Hi and welcome back to the podcast. This is the audio of my monthly Teams update. Everything you need to know in under 15 minutes. If you want to see the full video and slides, you can catch over on LinkedIn or X or on Empowering Cloud along with the full PowerPoint deck and all the links. Hope you find it useful.

On with the show. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Microsoft Teams enterprise update September 2026. Yes, we are in September already. If you were off, we had a break over the summer. Hope you had a good break. We are thoroughly back into the mix now.

This month, we'll be going through 11 Microsoft Teams updates and five intelligent spaces updates as well, and some news around Pro Portal p - and some news around Pro Portal, places, and some news around, and some news around Pro Portal, places and, and some news around Pro Portal, Places and Planner.

First up, we are just weeks away from Android device management cutting over to the Pro Portal. It is.

First of all, we've been following the updates, you should be aware of this, but we are now in the phase of 

Pro Portal Device Migration

Tom Arbuthnot: Android device management cutting over to the Pro Portal. It started 1st of September and ends by the 30th of September, so just weeks to go. And this is all of Android device management moving out of the Teams Admin Center and into the Pro Portal.

Do check out the message if you haven't already.

Make sure your devices are up-to-date, make sure all the relevant operations teams have access to the Pro Portal. We're gonna be going to this in. I'm excited that we've got Kim Matlock on Teams Fireside Chat on the 10th of September. Matt Slomka's joining as well, and we're gonna be talking about this and a bunch of other things as well.

But this is a really good, this is a really big deal for operations teams, so do make sure.

This is a really big deal for Teams device operations, so do make sure you're all lined up for it. 

Ribbon Sponsor & Events

Tom Arbuthnot: Many thanks to Ribbon, who are this month's benefactor of the community. Really appreciate all their support. Actually, this week, I'll be heading to their London events. I'll be doing a session on who's going to profit from agents, talking a lot about agentic opportunities and also voice agents.

Really looking forward to that. Um, if it's a bit close for that one for you or you're not in Europe, they have their insight session on the 10th to 12th of November 2026 in the US. These are really great events. I definitely recommend them.

And I really appreciate all their support of the community. And if you haven't been on Empowering Cloud over the last month or so, we've published a lot. 

Empowering Cloud Podcast Recap

Tom Arbuthnot: If you haven't been on Empowering Cloud lately, we have a lot of great updates. We took a pause on events over August, but they're back in September. We'll be talking about those later, but we still kept the podcast going.

We had a great conversation with Mahindra around where things are going with AI and multi-model and work IQ. Emily gave us an update of Teams Phone. We had customer conversations around E7 and also voice agents and.

Javid Khan, CEO of Neat on where things are going in devices and rooms and spaces. A great conversation with Javid Khan, CEO of Neat on where things are going in the spaces and rooms. A great conversation with Javid Khan at Neat around where things are going with intelligent spaces and rooms. And also a really interesting conversation with Adnan around intelligent connectivity and the SIP intelligent edge.

Gartner Magic Quadrant: Microsoft Named Leader

Tom Arbuthnot: On the news front, Microsoft have, again, been named a leader in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant. This is the eighth year running. They are very much, uh, up and top right. Interesting to read through that report and see what the weighting is on that and where the focus is. Um, I feel like it's very la.

It's been a UC benchmark for absolute years and obviously great for Microsoft to be at the top. Congrats to them. But I think more and more, the UC space is going to be about AI and agentic and a platform for agent and person collaboration or AI and person collaboration.

I wonder if we'll see some changes in that, as we saw UC and collaboration come together and it's not just about calls and meetings. I think we'll see more weight into agents and agentic as well. But congrats to Microsoft for being at the top again, and if you want to read through the report, Microsoft have a re - Microsoft have a free reprint link, which you can get on the slide there.

Even though it's typically quieter in July and August, we still had some new updates for Teams come through the Message Center and the roadmap, so let's take a look at those.

