Microsoft Teams Phone Agent

Microsoft 365 has introduced a new agent called Teams Phone Agent. This tool allows organizations to build customer voice agents that integrate seamlessly with Teams Phone. It's especially useful for businesses that interact directly with customers. The Teams Phone Agent can follow instructions and respond to callers efficiently. Its features include:

• Handling Question and Answer scenarios by connecting with specific knowledge bases, allowing it to provide instant responses without keeping callers waiting. It also assists callers outside regular business hours.
• Managing Appointment Scheduling, helping users book, confirm, or modify appointments.
• Offering conversational routing and intelligent transfers, which are much more effective than traditional auto attendants, as it routes callers directly to subject matter experts without needing human intervention.
• Supporting multilingual interactions in over 60 languages.

To start using this service, you’ll need to enroll in the Frontier program.

Reference: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoftteamsblog/engage-customers-with-teams-phone-agent-and-custom-voice-agents-built-in-copilot/4526829

Microsoft Teams Premium Capabilities Available in other M365 Suites

Significant updates are being introduced to Microsoft Teams licensing. Several features previously exclusive to Microsoft Teams Premium will now be included in the core M365 suites, eliminating the need for the Teams Premium add-on.

Summary:

• All advanced Town Hall and Webinar capabilities will transition to the Teams Enterprise license. Holders of an M365 suite with Teams will have access to these enhancements, enabling events with up to 3,000 attendees (and a view-only experience for up to 10,000 attendees).
• Attendee pack add-on licenses are being launched, supporting town hall events from 5,000 to 100,000 participants.
• Microsoft Places, a tool designed to facilitate workplace coordination for end users, is now bundled within M365 suites.
• A new Teams Shared Space License is being introduced, offering expanded functionality for space management and analytics.

Reference: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoftteamsblog/licensing-updates-extend-access-to-advanced-capabilities-in-microsoft-teams-and-/4488312

New Teams Channel Agent

In September 2025, Microsoft Teams introduced a new M365 Copilot feature known as Channel Agent. The Channel Agent operates within a Teams channel, utilizing conversation history, documents, and other resources to assist users. Often, Teams channels are created to support specific initiatives or projects. Channel Agent is capable of generating structured reports, responding to queries, capturing and tracking tasks, and creating team notes by leveraging the information available within the channel.

Reference: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft365insiderblog/introducing-channel-agent-in-teams/4455451

Add M365 Copilot to a Teams Group Chat

A new feature is being introduced to M365 Copilot and Microsoft Teams. Within group chats, users can now add Copilot as an additional participant. Once Copilot is included in the conversation, it can be instructed to complete various tasks, such as:

• Summarizing or answering questions from the chat.
• Compiling information from the discussion and creating a Word document.
• Bringing in supplementary information from the Web to enhance the conversation.

This functionality allows users to interact directly with Copilot within the Teams Group chat environment, streamlining workflows without the need to switch between applications.

Reference: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft365insiderblog/a-new-way-to-collaborate-with-copilot-in-teams-chats/4463655

New Microsoft Teams M365 Copilot Facilitator Agent

Microsoft Teams has introduced a new Facilitator Agent designed to enhance meeting focus and productivity. The Facilitator offers several key features:

• Tracks discussion topics and timing using visual timeline markers to help ensure conversations remain on schedule.
• Enables collaborative, real-time note-taking.
• Provides answers to questions by leveraging information from the meeting and online sources.
• Monitors tasks and assignments throughout the meeting.
• Instantly drafts documents in Word or Loop to support meeting content.
• Delivers improved experiences for chat, notes, and meeting timers when using Teams Room.
• Records ad-hoc discussions to ensure no valuable insights are overlooked.

I have observed the Facilitator Agent in meetings and found the topic and time tracker, integrated with the meeting agenda, particularly effective in helping participants address each subject promptly.

Please note that access to these functionalities requires an M365 Copilot license.

