Microsoft Teams Insider

It's the start of Microsoft's new financial year and there's already a lot to unpack. In this month's update we cover the new Microsoft Frontier company, Cowork going GA (and the new consumption cost model), a wave of Copilot and model updates, plus a huge run of Teams calling, meetings and devices news from InfoComm - including the big Teams Phone Agent announcement.

Huge thanks to this month's benefactor, Neat, for their continued support of the community. Neat have just announced an MCP server for their management platform (a first for OEM tooling) and their intelligent framing beta. Details on the Neat blog — and check out Graham's video on the Neat MCP server.

🔑 Key topics
• Microsoft Frontier - new $2.5bn company, 6,000 embedded ("forward deployed") engineers to drive enterprise AI adoption
• M365 price rises now live (business/frontline/enterprise up ~8-15%, frontline up 25–33%); annual local currency adjustments coming each January
• Cowork now GA - fully consumption-based (Copilot credits); example use cases range from ~$1 to $7+ and can climb fast with heavier models. GPT-5.5 available in the EU data boundary
• Copilot - Sonnet 5 selectable, Work IQ reasoning over Power BI, new vision capabilities, Notebooks rolling out to Copilot Chat
• Models - Fable back in Claude, GPT-5.6 rumoured, Microsoft leaning more on first-party models
• Agents - Planner agent GA, Sales agent GA (in M365 Copilot license), Dynamics Service agent announced, AI content watermarking
• Copilot Super App due August - merges Copilot Chat, Cowork & GitHub Copilot; plus a look at Anthropic's Claude Tag
• Teams Phone Agent - Microsoft's AI auto/mainline attendant, tied into Copilot Studio
• Multi-line GA, Queues app GA on mobile, dedicated Recap app, Facilitator with internet access + voice mode
• Admin - new transcript access controls, auto-block bots; Live Events and Together mode retiring
• Rooms - 1.5M active rooms (1,000+ added/day), IntelliFrame People Labels (Huddly first), Express Enrollment, new AVIXA training
• Devices - Android devices coming to Pro Management portal; Cisco native Zoom Rooms, Crestron Compute GA, Jabra new service plans

📅 July events
• 21 Jul - Teams Devices AMA (with AudioCodes)
• 22 Jul - Microsoft Partner Kickoff (summary to follow)
• 23 Jul - Teams Phone Agent webinar (with Pure IP & Microsoft)
• Late July - Copilot Fireside Chat
• Ongoing - M365 Community Change Roundup

🔗 Links
• Empowering.Cloud
• Ilya InfoComm keynote (speed edit)
• Neat MCP server + Graham's video
• Teams Phone Agent demo
• Slides and Links

Ben Richardson, Infrastructure Engineer at SmartSearch, and Andy Whiteside, VP of Sales at Numonix, discuss SmartSearch's move from legacy on-premise call recording to Numonix's IX Cloud platform for Microsoft Teams.

• SmartSearch needed more than compliance recording, with usability, QA reporting, and third-party integration as critical requirements

• How SmartSearch integrated Numonix with Attention to automate sales call scoring and update HubSpot CRM via API

• Deploying Numonix took just 20 minutes and five PowerShell commands, compared to days with legacy on-premise recording systems

• Bring-your-own Azure storage allowed SmartSearch to meet strict InfoSec and data sovereignty requirements

• Practical advice for organisations evaluating Microsoft Teams compliance recording, from cross-department requirements gathering to vendor certification checks

Thanks to Numonix, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud

Kevin Kieller, Co-Founder and Lead Analyst at enableUC, discusses how the major unified communications vendors are taking distinctly different approaches to AI and what this means for IT professionals and organisations.

• How Microsoft, Zoom, and Cisco are each pursuing different AI strategies, from rapid deployment to simplicity-first to proactive ambient intelligence

• Why UCaaS platforms have reached feature parity on core capabilities and what that means for vendor selection

• The shift towards consumption-based AI pricing and the challenge of balancing enterprise cost predictability with encouraging adoption

• Why data and context matter more than having the best model, and the risks when AI assistants access information without clear boundaries

• Google's underappreciated position in the AI and collaboration space despite strong foundations in DeepMind and Gemini

• Why vendors may be over-rotating on agentic AI and the importance of focusing on real business outcomes rather than technology for its own sake

• How AI is reshaping the role of IT admins and why technology professionals need to keep pace with rapid change

• The growing importance of edge AI processing for meeting rooms and video systems

Thanks to Momentum, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud.

Michel Bouman, AI Powered Workplace Lead EMEA, India and SEA - Teams Engineering at Microsoft, shares a deep dive into Microsoft Scout, the new desktop AI autopilot that acts on your behalf around the clock.

• What Microsoft Scout is, how it evolved from Project Lobster, and how it differs from Copilot Chat and Copilot Cowork

• How Michel onboarded a personal agent called Red to manage email triage, calendar scheduling, and complex multi-step reporting tasks

• Real-world autonomous workflows including expense filing, booking appointments, and even monitoring EV battery charge for road trips

• Agent-to-agent orchestration in practice and how teams share skills and automations across their agents

• The security model behind Scout, including resistance to prompt injection and impersonation safeguards

• The psychology of working alongside AI agents, why treating them as human can be a risk, and Michel's upcoming book "When Your Next New Hire Isn't Human"

Thanks to Momentum, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud.

Alev Tamer, Sr. Partner Solution Architect at Microsoft, and Chris Wheeler, Senior Copilot Solution Engineer at Microsoft, discuss the latest Microsoft Copilot announcements fresh from Microsoft Build.

• Multi-model strategy: how Microsoft brings together models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft AI to offer genuine choice

• Critique and Council: using multiple models to validate and challenge each other's outputs for improved accuracy

• The DRACO (Deep Research Accuracy, Completeness, and Objectivity) benchmark and how Research with Critic achieves the highest score for deep research completeness and accuracy

• Copilot Cowork vs Scout: cloud-based fire-and-forget task execution versus local desktop agent capabilities

• Work IQ as the personalisation layer that makes Copilot genuinely relevant to your role and daily work

• Real-world use cases including automated demo pack generation, fitness apps built on Azure, NHS website creation and AI-assisted performance reviews

• Skills and plugins: creating reusable instruction sets for repetitive tasks and new integrations including Dynamics 365 and Fabric IQ

• Data residency and security: navigating Anthropic data processing, EU data boundaries and flex routing for European organisations

Thanks to Shure, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud