Tom Arbuthnot: 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. 

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Microsoft Teams Enterprise Update. We are just pre-Microsoft Ignite, but there's still quite a lot going on in the space, particularly in contact center. Microsoft have launched some new capabilities, including integration to existing contact centers. We've also got a lot going on in Teams, particularly in security, phishing, QR codes.

We'll talk about that. I've got five quick Microsoft Teams updates and seven intelligent spaces updates as well. Many thanks to Pure IP, who are the benefactor this month. Really appreciate all their support. Let's jump in. So first up, uh, I've been talking about this month after month, so if you don't know, you must know by now, surely.

Um, but Teams Admin Center device management is all moving over to the Pro portal. That is happening by the 15th of December. So if you haven't looked already, make sure you've read these message into messages. Make sure you understand all your devices are up to date, and they're all moved over. And for your operational teams, make sure they've got access to the Pro portal, and they can get access to manage those devices.

GCC is coming in January as well. So if you're a GCC customer, have a look at MC one two two seven six two two. Many thanks again to Pure IP, who are the benefactor this month. Pure IP recently launched an observability product where they can give complete coverage of their core network, as well as over UCaaS platforms, including Teams, Webex, and Zoom, pulling in all the CDR and quality data from those platforms, combining it all into unified reports that include the network and the operator.

If you're interested in that, I did a video with Diana talking through it. And they also have a webinar coming up on the 7th of December, which is a look at their product portfolio for 2027. What's coming, some new features. We've talked a couple of times about AI voice agents. That's coming too. So if you're interested in that, do join the webinar.

Many thanks to Pure IP.

If you haven't been on Empowering.Cloud, if you haven't been on Empowering.Cloud yet this month, there has been a lot going on, some really good podcast. We had Tristan from EY. I really enjoyed the conversation with him,

Talking about running Teams at massive scale and how you deal with that and deployment. He's been in the community for a long time. Very much appreciate him sharing his thoughts. Also, we had Henry on the podcast talking about the massive announcement that Logitech have made. Always great to get Henry on.

He gave us the inside track on some of the development, some of the features, and also timelines in the MDEP conversation as well. So do check that out

And we had a really big hit in the Teams Contact Center Face Off. Many thanks to the five certified vendors who joined that. We did back-to-back five minutes to pitch your solution, talk about your USPs, help customers understand it. We had over 240 people on the live session, and we've had a lot of interest in the recording as well.

We are planning on doing some more versus sessions, uh, particularly in devices I think coming up next.

We have lots of events coming up. Obviously, the big one is Microsoft Ignite. I will be there. We've got some interviews lined up, some conversations lined up. Really looking forward to that. If you're there, do let me know. It'd be great to say hello. We're gonna do the Teams Fireside Chat live from Microsoft Ignite, cover some of the news.

Scott Plette is gonna be joining us remotely on that one. We've got the

Then online we've got some

Online in November, we've got some great sessions. Fellow MVP Josh Blalock at Shure. We're going to do a live session going through some of the AV terminology explained more for the IT pro. So if you're in the Teams Room space or you're in the AV space and you want to learn more about all the terminology that aligns to Teams Rooms, looking forward to that one.

We're also doing, uh, a session with Orchestry on AI billing, usage-based billing. That is a big conversation at the moment, especially as Code rolls out. Obviously, Cowork is out, and Autopilots are on the way, helping you understand how you manage that billing, how you control it, what it's all about. Looking forward to that.

The usual MTD AMA Usual MTD AMA. We have an interesting session with Ribbon on deepfakes. You'll see later in this session that deepfakes is a big conversation at the moment in this space. Really looking forward to that

And a little bit further out into December, we have the Microsoft Teams UC User Group London. That'll be a good one, a bit of a roundup of the year, a little bit of what's coming ahead on the roadmap for next year, and also some drinks afterwards for those who want to stay on.

And Neat are kindly hosting us in December

onto the news you need to know. Microsoft keep tweaking the policies and the controls around Copilot and meetings and recording and transcription, so worth checking out MC1532253. Microsoft are splitting out Meeting AI and transcription with Meeting AI and trying to switch out who controls And trying to split out who manages AI and who can use AI in different policies.