Reference: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft365insiderblog/keep-meetings-focused-and-productive-with-facilitator-in-teams/4456029

What's New in M365 Copilot in Oct 2025

There were a lot of new interesting new capabilities being released into M365 Copilot in the month of Oct 2025.  Here are the ones that caught my eye:

• New Session Persistence Enhancements: Ensures users can seamlessly continue conversations when navigating away from a chat session.
• Chat GPT-5 will become the new default model for Copilot Chat.  Currently, you must select it.
• Microsoft Teams Audio Recap is being released.  This gives users the ability to get pod-cast style audio recaps of meetings they select in newscast, executive or casual formats.  You no longer have to sit there and read tons of recaps, you can now listen to the recaps on your drive home!
• Have Copilot draft meeting agendas based on when the meeting is, the attendees, title and users meeting inputs.  Copilot will leverage all your M365 Copilot data in email, chat, and documents and then create an agenda for you.
• Copilot Chat Capabilities with Exchange Online Calendar: 
• Search a calendar based on meeting organizers making it super easy to get all meeting information and summaries.
• Seach calendars that you have been delegated access to which is great for executive assistants to pull information about meetings.
• Search calendars based on meeting categories like title, date, time and location.
• When opening an Office file on a mobile device, you can use Copilot Chat in the file “preview” which streamlines the user experience to ask questions.
• The new Surveys Agent has been rolled out.  This is an agent that automates the workflow of creating surveys.
• Copilot in PowerPoint speaker notes generation.
• Bing web cards will now be appearing in Copilot Chat with quick visualizations of weather, stocks, sports, new, current events, etc.
• New simple Copilot Chat APIs allows users to simply sent prompts to the API and get back results.
• M365 Copilot Usage reports is being rolled out to GCC cloud!
• New M365 Copilot usage reports that provide detailed metrics on the total prompt submissions at both organizational and user levels.
• New Agent ownership reassignment enables administrators to transfer ownership of agents within the organization with an employee leaves or changes roles.
• Administrators can export their agent inventory along with metadata to perform independent review and analysis of all agents.
• Administrators can pin M365 Companion Apps (People, Files and Calendar) in all user taskbars.  These apps give users real time information integrated with Copilot.

Reference: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft365copilotblog/what%E2%80%99s-new-in-microsoft-365-copilot--october-2025/4464046

Microsoft Teams Audio Recap with M365 Copilot

Microsoft Teams is introducing a new feature called Audio Recap. This tool will automatically generate podcast-style summaries of your meetings, so you don’t have to read through lengthy recaps. It’s especially useful if you have lots of meetings, can’t attend them all, or want to catch up on the go. You can select multiple meetings in Teams and have audio recaps created, which can then be played on your computer or mobile device, even while you’re driving home. You can also choose your preferred listening style—Executive, Newscast, or Casual—and the summary will match that format.

References: 

• https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft365insiderblog/listen-to-an-audio-recap-of-your-meetings-in-teams/4450900
• https://medius.microsoft.com/Embed/video-nc/d4191e9f-f6d4-481d-9d6b-af9bc172f762?r=558446251512
• https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?id=490051

M365 Copilot Teams Mode

Teams Mode for M365 Copilot is a new feature about to be released for public preview. It offers an engaging option that lets users start a M365 Copilot Chat as a private conversation between themselves and Copilot. When they want to include others, they can simply choose “start a group chat” within M365 Copilot Chat. This action brings everyone, along with Copilot, into a Teams group chat so they can all continue discussing with Copilot.

For instance, a business analyst might begin researching with Copilot Chat and later invite colleagues to join. Together, they can keep the conversation going and ask Copilot questions based on their varying expertise.

Reference: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft365copilotblog/introducing-teams-mode-for-microsoft-365-copilot/4463259

September 2025 Microsoft Teams Updates

Microsoft Teams had several import releases in the month of September 2025.  Here are the top ones that caught my attention:

• Agents in channels (Public Preview): Each channel can now have a Channel Agent that becomes an expert on information within that Teams Channel.  The Agent will be named after the Channel, and will help with common tasks such as identifying important deadlines buried in the conversations, summarizing status, assigning tasks and answering questions.
• Threads in Channels: I was really happy to see this.  You now have the ability to reply to specific messaging, while keeping conversations grouped together preserving the flow and context of a conversation.
• Enhanced AI thread summary in Channels: Now there are AI-generated thread summaries available in a post/reply and threaded channels.  This really helps with lengthy conversations.  Now you do not have to scroll around to read information; you have a summary right there for you to scan before you post something.
• Meeting Facilitator Agent is now GA.  This Agent helps keeps meetings focused and organized.  The agent will set an agenda based know the invitation and inferred goals from the discussion, it will keep conversations on track with visible timelines and reminders, it will capture real-time notes, answer questions within the context of the meeting, records and assigns tasks, etc.  
• Enhanced Meeting Protection – Prevent Screen Captures: This requires Teams Premium. This prevents users from taking screen captures.

