Tom Arbuthnot's Microsoft 365 Perspective

Many thanks to AudioCodes, this month's Empowering.Cloud Benefactor. Catch them this month in the UK at Call and Contact Center Expo and in the US at Microsoft Ignite to talk all things Teams.

We are only weeks away from Microsoft Ignite, yet there is still a lot of news with the Queues app going GA, SBA improvements and big Teams UI changes.

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Teams Monthly Update Video Briefing

Everything you need to know in under 15 minutes, video here, deck here - Big Teams and Chat UI change, SBA update, Android 15 support dates, Teams Copilot Agents, Places roadmap and more

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Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 News

• Teams moving Teams and Channels under the Chat Button - the biggest UI change Teams has ever seen.
• Microsoft Teams Queues App is GA - Find out more in this Queues App in Microsoft Teams Explained briefing with MVP Zach Bennett.
• Microsoft Teams Survivable Branch Appliance Major Update - The survivability window moves from 24 hours to 7 days. Details from Miguel Corteguera here​
• Microsoft Teams Devices Android 15 support dates. Understand why this matters here.
• Key numbers from Satya Nadella’s Microsoft 2024 Annual Report Letter​

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Roadmap

• This is the first roadmap reference to Copilot Agents going multi-player in Microsoft Teams.
• Microsoft is moving Copilot plugins to the right pane of Copilot. They will now be found under “Agents”
• Intelligent recap coming for ad-hoc Microsoft Teams meetings and calls​
• Up to 50,000 simultaneous Microsoft Teams Town hall attendees (Teams Premium), coming December.

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Briefings

• ​Queues App in Microsoft Teams Explained with MVP Zach Bennett, Principal Architect at LoopUp
• ​Jabra Evolve Headsets, 10 Years of Innovation with Nigel Dunn, VP North EMEA, EMEA & CALA Sales at Jabra

Teams Insider Podcast

• ​The Year of Recovery for Video Rooms and the Relevance of BYOD with Roopam Jain, Vice President of Research, Information and Communications Technologies at Frost & Sullivan
• ​The Need for Meeting Interop with Pexip CEO Trond Johannessen​
• ​The Benefits and Challenges of UC Standardisation with Ryan Herbst, Vice President and Chief Strategist at UnifiedCommunications.com
• ​What is the Microsoft 365 CAPE team? with Anthony Woodruff, Technical Program Manager at Microsoft

On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and YouTube​

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Events

Online:

• ​Crestron Intelligent Video: Enhancing Microsoft Teams Rooms in Any Space - November 12th
• ​Microsoft Teams Devices Ask Me Anything - November 19/20
• ​Teams Fireside Chat Live from Microsoft Ignite - November 21st
• ​NEW Copilot Fireside Chat - November 27th
• ​Converged Communications Partner Sales Bootcamp - 2-4 / 3-5 December

In-Person:

• ​Microsoft Ignite - 19-22 November, Chicago / Online
• ​Microsoft UC User Group London - November 27th, London
• ​Call & Contact Centre Expo - 27/28 November, I am speaking on day 1
• ​ESPC - 2-5 December

In case you missed it:

• I hosted a webinar with Ron Wolfe, VP of Microsoft Practice at AVI-SPL, on Next Gen Collaboration, AI signature Microsoft Teams Rooms. Here's the recording in case you missed it.

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Modern Work Sessions to Look Out for at Microsoft Ignite

• Unlock smart collaboration with Microsoft Teams - BRK280 - Ilya Bukshteyn, Pete Daderko and Kerry Perez Heffernan
• Transforming content management with agents in SharePoint - BRK279 - Jeff Teper
• Maximize partner opportunity with Modern Work solutions powered by AI - BRK298 - Nicole Herskowitz, Mayank Kapur, Chris Large, Uriel Rootshtain

Follow me on LinkedIn for the news and interviews with key people from the show, and look out for a special Teams Fireside Chat live from Ignite on Microsoft Places