Microsoft 365 Data Residency Switch, Copilot Cost Controls, EWS Cutoff & More: Top Enterprise Changes

Tom Arbuthnot and Rolf Tröndle (Change Cockpit) pick out the Microsoft 365 enterprise changes worth acting on this month: a new data residency switch in the admin centre with a 14 December deadline, Copilot credit spending policies and consumption dashboards, Fable 5.1 arriving in Cowork and Copilot Studio, and the EWS switch-off from 1 October. They also cover passkeys as a first MFA method, a run of Teams meeting and calling changes, and users changing a meeting organiser without PowerShell.

In the second episode of this format, Tom Arbuthnot (Empowering.Cloud) and Rolf Tröndle (Change Cockpit) break down the biggest Microsoft 365 enterprise changes you need to know about:

- A new admin centre switch controlling whether Microsoft 365 customer data stays in-country, with different defaults depending on which Message Center post your tenant received

- Building apps in Copilot Cowork and Copilot Studio, and the governance and cost questions that come with it

- Cowork effort control, Copilot credit spending policies and consumption dashboards

- Fable 5.1 in Cowork and Copilot Studio, and what "enterprise data protection" does and does not mean here

- The EWS switch-off from 1 October and how Microsoft is now pre-populating EWSAllowedAppIDs

- Passkeys as a first MFA method and passwordless password change

- Teams: shared voicemails in the Queues app, QR code protection, the refreshed meeting experience, AI toggles, channel whiteboards in SharePoint and call delegation updates

- The AI at Work Roadmap, Project Online Essentials end of support and the retirement of the companion apps

- Changing a meeting organiser from the calendar, self-service Copilot connectors, Excel Change History and 3 TB archives

If you manage Microsoft 365 for your organisation, these changes could directly impact your users. Every Message Center post discussed is linked below on the ChangePilot portal.

Subscribe for more breakdowns of the top Microsoft 365 and enterprise changes, delivered as both a podcast and video.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introductions
• 0:32 New data residency control: store Microsoft 365 customer data in-country — MC1470876, MC1470878
• 3:06 Build apps in Copilot Studio and Copilot Cowork (Frontier) — MC1469329
• 5:13 Cowork effort control — MC1461699
• 6:57 Copilot cost management: spending policies, alerts and consumption dashboards — MC1470425
• 9:10 Fable 5.1 in Cowork and Copilot Studio with enterprise data protection — MC1465748
• 11:40 EWS switch-off and EWSAllowedAppIDs — MC1469960
• 13:55 Passkeys as a first MFA method — MC1450133
• 15:11 Passwordless password change in My Sign-Ins — MC1437671
• 16:13 Shared voicemails in the Queues app for call queues and auto attendants — MC1287371, MC1443511
• 17:02 QR code protection for Teams messages from external users — MC1470410
• 18:55 Microsoft 365 Roadmap becomes the AI at Work Roadmap — MC1461528
• 20:20 Project Online Essentials end of support — MC1466302
• 21:20 Refreshed Teams meeting experience — MC1317197
• 22:19 AI toggles in Teams meetings — MC1319216
• 23:13 Channel whiteboards now stored in SharePoint — MC1253753
• 24:12 Call delegation: lock a call and delegate warning tone — MC1429012
• 25:06 Retirement of the Microsoft 365 companion apps — MC1474111
• 26:11 Change the organiser of a meeting — MC1472028
• 28:48 Self-service Copilot connectors — MC1459140
• 30:08 Excel Copilot Change History skill
• 30:57 Auto-expanding archive capacity increases to 3 TB — MC1472592
• 33:12 Wrap-up

Key insights

• A new "Store Microsoft 365 customer data in-country" control has appeared in the Microsoft 365 admin centre for tenants in France, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. Some tenants received it default on (MC1470876), others default off (MC1470878), and if it is off your data can shift from in-country to regional storage within the EU Data Boundary when the selection takes effect on 14 December. Check it under Settings, Org settings, Organization profile, Data location.
• App building is coming to Copilot Cowork first and Copilot Studio after, Frontier only for now, with published apps listed in the admin centre under Apps. Tom's concern is lifecycle: who maintains an app once its creator leaves, and where the consumption cost lands.
• Cowork effort control lets users choose light, medium or high effort, with higher effort burning more Copilot credits. Tom's take: asking a knowledge worker to grade their own question is awkward, and defaulting to "smarter" both burns credits and makes simple answers slow.
• The September cost management update adds spending policies that auto-include new services and agents, user limit threshold email alerts, consumption dashboards for AI Reader, Global Reader and License Administrator, and custom approval policies for Cowork credit requests. Tom's framing: IT facilitates the service, the business decides what counts as a good spend.
• Fable 5.1 is available in Cowork and Copilot Studio without the "Anthropic models with data retention" tenant setting that Fable 5.0 needed, so Anthropic no longer stores your data. "AI providers as subprocessors" is still required, and processing still happens in US data centres, so enterprise data protection here does not mean EU, Swiss or UK residency.
• From 1 October Microsoft switches EWS off unless EwsEnabled is set to true. If EWSAllowedAppIDs is null, Microsoft now pre-populates it from the last 60 days of usage; if you set the list yourself Microsoft never changes it. Your tenant gets Message Center posts listing the apps still using EWS, which is Tom's reminder that targeted posts only show up in your own Message Center.
• Passkeys become a first-class MFA method: users can register a passkey first, without an Authenticator fallback. Phase 1 (synced passkeys, Entra passkeys on Windows, FIDO2 keys) lands October to November; phase 2 (Windows Hello for Business, macOS Platform SSO, Authenticator passwordless) is January to February 2027. A separate change lets passwordless users change their password from My Sign-Ins; it is off by default, and Tom notes the trade-off if a passkey is hijacked.
• Shared voicemail management moves into the Teams Queues app for call queues, with auto attendants following. It needs Teams Premium and an admin assignment for access to voicemail history.
• QR codes sent by external users in Teams chat now arrive blurred behind a reveal click. Tom's take: hiding is a start, the proper fix is checking the URL inside the code, and the real risk is the user scanning it with a less-managed personal phone.
• The Microsoft 365 Roadmap is now the AI at Work Roadmap and also carries Dynamics 365, Power Platform and Dataverse, another sign the two product worlds are merging. Project Online Essentials reaches end of support on 1 October: reassign Planner Plan 1 or 3 to keep Planner Premium access.
• Teams meeting changes arriving together: centred controls with Leave kept separate in the top right, toggles for individual meeting AI features, channel whiteboards stored in the SharePoint site rather than the creator's OneDrive, and delegators able to lock a call from delegates with a warning tone when one joins. The Calendar, Contacts and Files companion apps retire on 16 December.
• Users will be able to change a meeting's organiser from the calendar item, alongside the existing admin PowerShell route. The new organiser must accept, future instances of a series move to their calendar, internal attendees get a silent update and external attendees get a cancellation plus a new invitation. Phase 1 covers non-online meetings; Teams meetings and transfer of chat, recordings and transcripts follow.
• Self-service Copilot connectors let users connect third-party sources with their own credentials; a new connector sits in the admin centre for at least seven days before users can see it, so check it weekly. Excel's Copilot Change History skill is now GA, and auto-expanding archives grow from 1.5 TB to 3 TB for E5, A5, G5, F5 Compliance and Purview Suite licences, useful where long retention fills Recoverable Items.

Insights summarised by AI from the episode transcript, reviewed by the Empowering.Cloud team.