Reference: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoftteamsblog/what%E2%80%99s-new-in-microsoft-teams--september-2025/4457965

Microsoft Teams August 2025 Updates

I typically forget to look at the monthly Microsoft Teams blog posting they do every month.  There are always several new features can capabilities being introduced each month.  Here are a couple that caught my eye.

• New filtering for messages in chat and channels.
• Save messages view.  You have the ability to bookmark important chat messages and go to a centralized view that will show you everything you have booked marked across Teams chats.
• Multiple emoji reactions….yes I can finally many, not just one.
• Personal meeting templates allows you to create meeting templates that are based on your preferences for external meetings, internal 1:1 meeting, partner meetings, etc.
• Organizers can now message attendees in the lobby before letting them in.  For instance, “hey we will let you admit you in 2 mins we are running late”.

Reference: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoftteamsblog/what%E2%80%99s-new-in-microsoft-teams--august-2025/4448706

New Microsoft Team Calendar

In early February 2025, Microsoft Teams released a new calendar experience. This update provides a consistent and unified experience similar to what users have with Microsoft Outlook. The new calendar feature aims to make scheduling meetings more efficient, aligning closely with the richer calendar functionalities available in Outlook.

Reference: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoftteamsblog/the-new-calendar-in-microsoft-teams-now-generally-available/4373598

December 2024 M365 Copilot and Microsoft Teams

Here are some of the new capability releases for M365 Copilot and Microsoft Teams for the month of December 2024:

• M365 Copilot was released to Microsoft GCC cloud.
• Viva Learning and Copilot Academy 
• New templates and reports in Copilot Analytics to better understand employee readiness, adoption and impact which can be used along side of the Copilot Dashboard.
• Copilot on OneNote for Mac and iPad.  Leverage copilot to understand, summarize, rewrite or do further brainstorming.
• New Excel Copilot functions for “understanding” data.  For instance, leverage Copilot has Clean Data detectors to help find inconsistencies with data and provides recommendations.  Plus Copilot will recognize patterns and provide suggested formulas.
• Word Copilot can now read aloud responses in the chat pane.
• Word Copilot will allow users to ask questions about images by simply putting the image into the chat.  Copilot can then extract text, get a description of a chart, translate information or generate alt text.
• Intelligent recap in Teams is now available for meetings that started using the “Meet Now” function.  This allows ad-hoc meetings to have the same AI meeting experiences that a schedule meeting has.
• Teams Meetings now supports the “take control” feature in Teams web app.
• Webinar and Town Halls now support RTMP-In 708 captions are a closed captioning standard that provides enhanced captioning capabilities.

References

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft365copilotblog/whats-new-in-microsoft-365-copilot--december-2024/4359815

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoftteamsblog/what%E2%80%99s-new-in-microsoft-teams--december-2024/4359658

Microsoft Teams Queues is now GA

Microsoft Teams Queues is now Generally Available (GA).  This is an existing, new experience delivered within Teams that enables organizations to that need to engage with customers but are not part of a traditional call center environment.  You can quickly create Queues that can support internal or external projects and initiatives.

There is a plethora of capabilities that allows you to create queues and then assign team members to work with those queues.  Calls can be prioritized, transferred between team members, history of past calls, opt in/out of queues, and switch between queues based on analytics (average wait time, number of abandoned calls, etc.).

Microsoft Copilot can be leveraged with Queues as well.  Notes can be automatically captured, along with highlights, the next steps, and outstanding issues enabling staff to be more accurate in their follow up with customers.

