Many thanks to Ribbon, this month's community Benefactor. I really appreciate all their support of the community.
Ribbon has announced an expanded relationship with Amazon AWS, bringing their enterprise and carrier-grade voice infrastructure — including Acumen, operations tools, and their full deployment pipeline — into Amazon Public Cloud and the AWS Marketplace for enterprises and service providers.
March Microsoft 365 and AI Workplace Briefing
You can check out my March update video briefing to get all the news in under 15 minutes on YouTube, LinkedIn and on the podcast.
Microsoft 365 and Copilot
Microsoft announced what they are calling Wave 3 of Microsoft 365 Copilot. The theme here is clear: Microsoft are moving beyond assistance to agentic capabilities. The headline announcements are Claude in Copilot Chat, Copilot Cowork, Agent 365 and the new Microsoft 365 E7 bundle.
Anthropic Models in M365 Copilot
Microsoft are delivering on the multi-model story. We first saw model options in GitHub Copilot, and now Anthropic's Claude Sonnet will be available in Copilot Chat for all licensed users via the Frontier program (rolling out to GA in March). You'll see a model selector dropdown in Copilot Chat where you can choose Sonnet alongside the OpenAI models. MC1247880. This requires enabling the Anthropic models in your tenant. For EU/EFTA and UK tenants, Anthropic is off by default — admins need to explicitly opt in.
Interesting that Microsoft are using the word "Claude" a lot rather than just "Sonnet" the model — I think that's down to the positive brand awareness of the Claude brand.
Copilot Cowork
Initially, I was quite surprised that this was the same feature name that Anthropic are using for their Cowork experience, but it turns out it's been developed in close collaboration with Anthropic. It's essentially the same model and agentic harness, but running in the Microsoft Cloud.
The idea is that Cowork will take actions on your behalf — multi-step tasks like rescheduling meetings and protecting focus time, meeting prep by pulling together documents, emails, Teams messages and producing a deck, researching a company, or building a product launch plan with Excel, documents, and a pitch deck. You can keep engaging with it as it works and steer the output as it goes.
The key difference from Anthropic's standalone Claude Cowork (which runs on your desktop): Microsoft are bringing enterprise-grade audit and control, and they're layering in the Work IQ foundation.
Worth noting: Copilot Cowork is not multi-model — it only works with Claude. It again depends on enabling the Anthropic models in your tenant.
Copilot Cowork will be available to Frontier-enabled tenants in March as a research preview. No dates yet for broader availability. Microsoft Blog
Agent 365 — GA May 1, $15 PUPM
We finally have a GA date and pricing for Agent 365. It'll be generally available on May 1, 2026, at $15 per user per month. Customers already in the Frontier program will retain access and continue to get early features.
Agent 365 provides an agent registry, access control via Entra ID, visualisation of agent activity, interoperability, and security. What's interesting is that Microsoft are positioning this as a per-user license — so it's about a user creating "on behalf of" agents and leveraging the advanced governance features. More to come on how this will work. MC1247634.
Microsoft 365 E7 — "The Frontier Suite"
Also coming May 1, the long-rumoured Microsoft 365 E7 at $99 PUPM. This is not an "everything SKU"; What it does include is Microsoft 365 E5, Copilot, Agent 365, and the Microsoft Entra Suite.
Microsoft are positioning it as the Frontier Suite. If you stack all those up individually, you're saving about $10 per user. It will be interesting to see how this lands in the market — I think a lot will depend on the perceived value of the Agent 365 platform. More details here.
SharePoint at 25
I was really pleased to have Jeff Teper on the podcast this month for SharePoint's 25th birthday. Some incredible numbers: 1 billion users each year, 2 billion files uploaded, 2 million SharePoint sites created every day. We talked through the journey from the very beginning, going into the cloud, scaling — Listen on the Teams Insider Podcast or YouTube.
Microsoft Teams and AI Powered Workplace
Identifying Bots in Teams Meeting Lobby — Third-party bots joining Teams meetings will now be clearly flagged in the lobby. Organisers must explicitly admit them separately from human participants. Requires lobby to be enabled. Coming May.
Multiple Phone Numbers for a Single User — Admins can assign up to 10 phone numbers to a single user, mixing Operator Connect, Direct Routing, and Calling Plan. Coming April.
Channel Agent Updates — Channel agents can now ground over SharePoint data in the channel — a big gap filled. Also, improving welcome messages and enabling channel creation without an agent. MC1243546.
Teams Rooms and Devices
Enhanced Issue Detection and Auto-Remediation — Teams Rooms Pro Management portal is moving from alerting to proactive remediation — attempting software fixes, config changes, or device resets during nightly maintenance. First step on the AI-driven remediation journey. Coming April. MC1248392
Book Meetings from Teams Panels — Walk up to a room and book a future meeting directly from the panel, with time slots through midnight the next day. Requires Teams Rooms Pro or Shared Device license. Coming April. MC1245225
New Teams Certified Devices
- Cisco Desk Pro G2 — Notable because this is their first MDEP device on Android 15. They've added a wider camera, positioning it as both a huddle experience and a personal device.
- Jabra Evolve3 75 and 85 headsets — I've got the 75 and have been really impressed so far.
- Shure IntelliMix Bar Pro and Shure IntelliMix Touch Panel, hitting the certified list today! Another MDEP device.