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In the last newsletter, Microsoft confirmed a Copilot "super app" was coming this quarter. Two weeks later, it has started landing: the consumer Copilot app and the Microsoft 365 Copilot app are merging into one. Alongside that, Microsoft published containment guidance for autonomous agents (it seems OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta could all use it) and set two device deadlines. Many thanks to Landis, this month's community Benefactor. I really appreciate all their support of the community. Their July Contact Center release is worth a look β batch user management that applies settings templates to whole Entra groups at once and chat webhooks so you can extend the automations you built for voice. Microsoft 365 AI Workplace 15 Minute Update β August 2026Everything you need to know in 15 minutes or less. Watch on YouTube, read it on Empowering.Cloud or listen on the Podcast. π OpenAI became a subprocessor in Microsoft 365 Copilot, and the admin toggle auto-enabled on 24 July unless you had already said no. If you haven't checked that setting, do so. π’ Microsoft's FY26 year-end numbers: over 30 million paid Copilot seats, Azure up 43%, and weekly Copilot engagement apparently on par with Outlook and Teams. π³ Eight Copilot updates in eighty seconds, including Claude Opus 5 in Copilot, Computer Use arriving in Cowork, and the M365 Admin agent going GA. π Teams voice agents get a certification programme, with AudioCodes the first listed provider, and Facilitator moves from note-taker towards active participant. Teams Insider Podcasts
The Teams Insider Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and YouTube. Microsoft 365 and Copilot NewsThe Copilot super app starts landing β one app, a new icon, a new URLMicrosoft has started merging the consumer Copilot app and the Microsoft 365 Copilot app into a single app (MC1454108). Personal, work and school accounts sit in one experience, with their data kept separate. It uses the Microsoft Copilot name and has a new icon. This will bring Chat, Code, Cowork and Autopilots into one experience. One thing admins should note: Recall exclusions configured in the old Copilot app do not carry over and must be reapplied. MC1454108 is otherwise reassuring β it explicitly says there is no change to enterprise controls. Several consumer Copilot features retire on 18 August, including Podcasts, Group Chat and Deep Research. Microsoft 365 Premium subscribers can continue creating detailed reports and analyses using Researcher in Copilot (Microsoft support). Microsoft publishes containment guidance for autonomous agentsMicrosoft has published practical guidance for securing AI agents, along with an e-book, *Zero Trust for AI: rebuilding security controls for autonomous and agentic systems*. It covers containing what an agent can do, hardening the attack surface, reducing blast radius and governing agent identity, and builds on Microsoft Execution Containers from Build and the open-source Agent Governance Toolkit. Containment strategies for AI have also landed in Secure Now. That maps onto two changes shipping right now β Copilot Studio can block maker-provided credentials for authentication from 25 August (MC1446172), and Power Platform gets enhanced admin controls for agent security from 2 September (MC1446227). If you are being asked to turn agents on this quarter, take a look. Copilot credit consumption gets a dashboard and a capA Copilot credit Consumption Dashboard has landed in Viva Insights (release notes, roadmap 566302), tracking credit burn for Cowork and the Work IQ APIs. Access is scoped to Global administrators, Insights analysts, and managers with at least five direct reports, which is worth checking against who actually needs the visibility in your organisation. Tenant-wide leader access is not in this release. It is on by default, but it depends on usage-based billing being set up through Cost Management in the Microsoft 365 admin centre β so if you have not done that, the dashboard will have nothing to show you. Separately, the Power Platform admin center is getting per-agent and per-user Copilot credit metrics plus a pay-as-you-go consumption cap, in public preview from 22 August (MC1451872). A cap is the piece that was missing β a dashboard tells you what you spent, and the cap is what stops the surprise. GitHub Copilot harness in Copilot Studio is GAIf you are building agents in Copilot Studio, this is an important change. The GitHub Copilot harness for building autonomous agents and workflow automation is now generally available (MC1446644, Microsoft Blog). Available harnesses in Copilot Studio are now:
The licensing detail is the part to read twice. Agents running on the GitHub Copilot harness use "usage-based billing for all work, regardless of Microsoft 365 Copilot licensing" β you pay based on the models you choose, the organisational context and tools you add, and the runtime used. Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed users keep fair use of Copilot Chat and Standard harness agents as part of their licence, but that does not extend to this GitHub harness. It also costs during the building, not just the running: "certain AI-driven maker experiences, like natural language authoring, evaluations, and testing, will also fall under usage-based billing if building with the GitHub Copilot harness". So makers experimenting with it are consuming budget before anything reaches production, which is worth knowing before you point a team at it. Microsoft's Copilot Credits licensing guide (PDF, August 2026 edition) is a good reference. Microsoft Teams and AI-Powered WorkplaceMicrosoft named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for UCaaSMicrosoft has been named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for UCaaS, and the reprint is available. Teams Phone Agent hits public previewβTeams Phone Agent is in public preview via Frontier, and MVP Andres Bohren gives an overview. It answers, triages and routes inbound PSTN calls conversationally, handing off to Copilot Studio voice agents where it needs to. βEmily Kirby from the Teams Phone team joined the podcast this month to talk through what has shipped and what is coming, which is a good listen if this is your area. Teams Live Chat is retiredNew setups were blocked from 6 August, and support ends on 5 October 2026 (MC1449174). The website support-chat widget that routed visitors into Teams is done, around eighteen months after it launched, with Microsoft pointing people at Dynamics 365 Contact Center or Copilot Studio instead. I think this got very little use. Key Teams Changes
Teams Rooms and Devices NewsTeams Android device management begins phased deprecation in SeptemberInventory, updates, health and settings for Teams Rooms on Android, Teams phones, panels and SIP phones are moving to the Teams Rooms Pro Management Portal (MC1227622). The phased deprecation of overlapping Teams admin center device-management features begins during the week of 1 September and is expected to complete across all clouds by the end of September. Devices need access to the required Pro Management Portal network endpoints, including Azure IoT Hub, to remain manageable. Supported devices on recent Admin Agent versions update automatically. Devices that have been offline on Admin Agent 794 or later update automatically when they reconnect; older versions need a manual OEM firmware update first. Signed-out devices need to be signed in once after reaching the latest eligible Admin Agent version so they can be onboarded to the portal (Microsoft Learn, MC1450127). Weβll be talking about this in more detail at the next Teams Fireside Chat β Kim Matlock, Principal Lead Program Manager, Teams Rooms. Android 10 and 11 Teams device certification ends on 3 SeptemberTeams devices running Android 10 and 11 lose certification on 3 September, then have one year of Microsoft support remaining. This affects first-generation HP Poly, Logitech and Yealink models. Android 12 and 13 devices were extended to 15 August 2028, with support running to 2030. Shared display mode and peripheral detection for BYOD spacesShared display mode and peripheral detection for BYOD spaces are generally available worldwide, including GCC (MC1442609). The update delivers a more room-aware experience in BYOD huddle and focus rooms with AI noise suppression, speaker framing and room echo cancellation provided by the Teams desktop client. Interesting Rooms and Devices Changes
Teams Phones and the legacy authentication retirement β check for hardware you need to replaceThis one is a budget conversation rather than a maintenance one. Teams Phones affected by the retirement of the legacy authentication infrastructure cannot authenticate once it goes; there is no firmware update, only device replacement (MC1254555, MC1229952). Other Interesting Microsoft 365 Changes
EventsWe're having an events break for August, but we're back with a full September. Online events
In-person events
As always, if you have any questions, corrections, thoughts, or feedback, please reply. I read all the replies. I really do want to hear your thoughts. Thanks Tom |
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