Queues are very simple to set up.  There are tons of administrative capabilities that allow you to easily add and remove support staff.  There is a capability called whisper controls that gives the ability for supervisors to step-in and assist in a conversation.  There are analytics that allow you to monitor performance, track call volumes and identify areas of improvement.  Auto attendants can be configured and numerous other configurations that control the customer experience like welcome greetings, music on hold, queue hours, call routing rules, agent monitoring, etc.

Microsoft Team Queues requires Teams Premium Licensing.

References:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/queues-app-for-microsoft-teams-now-generally-available/ba-p/4276837 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-the-queues-app-for-microsoft-teams-370ad83e-c2c1-4a9f-8a59-16c98be102e9 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/manage-queues-app 

Public Preview Microsoft Teams VDI

The new Microsoft Teams client will be starting a public preview with significant new optimizations for VDI.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/the-future-of-microsoft-teams-in-vdi/ba-p/4175859

Microsoft Teams Live Events

Microsoft Teams Live Events has been planned to retire in Sept 2024, however this timeline has been extended.  Customers are still encouraged to transition to Teams Town Hall.

Reference: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/updates-for-town-hall-in-microsoft-teams-and-teams-live-events/ba-p/4148352

New Teams Capabilities in 2024

Microsoft published an overview of what they plan to achieve with new meeting experiences in calendar year 2024.  Good read.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/new-year-new-meeting-enhancements-in-microsoft-teams/ba-p/4034799

New Microsoft Teams Client Supports VDI

 Pretty important announcement.  The new Microsoft Teams client app now supports VDI.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/announcing-general-availability-of-the-new-microsoft-teams-app/ba-p/4000093

New Copilot Features for Teams and Outlook

No…I did not us copilot to write this blog…

There are a ton of new announcements from Ignite.

I found this article on new Copilot in Outlook very interesting: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/outlook-blog/copilot-in-outlook-helps-you-achieve-more/ba-p/3981033

A lot of creative new features that I will need to give a try:

• Ask copilot to schedule a meeting
• Get ready for your next meeting
• Summarize long email threads and get suggested actions
• Follow a meeting you cannot attend
• Preserve declined meetings
• Draft messages that sound like you
• Summarize an email you are authoring
• Coach on improving tone and clarity of a message you are authoring

I will definitely need some time to start playing around with these features….

Additionally a ton of Microsoft Teams Copilot features are discussed here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/what-s-new-in-microsoft-teams-microsoft-ignite-2023/ba-p/3976670

• Copilot compose for Teams Chat and Channels…. Copilot will literally change your quick chat into fuller more complete communications
• Copilot in Teams Channel will help summarize key information in long chats to help you catch-up
• Copilot Teams Calls can take notes as you are doing direct calls with team members, capture notes and capture all your tasks.  Can even capture questions and activities that need to be competed.
• Intelligent recap helps you get information from meetings that you were not able to attend.
• Copilot collaborate notes will take real-time notes, shared with all participants.

Frankly there is so much here, I am going to have to sit down and really start trying to learn how to use all these tools in my day-to-day work.

Town Halls replacing Microsoft Teams Live Events

Microsoft Teams Live Events is now being replaced by Town Halls in Microsoft Teams.  Live Events has a long legacy at Microsoft, and it was part of an old platform that is not utilized by Microsoft Teams.  Live Events also a different user experience than what users were accustom to in the Teams client.  Live Events will be supported through 9/30/2024.

Town Halls is now Generally Available (GA) and is fully integrated into the Teams app user experience.  Town Halls has tons of features to help you have large virtual events.  New features such as attendee capacity, event concurrency, event duration, eCDN, green room, structured Q&A, attendee reporting, live translated captions, etc., etc.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/introducing-town-halls-in-microsoft-teams-and-retiring-microsoft/ba-p/3925739

New Microsoft Teams App is Generally Available (GA)

The new Microsoft Teams App for Windows and Mac has moved from Public Preview now Generally Available (GA).  This has been a long time coming.  One of the biggest objectives was performance with it being two times faster using 50% less memory.  I have personally seen a big difference because running video in meetings used to really tax my older devices.  It is a pretty seamless upgrade and for an every day user like me, with all the capabilities I am accustomed to are there.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/announcing-general-availability-of-the-new-microsoft-teams-app/ba-p/3934603