This is GA in November into December, so coming soon

Recording and transcription policies will follow the organizer's policy and there's a new record only choice as well. And for those with Teams Premium, default meeting templates can apply

and this is a nice one for those with Teams Premium. You can now apply meeting protection policies for meetings scheduled from Teams or Outlook. And again, that is coming out in

And again, that's rolling out in November. And we talked last month about the AI meeting summary files. Those, those are, those are generated files to help the AI when it's going back through meeting notes or meeting summaries. That has slipped out to 2027

This is probably the biggest news this month. Microsoft have launched their contact center intelligence in preview. The idea here is you can take Microsoft's voice agent technology and integrate it with existing contact centers like Genesys, Five9, Avaya, uh, whatever you want within reason. There is a connectivity system there, and the idea is, is that you can mix Microsoft's voice AI technology into your existing contact center infrastructure without having to rip and replace the contact center.

Early days, this is in preview. Uh, Microsoft for the first time have hit the Gartner Magic Quadrant for contact center

Fucking hell

There'll be more talk of this at Microsoft Ignite, so looking forward to... There'll be more talk of this at Microsoft Ignite, so looking forward to digging into this. And we've got now five different options for AI in and around Teams. So we've got Teams Phone Agent, we've got the Copilot Studio harnesses, we've got Teams Phone Agent plus certified contact centers through the Unify platform.

We've obviously got D365 Contact Center, and now we've got Contact Center Intelligence as well. So lots going on just in the Microsoft ecosystem around voice agents

Microsoft continue to have a big focus on security, and that includes the Teams team. There's been a lot of work, there's been a lot of work done around phishing, QR codes, and deepfakes. So on phishing, there'll be AI phishing detection coming to Teams. That's due in December. Nothing to configure. That will just be on by default

We talked last month about QR detection and hiding the QR code and making the user click through, but now there'll be malicious QR code detection, so it will actually check those URLs and check that they're safe

I talked earlier about Ribbon and the deepfakes webinar. Looking forward to that. Teams are bringing third-party deepfake detection

And this now has a Message Center item, and it is due mid-November. I still haven't heard who the certified partners will be for that deepfake detection, so looking forward to more details there. Again, listen out for that at Microsoft Ignite. We've got some improved conditional access policies, and this is a really interesting one.

Facilitator is going to have a new protection skill. Uh, it just hit the roadmap, and the idea is that Facilitator will be looking at the transcription for anything that looks suspicious around phishing or somebody trying to do something they shouldn't in a meeting. So nice to see Microsoft using the AI capabilities in the meeting for security as well as for transcription, convenience, actions, et cetera

Five quick Teams updates. Number one, external file sharing is now on by default. This is really nice from a user experience point of view. Traditionally, you couldn't drag files into a federated chat and share them. Now you can. It will generate a OneDrive link. Um, just a reminder that Teams federation unfortunately, is being used a lot for impersonation attempts, organizations trying to say, bad actors trying to impersonate IT support, for example.

So unfortunately, as much as I love Open Federation, uh, it probably is best practice to have an external allow list for federation. Tony Redmond has a really good blog on that there

I recently had Michelle on the podcast who owns this feature. The pod hasn't come out yet, but it will do soon. This is the improved

This is the improved meeting controls, what Microsoft sometimes call the U-bar at the top of the meeting. So the meeting controls are shifting to the middle of the screen. The leave is on the right. Uh, really interesting conversation with Michelle

If you haven't seen that, that should be rolling out soon

Couple of cancellations. Microsoft were going to move Copilot Chat from the chat list. That's now been canceled, and also Whiteboards were going to move to... Also Whiteboard data was going to move to Sen- SharePoint, uh, but for the moment, that is now going to stay in the user's OneDrive. And IntelliFrame People Labels has slipped out to January.