First up, 

Call Queues: Auto Record & AI Recaps

Tom Arbuthnot: Call Queues is getting auto record and getting AI recaps. Microsoft continue to invest in the Call Queues app. This does require Teams Premium. Now we have the capability on a queue by queue basis to enable automatic recording. And you can see this is feeding into automatic recording, transcription, AI summaries, really adding some power to the Call Queues app.

On the calling side, transfer. On the calling side, call trans. On the calling side, 

Intelligent Call Transfer & Teams Phone Agent

Tom Arbuthnot: intelligent call transfer and intelligent call delegation have now shipped in Frontier. Also, we've got the Teams phone agent in the Frontier program that we talked about last month. That's a really big, that's a really big new capability.

Voice Agent Certification

Tom Arbuthnot: And we saw a new voice agent certification for integration to Teams Phone Agent. Still only AudioCodes listed on that as a provider. Kind of part of the Unify conversation, but expect more news on that soon,. I'll talk more later about a versus contact center session we're doing in a few weeks, which should be really fun.

Teams Live Chat Retirement

Tom Arbuthnot: Teams Live Chat is going to be retired. Uh, some of the blogs made a big deal of this. Really, it didn't get a ton of usage. It was only for kind of SMB, and the idea was you have a chat widget on your website connected directly to Teams. Microsoft's gonna deprecate that, and they're pointing people towards Dynamics 365 Contact Center or Copilot Studio. Also, a lot of the certified contact center solutions have options for live chat, so take a look at those as well. 

Teams Web Moving to cloud.microsoft

Tom Arbuthnot: If you haven't seen this, important one for whoever owns networks and proxies, Teams Web is moving to the new cloud.microsoft domain by 30th September, so make sure that it's routing through all your proxies and firewalls and all looks good.

Mandatory Consent for Joining Meetings

Tom Arbuthnot: Mandatory consent for joining Teams meetings is a new capability where you can customize terms that a user has to accept before they join the meeting, and their acceptance is also logged in an audit log. So for those who want to have custom terms and conditions around what's going to happen with the meeting or the meeting content, that is rolling out between September and December.

Report a Security Concern in Meetings

Tom Arbuthnot: Report a security concern during a meeting. This is an interesting one with more and more fears around impersonation and deepfakes, particularly with audio and increasingly with video. You now have the capability to right click on a person and report the issue. Uh, this goes into.

This creates an event that goes into TAC and Defender. So it's not like a live interaction. It doesn't set off any alerts or anything, but it does create a log. I imagine if someone's in a meeting who you think shouldn't be there, uh, you probably want a more instant response, but nice to give your users an opportunity to report any potential issues, and do make sure you're reviewing those logs in TAC and Defender.

QR Codes Obscured from External Senders

Tom Arbuthnot: Another security one, QR codes from external senders are going to get obscured or blurred by default. So Teams federated chat or external chat is increasingly be used as a attack vector. Really sad, we used to have pretty much everybody open by default in terms of federation when we were in the OCS and Lync days.

Um, as Skype Business and then Teams got more and more popular, obviously it has become a potential surface for bad actors to try and get into your organization. And one of the ways they'll do that is by sending a QR code rather than URL, because URLs get scanned, QR codes might get through, um, and also users might not think it through and just scan them with their personal phone and jump into the scenario.

So this is just to give the person a second to think, to click the button, to unobscure the QR code and decide if they want to do it. Um, I wonder if we'll see potential to block the QR codes as well, because once you can obscure them, you know they're there. Um, that is rolling out in October.

Auto Record Policies & Record-Only Option

Tom Arbuthnot: Auto record choices now follow your meeting policies, and also there is a new record only option which doesn't transcribe. So that's interesting. We've had the transcribe only option with no recording, and now we've got the record only option with no transcription.

And this is just to hit different business requirements where certain people might think that storing transcriptions without recordings is okay, or storing recordings is okay, but we don't want transcriptions because there might be a risk the transcription doesn't match the recording. So more, more granular options and aligning those options to your meeting policies, which is really nice to see.

