Microsoft Teams Insider

Brian McGough, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft, gives a behind-the-scenes look at how change communications work across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem and what's coming next.

• How Message Center has grown from 50 posts a month to over 225, and the operational complexity behind keeping hundreds of live posts up to date

• The targeting system behind Message Center, from licensing-based filtering to tenant-specific notifications across multiple clouds including GCC, GCC High, and DoD

• Microsoft's modernised approach to change management, introducing frontier, standard, and deferred release options that give admins more control over when changes reach their users

• The new MCP servers for Message Center and Roadmap data, and how they unlock conversational, tenant-grounded insights

• Why customer feedback on Message Center posts genuinely drives change, including stopping feature rollouts and reversing retirements

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

MVP Tom Arbuthnot shares all the latest Microsoft Teams and Copilot news and announcements in less than 15 minutes for May 2026.
Many thanks to Logitech for their continued support.
• Microsoft 365 E7 and Agent 365 GA
• New Models in Copilot • Cowork gets Skills, Plugins and Mobile
• AI Skills in SharePoint • Modernising M365 Change Management – New MCPs
• Teams Phone Multi-line GA
• Teams Devices News & New Devices
• Upcoming Events 
Useful Links: 
Briefings
Understanding Express Install for Microsoft Teams Rooms
Microsoft 365 Roadmap and Azure Updates (Roadmap) MCP Explained
FIRST LOOK: Neat Board 32 & Neat Pad Pro - Devices for Every Meeting Room
NEW Neat Board 32 & Neat Pad Pro: Full Product Walkthrough & Key Features
Teams Insider Podcasts
What is Microsoft 365 Frontier, Work IQ, Cowork and Agent 365 with a Copilot Global Black Belt
Microsoft 365 Copilot Cowork Explained with Bas Brekelmans, Software Engineer at Microsoft
Creating a First Class Microsoft Teams Rooms Experience at Their New London HQ with Damian Lewis at BSI
Microsoft Teams for Frontline Workers: Market Opportunity and Enterprise Mobility with Spectralink

Graham Hosking, Senior AI Solutions Engineer at Microsoft, discusses Copilot Skills, Cowork, and the rapidly evolving world of agentic AI across the Microsoft stack.

• How businesses are navigating AI adoption and why there is no silver bullet for enterprise AI

• What Copilot Cowork is and how it takes Microsoft 365 Copilot to the next level with multi-threaded task automation

• Skills as reusable blocks of instructions that simplify complex business processes like RFPs without needing multiple agents

• The spectrum from declarative agents to Copilot Studio to pro-code solutions on Azure Foundry

• MCP servers and plugins extending Cowork's reach to third-party systems like Salesforce

• Computer use arriving via Windows 365 plugins, unlocking automation for legacy systems without APIs

• Sovereign data considerations and Anthropic model availability across Europe

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

Brett Johnson, Copilot Global Black Belt at Microsoft, returns for a second discussion to decode some of the biggest developments in the Microsoft 365 Copilot ecosystem.

• What the Frontier Program is, how it differs from public preview, and how organisations can get early access to the latest AI innovations on a per-user basis

• How Anthropic models are now integrated into Microsoft 365 Copilot, including data sovereignty considerations and the path to EU availability

• Work IQ explained: the intelligence layer combining Microsoft Graph, memory and real-time inference to supercharge Copilot experiences

• Cowork in action: how the Anthropic-powered agent creates documents, manages calendars and processes complex multi-step tasks in a secure cloud container

• Brett's vibe coding journey, building an astrophotography automation tool with Claude and VS Code, and why personal AI projects accelerate workplace adoption

• Agent 365 goes GA: what it means for governing, managing and securing the growing number of AI agents across organisations, including third-party integration via the Agent 365 SDK

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

Bas Brekelmans, Software Engineer at Microsoft, focused on Microsoft 365 Copilot Cowork, explains its architecture and use cases.

• How Copilot Cowork runs entirely in the Cloud, unlike local machine-based alternatives, enabling enterprise-grade security, audit and compliance

• The multi-model approach using Anthropic's Sonnet and Opus, with the flexibility to switch to the best available model

• Built-in and personal skills for calendar management, document generation and automated workflows

• Extensibility through MCP servers, enabling integration with third-party and line-of-business applications

• Scheduled tasks and autonomous email handling that save hours of manual work each day

• Enterprise compliance features including Purview integration, eDiscovery support and rich audit logs

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