I'm really looking forward to this one. I've got my Huddly system ready to test this out. So that will be the hover over labels. Look out for that now coming in January

Intelligent call delegation is now rolling out in preview. We talked about this a couple of months ago. This is

This is like your personal attendant that screens your calls for you. It can also do some more advanced stuff like book meetings if you want it to. That is rolling out initially in November in preview and GA in January, and that is included in your Copilot license. There's no additional Copilot credits there

Teams Phone Agent is now up to 42... Teams Phone Agent is now up to 42 different voices. They've also added a Copilot credit estimator, a spam detection template that continues to

That continues to get investment, and we had a really good fireside chat on that last month. And if you didn't see this last month, the Queues app premium trial is still available until December the 14th. If you want to reduce... If you want to have an extended period to trial Teams Queues app, you can do that, and if you go ahead and use it, you get the first year discounted as well

Simultaneous screen sharing is coming, sharing two screens at once. You see this request sometimes from, uh, game development studios or from pair-- or from programmers wanting to do pair programming where they want to share two screens at once.

That is coming to the desktop client November, December, and also Teams Rooms in December as well

There's interesting new conversat-

There's an interesting new feature coming on the roadmap for December, which is side conversations during meetings, so you can break out into a one-to-one or a small chat inside of a meeting without disrupting the meeting Not sure what the UI is gonna look like for that, but looking forward to testing that out

And Microsoft are also going to use AI to drive through meeting quality information and give meeting quality insights in the Teams Admin Center. I am all for any AI reasoning over all that data and helping us understand issues. Looking forward to that coming mid-November

Onto intelligent spaces

Onto intelligent spaces. Microsoft has announced m- m- Microsoft has announced cross Microsoft has announced cross-meeting... Microsoft has announced cross-platform meeting connect with Zoom. Bit of a mouthful.

This the ability for Zoom Rooms to join Microsoft Teams meetings and obviously Microsoft Teams meetings to join Zoom Rooms. Synced mute, 1080p, more of the features you would want between the two systems. There's a Teams blog on that, and also it was announced in Zoomtopia. No hard timelines around that, but Zoom says first half of 2027

Logitech had a whole plethora of device announcements. We talked about this briefly. Logitech had a whole plethora of device announcements. We talked about this last month. Some of those devices are shipping already, some are roadmap into 2027. , Again, if you want the inside track on that, check out the podcast with Henry Levak.

It was a really good session about not just the devices, but some of the design philosophy behind them and some of the interesting technical details. Really enjoyed that conversation with Henry

There's some changes coming for IntelliFrame, so this is Microsoft's cloud-based framing. The option is, uh, to turn it off is going away from the online participants of a meeting.

Users in the room can still turn it off with the console. Generally, it feels like the focus is on Edge AI at the moment in those framing use cases. Um, also Express Face Enrollment and People Labels that we've talked about before, that has slipped to January 2027. So if you've been waiting on that one, you'll be waiting a little bit longer to get that Express Face Enrollment

Some updates on Android. Some updates on Android room. Pro license rooms are getting private presenter and organizer chat in the green room. Nice add there. And also there were some fixes for bugs in October. On the Windows side

On the Windows Room side, we got Facilitator AI notes for in-person meetings on the roadmap for the first time, and

And local PTZ controls. Also app updates are now going to be

And local PTZ controls for the cameras and app up- and app updates are going to exclusively get distributed through the ProPortal now, not the Microsoft Store

If you've got any parts of your organisation in Canada, Canada have changed, uh, the way they're dealing with daylight savings time, so your Android devices need to make sure you have a firmware update or you need to temporarily change the time zone yourself

And hide organizer, and hide organizer names on Teams panels is

And hide organizer names on Teams panels is rolling out now

Lastly on Rooms, strongly recommend you check this out. Uh, Jimmy and the team have built a Teams Rooms Fundamental course. It's free to access on AVIXA. You do need to log in, but highly recommend that. I've heard early feedback, and I'll be checking that out as well So that's it for this month. Hope that was a useful Teams update for you.

If you've got any questions, do let me know. I will be at Ignite, so if you're there, it'd be great to say hello. I'll be bringing you all the news of Teams and also some Copilot news as well.

I'm also doing a second video on Copilot credits, so look out for that. That was worth a dedicated video. Many thanks to Pure IP, the sponsor this month. Really appreciate all their support. Do check us out on the newsletter and on the events, and if you've got any questions, comments, or feedback, do let me know.

Thanks a lot.