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.
I talk to Gordon Eddy, VP of Product Management at Ribbon Communications, about it here.
I'm back from a great week at MVP Summit in Redmond. It's a chance for MVPs to get together with Microsoft, hear about what is coming and share feedback. It's all NDA, so nothing I can talk about now, but lots of exciting things are coming.
This month, we kicked off our new 2026 Teams Room Peer Exchange, and some great conversations were had. I'm currently setting up an AI in Legal Peer exchange and have ideas for some others. For those coming to Commsverse, I also have a private customer roundtable. Let me know if you are interested in either.
We also said goodbye to the UC Today Teams Podcast, which I co-hosted for 7 years. Thanks to everyone who listened and guests who joined. It's time to make room for some wider AI Workplace content in the works.
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.
Big changes to Microsoft 365 Copilot coming April 15th
Detailed in Message Center Posts: MC1253858 and MC1253863. My LinkedIn post here.
This news was released directly in the message centre, one of the two above messages was sent to your tenant(s). Yet another example of why you must watch the message center.
For the first time in my following Microsoft, we will see a license act differently depending on the number of users in the tenant.
The label in-product to help users understand their experience will be:
• Copilot Chat (Basic) for unlicensed users with 2,000 seats or more
• M365 Copilot (Basic) for unlicensed users with fewer than 2,000 seats
The experience for users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license will be labelled:
• M365 Copilot (Premium) for users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license
arting April 15, 2026, Copilot in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint with advanced reasoning will become generally available
For Tenants with over 2,000 users ⬆︎ (MC1253858):
Starting April 15,2026, Copilot will no longer be available in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for Copilot Chat (Basic/Unlicensed) users.
🔹 Copilot will remain available in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app and Outlook.
🔹 Basic users continue to have Secure Copilot Chat (web) and the ability to create Word, Excel, and PowerPoint from Copilot Chat in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app
🔹 Users will see the “Copilot Chat (Bas/ic)” label in-product to help them identify their experience.
For Tenants under 2,000 users ⬇︎ (MC1253863)
🔹 Copilot in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and OneNote with advanced reasoning WILL be available for Basic/unlicensed users
🔹 Copilot will remain available in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app and Outlook.
🔹 Usage will be governed by ”standard access”
🔹 Standard access is Microsoft’s term for rate limiting based on service capacity/time of day.
🔹 Users will see the “M365 Copilot (Basic)” label in-product to help them identify their experience.
M365 Copilot in Teams remains only available to Premium/licensed users.
So, a very different experience for Basic Copilot users, depending on whether your tenant has fewer than 2,000 users or more than 2,000 users.
My understanding of edu tenants is that if a tenant has any 'A' licensing, they are treated the same as the above 2,000-user scenario, i.e., starting April 15, 2026, Copilot will no longer be available in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for Copilot Chat (Basic/Unlicensed) users. As always, talk to your Microsoft representative. Anthropic Models in M365 Copilot
New Microsoft Copilot Leadership Team
Rajesh Jha is retiring after more than 35 years. He will transition out on July 1st and then stay in an advisory role.
Jha is a long-time Microsoft executive best known for leading the company’s Office and broader Experiences + Devices organisation, which has covered Microsoft 365, Teams, Windows, Surface, and related productivity products. He is widely credited with helping steer Office through its transition to cloud-based Microsoft 365
“Our priorities around SFI [Secure Future Initiative], QEI [Quality Excellence Initiative], and Copilot remain unchanged”, Jha said in a memo to employees.
Four leaders who have worked with Jha’s Experiences and Devices group will now report directly to Nadella
- LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky, who took on additional responsibility for Office applications and the M365 Copilot AI app last year
- Pavan Davuluri, who’s in charge of Surface devices and Windows operating systems.
- Charles Lamanna, the president of business and industry Copilot. He’s closely associated with Dynamics 365, the Power Platform, Copilot Studio, and Microsoft’s low-code and AI application strategy.
- Perry Clarke, president of Microsoft 365 Core, is best known for his long run in Microsoft 365 and Exchange engineering leadership
Jha also announced Jeff Teper, whom I recently had on the podcast, has been promoted to EVP (Microsoft 365 Collaborative Apps and Platforms), and both Sumit Chauhan (Office Product Group) and Kirk Koenigsbauer (Experiences and Devices Group) were promoted to president.
In Satya's Announcing Copilot leadership update memo. “We are bringing the Copilot system across commercial and consumer together as one unified effort”
This will span four connected pillars: Copilot experience, Copilot platform, Microsoft 365 apps, and AI models
Jacob Andreou, a former Snap executive who works in Microsoft’s AI unit, will become an executive vice president in charge of the consumer and commercial Copilot experience
“We are doubling down on our superintelligence mission with the talent and compute to build models that have real product impact”. Mustafa Suleyman, a former co-founder of AI lab DeepMind that Google bought in 2014, was previously looking after Copilot consumer, and will now focus on building new AI models.
Together, Jacob, Ryan, Charles, Perry, and Mustafa make up the Copilot Leadership Team.
Microsoft Teams Roadmap - there is a lot coming
- Attendant Agent — AI-powered auto-attendant with Copilot Studio: greets callers, answers questions, schedules, routes calls. Rollout May 2026. (roadmap)
- Retirement of CAPTCHA for meeting join - replaced by the new bot lobby experience (MC1262588)
- Introducing video recap for Microsoft Teams meetings (MC1261588)
- Copilot PSTN audio announcements - for non-transcribed Copilot calls (MC1260709)
- Catch up in Teams mobile - I love this feature (MC1260707)
- Queues app on Teams mobile (iOS) — Mobile call queue management for agents and supervisors. Rollout April (roadmap)
- Teams Events Attendee capacity packs are coming in May. (roadmap)
Teams Rooms and Devices
This week, we got a new number: “Microsoft Teams has continued to add more than 1000 monthly active Microsoft Teams Rooms every weekday.” Ilya Bukshteyn Corporate VP, Microsoft Teams Calling, Devices, and Premium Experiences.
The last public number of Teams Rooms was well over 1 million, and it continues to grow.
- Teams Phone user multi-line support on Teams Phone devices (MC1261591)
- AI-powered live interpretation on Teams Phone devices (MC1263278)
- Cross-platform join (with certified interop service) via SIP on Android — Teams Rooms on Android joining 3rd-party meetings via SIP with CVI. Requires Rooms Pro. Rollout June 2026. (roadmap)
- Enhanced media quality for Direct Guest Join — 4×4 grid (16 participants) + simulcast streaming for DGJ from Zoom/Meet/Cisco. Rollout May 2026. (roadmap)
- Book future meetings from Teams panels — Browse the calendar, reserve rooms, and add guests. GCC High, Android. Rollout May 2026. (roadmap)
- Digital signage on Teams panel devices. (roadmap)
- Teams Phones impacted by retirement of legacy authentication infrastructure [older hardware replacement required] (MC1254555)
Shure IntelliMix Bar Pro and IntelliMix Touch Panel are now certified for Microsoft Teams.