October 2nd, 2024

Latest enhancements to Copilot workflows in Visual Studio: Move seamlessly from Copilot in Quick Info and more…

Sinem Akinci
Product Manager II

There have been new integrations added to Copilot workflows in Visual Studio to make it even more seamless to navigate between in-editor activities and the Chat window that has context of global workspace, conversational history, and more to get the most out of Copilot, wherever you are.

With the latest updates, you can streamline your workflow with slight tweaks and follow-up questions, allowing Copilot to provide the most relevant set of suggestions for your workflows. These include enhancements to inline chat and code completions in 17.11 and Copilot in quick info in 17.12 Preview 1.

Refine Completions with Inline Chat

You can now use inline chat to refine the completions provided to you by GitHub Copilot. Instead of pressing Tab to accept, you can press Alt + / to modify and open an inline chat session and diff viewer.Copilot Completions with the hover option to modify using Alt+/From here, you can interact with Copilot to adjust the completions provided to you.

A diff viewer with Copilot completions with an inline suggestion from user to add an error case.Copilot will then tailor the completions provided based on your inline chat message, which you can then modify or accept.Completions provided with error handling in the middle.

You can learn more about refining GitHub Copilot completions in the VS Blog on refining completions.

Ask follow-up questions about Copilot-generated Quick Info in Chat Window

Want to ask any follow-up questions on Copilot-generated summaries of symbols? Now, whenever you invoke Copilot in the Quick Info hover over a symbol, you will have an option to transition the conversation to the Chat window.Option to continue in chat in the Copilot-generated quick info.

In the Chat window, you can ask any follow-up questions on the function or project in general to clarify or gather any additional details.Chat window where a user asked if the function supports float types, which it does not.

Navigate from Inline Chat to Chat Window

Similarly, if you start an inline chat session with Copilot, you can see a window to navigate to the Chat pane for follow-up questions using the familiar chat pane on a larger screen, as inline chat session lengths are shorter for accessibility. Asking a question on what a scenario tests inline with the option to continue in chat window.

This will quickly navigate you to the chat window, where you can ask any follow-up questions on this file or the workspace in general.Follow-up questions in the chat pane, like what other tests are therein the project

To learn more about inline chat updates, please read the VS Blog post on Copilot flow updates.

What do you think?

With the latest integrations to GitHub Copilot workflows, you can customize your experience and how you engage with Copilot to gather the most personalized results.

To access these updates, you’ll need an active GitHub Copilot subscription and the latest version of Visual Studio.

In addition, our team is working hard on improving C++ integrations with Copilot Chat, so please let us know any other enhancements you’d like to see to your C++ workflows and content you’d like to see.

Author

Sinem Akinci
Product Manager II

C++ Product Manager working on Copilot, CMake, and Linux experiences in Visual Studio and VS Code

1 comment

  • Paul Topping

    Better control over which files get inline completions from Copilot would be huge. There are places where it works well and other places where it just gets in the way. I use a .txt file to keep notes for a project. I don't want the completions as they just get in the way. I might very rarely ask explicitly for a completion. Perhaps we could get a setting where if one consistently dismisses the completions,...

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