Tom's Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 News

May news time already! Comms vNext, the Microsoft 365 Community Conference and Microsoft earnings. April was full of events and news.

In Microsoft's quarterly earnings, we learned that there are now 20 million Teams Phone users - Up nearly 30% year-over-year and 1 Million+ Teams Rooms — The last public MTR number was 500,000 in the FY23 Q2 earnings call (January 24, 2023). More stats from the earnings call here.

Many thanks to Neat, this month's Empowering.Cloud benefactor. Neat has had a lot of updates lately, including their new Gen2 bar, a partnership with Shure and most recently, all their Microsoft Teams MTR devices have been certified for use on the Microsoft GCC-H cloud tenants.

I recorded a podcast with Luke Kannel, a Product Specialist at Neat, and Tyler Troutman, Market Development Specialist at Shure, discussing Neat's and Shure's new integration and use cases.

Want all the news in a 15-minute video? You can check out my monthly briefing (grab the PPTX deck too)

Teams, Copilot and Microsoft 365 News

Voice Isolation is now rolling out in GA. I'm a big fan of this feature. In terms of improving the day to day experience of users of Teams it's right up there. Details here

Teams Rooms on Windows 5.0 brings
- New Teams 2.1 client to MToW - optimising rendering intelligent audio and video more reliably.
- Meeting Chat is shown by default in Gallery View for Teams Rooms on Windows - admin and touch console control
- 4K native display UI scaling for MTRoW. Note 4K display, not 4K video streams.
- Windows Autopilot - Zero Touch Deployment - early access preview (Pro) (docs)
- QR code to Join meetings, start an ad-hoc meeting or cast content. Using a mobile camera and Teams app
- Optional meeting passcode to join meeting on MTRoW. Admin configurable to prompt joiner for passcode for an MTR in a common area (Pro)Ability to change language on Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows
- The option to join Zoom meetings with an ID and other services to come is visually clearer.
- End users can switch IntelliFrame on or off using Stage roster.
- Skype for business support deprecation

Autopilot for Teams Rooms Windows Step-by-Step tutorial video from Michel Bouman

Microsoft Teams Rooms Pro Portal Remote Access setup PDF (Join MTDAMA this month for a live demo and discussion

Copilot for Microsoft 365 Success Kit available for download -https://aka.ms/Copilot/SuccessKitDownload

New Notebook for Copilot (on the web)( is a new way to use Copilot, beyond chat, Notebook is like an enhanced scratch pad that lets you fine-tune your prompts. Notebook allows for longer prompts and lets you iterate and refine your prompt over time to get the response you’re looking for. Check it out now at the top of Copilot web client.

Restricted SharePoint search began rolling out in public preview for Copilot for Microsoft 365 customers earlier this month. If you’re a Microsoft 365 admin, this enables you to review your content management and data governance practices without losing momentum with your Copilot deployment.