Tom Arbuthnot's Microsoft 365 Perspective

Many thanks to AudioCodes, this month's Empowering Cloud Benefactor. AudioCodes delivers a wide range of Teams-certified solutions from devices to contact center to recording. I recently joined them on a webinar discussing their Meeting Insights solution (on-demand here),

It's been a busy month, as usual. I was fortunate to head over to Microsoft HQ for the Converged Comms Bootcamp, a great 2-day event focused on Teams Rooms and Phone. Look out for the training videos soon, as well as a new Technical Exam and badge.

I'm looking forward to Commsverse in the UK next month, June 18th & 19th, Mercedes-Benz World. A great community gathering focused on Microsoft Teams, Copilot and M365 Collab.

I actually need your expertise and experience; I have one spot left on my customer panel on Copilot/AI in the workplace, Commsverse day 1. Are you a Workplace/Copilot/M365 service or product owner? I'd love to have you come and share your thoughts on the panel. Please reply and let me know if you're interested.

Monthly Update Video Briefing

Check out my monthly Microsoft Teams update for May, including all the news you need to know this month in less than 15 minutes. Video and PowerPoint - talking about Build news, new roadmap items, devices news and more.

You can also catch the audio version on the Teams Insider Podcast feed (coming next week).

Microsoft Earnings FY25 Q3 - M365 Highlights

Microsoft posted another blockbuster quarter with $70.1 billion in revenue, and the M365 train continues to roll with 430 million paid seats (up from 400 million). The growth drivers? ARPU is up thanks to E5 and Copilot attach rates, and seat counts are up in SMB and frontline worker SKUs.

Copilot was mentioned 26 times on the call (across all products), but no absolute user numbers were given. When discussing Microsoft 365 Copilot, it was stated, "Hundreds of thousands of customers across geographies and industries now use Copilot, up 3X year-over-year," but no specific numbers were provided.

We didn't get any new Microsoft Teams numbers.

Meanwhile, the EU antitrust saga continues. Microsoft's latest offer to the commission: potentially widening the price gap between M365 and standalone Teams from $5 to $9, holding that line for 7 years, and committing to better interoperability for a decade. We'll see if Brussels accepts or if Microsoft are still potentially in line for an antitrust case.

News from Microsoft Build

Microsoft Build is a developer-focused conference, but we also see some overlap in the Microsoft 365 space, particularly with Copilot. This build was all about Agents. Some highlights:

• Copilot Tuning: Low-code customisation of Copilot using your organisation’s data and workflows via Copilot Studio.
• Multi-Agent Orchestration: Develop and manage collaborative AI agents that delegate tasks among themselves, enhancing complex workflow automation.
• Copilot support for MCP, Model Context Protocol (Public Preview)
• A2A - Agent-to-Agent protocol—an open standard enabling AI agents to communicate and collaborate across different platforms and ecosystems (Public Preview in Teams). Developers can build agents for Teams using the A2A protocol.
• Microsoft discussed “The Open Agentic Web” and proposed NLWeb - a natural language interface for websites that makes them more directly accessible for agents. Enabling the transformation of existing websites or APIs into agentic applications.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) in Copilot has me exctied. MCP is an open standard (originally from Anthropic) for AI agents to connect to and interact with external APIs and services.

What this means for Copilot users:

• Copilot can now connect to third-party tools and services that support MCP
• Actions can be automated across different systems without custom coding
• Developers can wrap existing APIs with MCP to make them Copilot-compatible

Example: Instead of manually pulling data from your CRM, updating a spreadsheet, and sending a Teams message, Copilot could orchestrate all three actions through MCP-enabled connections.