Profanity Filtering Policy for Transcripts

Tom Arbuthnot: Also, there's now a policy for admins to control profanity filtering on transcripts, which is on by default. Again, in some regions, people have rules around not filtering out profanity, interestingly not because they want the accurate. Interestingly, because they want the accurate transcript from a accessibility and a reliability point of view.

Um, but options to turn that on or off, it is on by default. 

Communicator: New Corporate Comms Tool

Tom Arbuthnot: A new corporate comms tool. Uh, we've seen various shots at this kind of capability, but this is a new one, Communicator, which is a tool you can plug into Teams to send corporate comms, and it has acknowledgement capabilities. This is public preview in August and due to GA in January 2027.

I haven't had hands-on with this. If you've had a go, do let me know. I haven't had hands-on with this. If you've had hands-on, you play with it, do let me know. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

In the Teams Admin Center, live meeting and call monitoring is brought. 

Live Meeting & Call Monitoring in TAC

Tom Arbuthnot: In the Teams Admin Center, live meeting and call monitoring is being brought into one place

microsoft continue to keep quietly improving those live monitoring capabilities.

You do need Teams Premium for these capabilities, but if you are using them, take a look at that combined portal in the Teams Admin Center.

Third-Party Agents in Teams

Tom Arbuthnot: And a big topic at the moment is agents in Teams, not just first-party agents, but also third-party agents. And Microsoft have updated the Teams Admin Center to allow third-party agents in use to be enabled, .

And Microsoft gave an example of this with GitHub, which is, I guess, first party in the sense Microsoft owned GitHub, but a different surface that it has a GitHub Copilot agent in Teams where you can do your agentic coding and mess with PRs. And it generally seems Microsoft are putting quite a lot of effort into adaptive cards and how agents can interact with users in Teams.

MDEP: The Future of Teams Devices

Tom Arbuthnot: This week, we also got a new blog from Microsoft that kind of outlines where the Teams team are with MDEP. This is nothing we didn't know if you weren't kind of paying attention and you're in the community, but this is the first time I've seen it written down so clearly. Uh, MDEP is becoming the standard for Teams Rooms on Android and Teams devices in general, so I think panels think phones.

Uh, anything moving forward that is going to be certified for Teams will be MDEP, and Microsoft will also put kind of. Microsoft will also clarified that obviously Windows will carry on and Android will carry on, and both platforms will continue to exist for the long term. Um, and sometimes Windows will be ahead because the Teams app is developed first, and that's on Windows, and then that goes to the Teams room.

Um, and sometimes some things are easiest to do on Android, and so Android might get some things first as well. But this kind of confirms where Microsoft are with MDEP, and again, we'll be talking more about this on the Teams fireside chat with Kim and Matt. And if you haven't seen, Microsoft extensively updated the MDEP documentation, so if you do want to get into the weeds on what MDEP is and how it works and how it comes together, check out that MDEP documentation as well.

We also got a new Teams panel release. 

Teams Panel Update & Desk Reservation

Tom Arbuthnot: We also got a new Teams panel update with some new capabilities, so we've now got digital signage on idle Teams panels,

two-way setting sync between the devices and Pro Management portal. So again, part of that conversation about Android devices coming into the Pro Management portal, and Deskhub devices like the Logiflex can now also reserve the desk as well.

And if you haven't seen it, Graham Walsh did a great video showing how to set up those new capabilities.

Microsoft Places Documentation & Admin Portal

Tom Arbuthnot: Along with those MDEP documentation updates, we got some great places documentation updates as well.

Places all have. Places also have a new admin portal, and the documentation has been extended to talk about desk bookings and license requirements and everything else. Uh, expect to see more on places this year. If you are looking at or considering or using places, check out the updated documentation.

All right, 

Interpreter Agent for Teams Rooms on Android

Tom Arbuthnot: let's go through five intelligent spaces updates. First up, interpreter agent is coming to Teams Rooms on Android. So we've seen this obviously. We've seen this already on Teams Rooms on Windows, but coming now to Android, that is GA late August and rolling out until September. 

