Microsoft Teams Insider

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

Howard Crow, Director of Product at Microsoft, joins the podcast to discuss the evolution of Microsoft Planner, its deep integration with Microsoft Teams, and the growing role of AI agents in work management.

• Howard shares his nearly 30-year journey at Microsoft, from the founding days of SharePoint to leading the Planner and Project teams

• The genesis of Microsoft Planner and how it democratised project management beyond specialist tools like Microsoft Project

• Microsoft's unification strategy, bringing To Do, Planner, and Project for the Web together under a single Planner brand

• How Planner integrates deeply with Microsoft Teams across meetings, channels, and chats

• The Planner Agent and Microsoft's multi-agent runtime service, the first production multi-agent harness shipped at Microsoft

• How MCP (Model Context Protocol) is becoming the "USB for APIs" and unlocking new integrations for Planner

• The future of work: managing teams of humans and AI agents together, and why a visual planning surface matters for knowledge workers

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