Microsoft 365 AI Workplace Update February 2026
MVP Tom Arbuthnot shares all the latest Microsoft Teams and Copilot news and announcements in less than 15 minutes for February 2026.
Tom Arbuthnot's February 2026 round-up covers Microsoft 365 Copilot changes, the April 2026 Teams licensing shift that moves Places user features and advanced town hall and webinar capabilities into Teams core, and the retirement of Teams Live Events on 30 June 2026. It also covers express voice enrolment, the Meet app becoming the Events app, and ISE 2026 device news.
MVP Tom Arbuthnot shares all the latest Microsoft Teams and Copilot news and announcements in less than 15 minutes for February 2026.
Many thanks to Neat for their continued support.
PowerPoint Deck
- Enhanced M365 Copilot Memory
- Copilot Chat (free) in Outlook with all emails and Calendar
- Ilya Bukshteyn's ISE keynote
- Microsoft Teams Licensing Changes April 2026
- Places Roadmap Updates
- Express voice enrolment
- Meet App Becomes Events App
- Teams Live Events and API are retiring
- Multiple phone numbers on Teams Phone Devices
- Transitioning Teams Android Device Management
- Events
Useful Links:
Briefings:
- Real AI Use Cases in the Contact Centre with Luware Nimbus - Costs, Risks and Benefits - Marcel Gaufroid, Head of Sales – EU, at Luware
- Microsoft Places in 2026: APIs, Desk Booking, and Copilot Context - Brennan McReynolds, Product Strategy Lead for Microsoft Places
- Pure IP's Platform Strategy that Simplifies Enterprise Communications - Adnon Dow, Chief Strategy Officer at Pure IP
- AI Voice Agents - Sean Keegan, Developer Evangelist for Azure Communication Services at Microsoft
Teams Insider Podcasts
- The role AV Distribution play in Microsoft Teams Rooms with Jenny Hicks, Technical Director at Midwich UK
- Logitech's New Rally AI Cameras and Multi-Camera Microsoft Teams Rooms with Henry Levak, VP of Product for Logitech for Business
- Microsoft Places in 2026: APIs, Desk Booking, and Copilot Context Brennan McReynolds, Product Strategy Lead for Microsoft Places
- Microsoft Teams Rooms and Phone Journey at Toyota Financial Services JT Elliott, Unified Communications and Collaboration Manager, at Toyota Financial Services
LinkedIn Videos:
- Ron Wolfe, VP of Microsoft Practice at AVI-SPL, on all the key themes from the show and the new value from the recent Microsoft licensing changes.
- Calum MacDougall at Jabra. The stand has been packed with people and announcements!
- Full tour of AudioCodes collaboration solutions with Nati Davidi from AudioCodes at ISE Barcelona!
- A whole new ecosystem of solutions from Crestron Electronics with Microsoft Teams AI workplace in mind, with Alex Peras
- Nati Davidi from AudioCodes and Albert Kooiman from Microsoft at ISE 2026 about the new AudioCodes C456HD
- Rich Bayes at Cisco at ISE 2026, walking through some big Cisco and Microsoft Teams announcements
- Pratik Chanda at ISE 2026 on the Cisco booth about the Cisco Workspace Designer tool
- Tyler Troutman at Shure UK and Yoav Barzilay on the Microsoft MDEP team about the new Shure IntelliMix Bar Pro and what makes it unique.
- Nathan Coutinho about Logitech for Business's new cameras and all the mounting options.
- Graham Walsh from Neat, about new Neat Pad and Board 32.
https://portal.changepilot.cloud/MC1227627
https://portal.changepilot.cloud/MC1222980
https://portal.changepilot.cloud/MC1227087
https://portal.changepilot.cloud/MC1226495
https://portal.changepilot.cloud/MC1191612
https://portal.changepilot.cloud/MC1163764
https://portal.changepilot.cloud/MC1188999
https://portal.changepilot.cloud/MC1218423
https://portal.changepilot.cloud/MC1227622
https://portal.changepilot.cloud/MC1227077
https://portal.changepilot.cloud/MC1226223
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/versioning-and-support
https://learn.microsoft.com/microsoftteams/plan-town-halls
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/rooms/third-party-join?tabs=MTRW
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQlBPJwqIvA
Chapters
- Intro and Neat sponsorship
- 0:25 New briefings and podcasts on Empowering.Cloud
- 1:23 Microsoft 365 Copilot and agent updates
- 2:07 Copilot memory, Outlook free tier and retrieval API
- 3:11 Frontier models and Anthropic pressure
- 4:22 Ilya Bukshteyn's ISE keynote themes
- 5:30 April 2026 Teams and Places licensing changes
- 6:19 Express voice enrolment and Events app
- Live Events retirement and graph API dates
- 9:01 Interpretation hours, Queues app and Communities
- ISE device announcements
- 12:24 Teams Rooms management, passwordless accounts and signage
- 13:57 Upcoming events and Insider Live Sessions
Key insights
- Teams Live Events retire on 30 June 2026, with the beta scheduling graph endpoint going at the end of March and the 1.0 endpoint on 30 June 2026.
- Removing the 1.0 graph endpoint breaks Microsoft's usual 24-month deprecation commitment for GA graph APIs.
- From April 2026, Places user features and advanced town hall and webinar for up to 3,000 attendees move into the Teams core licence, with capacity add-ons and a shared space licence.
- Express voice enrolment builds a voice profile from meeting speech for voice isolation and recognition, requiring both admin allowance and user agreement.
- The Meet app becomes the Events app, covering webinars and town halls, in preview from early February and GA around April.
- Included interpretation hours rise from two to 20 hours per user per month, with interpreter coming to one-to-one Teams Phone PSTN calls.
- Teams Android device management moves from the Teams admin centre to the Pro Management Portal, in public preview around April and completing around June.
- Passwordless resource accounts for Teams Rooms enter public preview in March for Entra ID cloud accounts, April for on-premises, targeting June for general availability.
- Multiple phone numbers on a single user account and Teams IP phone is on the roadmap for April.
Insights summarised by AI from the episode transcript, reviewed by the Empowering.Cloud team.
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