Coordinated Meeting Join on Android

Tom Arbuthnot: Coordinated meeting join is coming to Teams Rooms on Android.

So this is where we have a Teams Rooms on Android and a Teams board on Android, and we can join and seamlessly those two devices join and set themselves up appropriately so we can do collaboration and whiteboard interaction on the board and have the meeting

on the meeting. this one's been a long time coming. A lot of customers are interested in this, so looking forward to that coming. A bit of a way out on the roadmap is due January 2027, and that's the first item we've seen on the roadmap going out as far as January 2027 as well.

We're also getting an update to breakout rooms on Android. They can be added to.

Breakout Rooms for Teams Rooms on Android

Tom Arbuthnot: We're also getting an update so Team Rooms on Android can join breakout rooms and move in and out of breakout rooms, and that is GA in October.

Android Health Signals in Pro Management Portal

Tom Arbuthnot: As we talked about with the move to Pro Management portal, we're getting more health signals coming through from Android devices into the Pro Management portal, so storage, meeting app, Calendar Sync, secondary display, and network health will be surfacing from Teams Rooms on Android through to the Pro Management Portal, and also richer health reporting for BYO devices, and also richer health reporting for BYOD devices as well.

That's rolling out in October. 

Local PTZ Camera Control on Room Consoles

Tom Arbuthnot: Local PTZ camera control on Rooms Consoles for Teams Rooms on Windows. So if you've got mechanical, optical, or digital PTZ cameras, there'll be controls on the Room panel to control those cameras.

That's rolling out later this month into October. And if you haven't. And again, we've talked about this before, but if you haven't noticed the Android 1011 certification devices have. If you haven't noticed. 

Android 10/11 End of Certification

Tom Arbuthnot: And again, we've talked about this before, but if you haven't paid attention, the Android 1011 devices are now end of certification as of the 3rd of September.

So some of those earlier ge - first-gen devices from HP, Poly, Logitech, and Yealink are now end of certification. There is no capability to upgrade the Android on those devices.

And for your Android 12 and 13 devices, that has been extended to the 15th of August 2028, so you've got a little bit longer on those devices. 

Windows 11 25H2 for Teams Rooms

Tom Arbuthnot: Also, on your Windows devices, they will be updating to Windows 11 25H2.

So if you do want to test a subset of devices, make sure they're in the right rings if you want to stage that.

That's it for the Teams. That's it for the Teams Enterprise News this month lookout for Kim Matlock and Matslonka on the Team. And 

Teams Fireside Chat

Tom Arbuthnot: that's it for the Teams Enterprise News for this month lookout for Kim Matlock and Matt Slomka on the Teams Fireside Chat. We'll be going deep into that Rooms and Android and Pro Manage Portal conversation.

You can bring your own questions there as well.

Upcoming Empowering Cloud Events

Tom Arbuthnot: We also have some great events coming up. We've got a global legal firm talking about how they manage Message Center and Microsoft 365 Change, our regular Microsoft Teams devices Ask Us Anything, the Change Roundup, of course.

Contact Center Face-Off

Tom Arbuthnot: I talked earlier about that contact center face off. We're taking five certified vendors and doing a joint session, five minutes each, talking through their solution, what the uniques their solution are, all in one place, all live, really looking forward to that, hoping lots of people will join and ask questions.

Collab Days, UC User Group & UCX London

Tom Arbuthnot: Also, Collab Days at Bletchley Park and our UC User group London, which in September will be hosted by Cisco in London. And a little bit further out, we have UCX London in October. Uh, M- Martin and I will be doing. Martin and I will be doing a Copilot and Teams update session there, and we're also doing a private round table, so if you're an enterprise organization and wants to join a round table, do let me know.

Thanks & Sign-off

Tom Arbuthnot: Many thanks again to Ribbon for all their support of their community. Hope this update has been useful for you. If you've got any questions, comments, or feedback, do let me know below. Thanks so much.