Microsoft Teams Roadmap Highlights

The Network Strength Indicator We've All Been Waiting For

No more "Is it your connection or mine?" debates. Microsoft is adding Real-time network strength indicators for everyone in calls and meetings. Automatic tips will appear for users with poor connections. Coming in August, MC1077865

Collaboration Improvements

• Reply to channel messages and break them into new threads (June 488300)
• Share files in external chats without the OneDrive share a link dance (July 492625)

AI in Teams gets Smarter

• Intelligent Recap will now capture shared screen content - a massive new ability that will improve recaps (July 490052)
• Interactive agents will be able to join calls and meetings in real-time (June 490564)
• Audio summaries let you catch up on meetings during your commute (July MC1073070)

Phone System Updates

• Use Copilot during calls WITHOUT transcription enabled (June MC1068906)
• Call waiting beep (yes, in 2025 Microsoft is adding the beep, I guess someone wanted it) (June MC1075913)
• Teams IP Phone Line key management from Teams Admin Center (July 493320)
• The UK now has three operators for Teams Phone Mobile (BT, Vodafone, VMO2), Power BI comparison report here.

Do you still have some users on Teams 1.0? They will get cut off in July.

If you received message MC1074970, “You are receiving this message because users in your tenant are still using classic Teams,". Make sure they are upgraded. Teams 1.0 will be blocked from the service as of July 1st.

Microsoft Teams Devices News

We are close to InfoComm, and I know there is a lot of Teams device news coming there (look out for some Teams Insider Podcasts). We still had some news this month:

Microsoft Teams Rooms on Android Gets Love: A Big May Update with Speaker Recognition, Facilitator Preview, PTZ Controls, and More. Check out an excellent overview from Graham Walsh (YouTube)

Logitech's Entry Level MTR on Windows Play: An entry-level Teams Room at $2,300. The MeetUp 2 with intelligent RightSight 2 features like Grid View, Speaker View, and Camera Zone; and RightSound 2 pair with Tap, with a 5-meter USB Kit with a 10.1” screen and HDMI ingest and a Lenovo Mini i3 compute,

MAXHUB's MAXHUB XBar 50 has quietly made it to the certified list. There is no new news yet, but I expect to see it and more at InfoComm.

Latest Briefing on Empowering.Cloud

Expert Briefings

• Understanding BYOD Microsoft Rooms with Microsoft Teams – Experience, Features and Licensing with MVP Randy Chapman at Logitech and Chris Fitzsimmons at AVI-SPL
• Ribbon Edge 8500 & Use Cases for a Scalable Modular SBC/Gateway/Router with Application Support with Gordon Eddy, Senior Director at Ribbon Communications

Teams Insider Podcast

• Inside Gong’s AI Microsoft Teams Integration with Patrick Burke, Senior Manager, GTM Technology Partnerships at Gong
• Rolling out 200 Teams Rooms globally in 90 Days and driving savings at SCOR with Reto Schadegg, Global IT Infrastructure Manager at SCOR
• Bookable Desks in Microsoft Teams Explained with Evie Grimshaw, Product Manager II at Microsoft
• Compliance Recording in Microsoft Teams: What It Really Takes and How to Choose with Michael Levy, CEO of Numonix
• Exploring Teams Phone Mobile: Mobile UCaaS Integration in Enterprise with Adam Holtby, Principal Analyst at Omdia

On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and YouTube

Events

Online:

• Copilot Fireside Chat with Marcus Schmidt - Copilot in Dynamics 365 Contact Center - 28th May
• Surviving a Cloud Phone Outage – Comparing Teams, Webex & Zoom Phone’s Local Survivability Solutions - 4th June
• Microsoft Teams & Logitech: The Complete Portfolio Explained with MVP Randy Champman - 10th June
• Teams Fireside Chat with MVPs Habib Mankal & Michael LaMontagne - Facilitator and AI in Microsoft Teams - 12th June

In-Person:

• Commsverse 2025 - 18th - 19th June
  • Commsverse - Ask the MVPs and Microsoft Anything about Microsoft Teams
  • Commsverse - Demystifying Microsoft Teams Licensing: 10 Teams Licenses and 7 PSTN Options Explained

Want even more? Check out the great update decks from Martin Boam, What's new in Calls, Meetings and Devices and What's new in Copilot

• https://aka.ms/WhatsNewCMD
• https://aka.ms/WhatsNewCopilot

As always, if you have questions, corrections, thoughts, or feedback, please reply and let me know. I read all the replies.

Thanks

Tom

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