 🔴 REJECT third-party bloggers' screenshots (e.g. an MVP's capture that shows their copyrighted book/content). Copyright risk on a monetised blog; a disclaimer does NOT fix it. Sush initially picked one of these — flag it, offer the official alternative.

Official monthly-roundup image gate — mandatory from August 2026¶

The official Tech Community monthly roundup is an image source in its own right. Do not wait until a colleague sends it after publication.

Search the current month + previous two months using the discovery gate in whats-new-copilot-pack-playbook.md.
Extract every roundup image URL and Microsoft-provided alt text before selecting any.
Build an inventory with:
source article + image URL;
published/modified date;
Microsoft-owned provenance;
literal pixel observation written while viewing;
intended blog section;
USE / SKIP + reason;
required demo/official-image variance caption.
Vision-review every USE candidate with view. Microsoft alt text helps discovery but is not proof of what the pixels show.
Re-run the image inventory if the roundup's modified date changes.

June 2026 tuition: Microsoft's late roundup contained 30 first-party images. It published six days after Sush's June recap and changed again on 14 July. The future workflow therefore checks at month-end, +7, +14 and the next monthly run.

5. Accuracy reconciliation (fix the notes when reality differs)¶

UI name ≠ release-note name: the PowerPoint picker showed "MAI Image 2.5 Flash" but the release note said "MAI-Image-2-Efficient" (different models in the same family). Options: (A) match the UI, (B) keep the release-note name + a note, (C) neutral title + name both in body ← Sush's pick. Verify the official name via microsoft_docs_search before deciding.
🔴 Verify "is it coming" BEFORE writing "coming soon" (Rule #13). Sush assumed Share-to-a-Teams-team was "a separate feature coming in future"; the roadmap showed it's GA (March 2026), just rolling out. Correct disclaimer = "rolling out, appears in this same dialog," NOT "future." Fast roadmap lookup: web_fetch https://mc.merill.net/message/RM<id> returns clean roadmap text incl. the GA date (much easier than the JS-heavy roadmap site).

6. Editorial calls¶

Under-representation > misleading (Rule #8): if a shot doesn't match the section, remove it rather than keep it. We removed a "Claude-in-Excel" image from the Agents roundup — it illustrated neither bullet. Leave a section text-only rather than force a wrong/generic shot.
Same prompt, different annotation is a legit way to illustrate two adjacent features (Teams-meeting ref boxed for #8, style-reuse ref boxed for #9 — same underlying shot).
Pair prompt→result where it tells the story (Agent Mode prompt + finished deck; brand-kit picker + on-brand output).
Portrait/phone shots: cap width so they don't dominate — max-width:340px (phone), 400–480px (narrow panels/composites), display:block; margin:… auto to centre.

7. "Fade off" reorder (image-less sections to the end)¶

Sush likes the blog to fade from image-rich → text-only. Group the no-image sections at the tail. - Usually only 1–2 sections are out of place (the rest are already at the end). Move them + renumber the H2 headings. - Renumbering changes the auto-generated anchors (## 24. Title → #24-title). You MUST update every Quick-Jump / cross-ref link to the changed anchors. - Hugo/goldmark anchor rule: lowercase, drop punctuation (periods removed → "2.5"→"25"), spaces→hyphens, em-dash " — " → double-hyphen "--". - Filename≠section-number is fine after a reorder (e.g. lab-25-defender-agents under section #24). Don't rename — the blog refs by filename; renaming is cosmetic + risky.

8. Validation (every time)¶

node scripts\check-blog-html.mjs after EVERY image placement and after the reorder — it validates alt text, src file existence, and Quick-Jump anchor resolution. Must be 0 errors.
Verify anchors on the LIVE preview (Rule #14): fetch http://localhost:1314/blog/<slug>/ and confirm each changed id="…" heading + its href="#…" link both exist. check-blog-html passing ≠ rendered-correct until you check the surface.
Orphan cleanup: after swaps, grep the blog for the old filename → confirm 0 references → then delete. Deleted 6 orphans this session safely.

9. Rules that always apply¶

STAGED ONLY — Sush reviews before any deploy (Rule #2 / #14). No git push in the screenshot phase.
Plain English, no jargon — it's Sush's voice (mum / 12-yo test).
Ask before adding new content sections (credits, notes) — but fixing notes to match reality is expected and welcome.

10. Two-phase handoff pattern¶

This work spans sessions. Write a handoff with: current state, the section→image map, disclaimers/captions to check, the webp-view gotcha, validation commands, and the kickoff line. Save alongside image-audit-<date>.md. A deep SME + fresh-eyes vision-QA pass is best done in a fresh-context session after the placement session (context fills up fast on a 40-image run).

Set 23 Jul 2026 from the July recap. Update after each monthly run with any new gotcha.