M365 Perspective

Teams Licensing Wins, ISE Highlights, and the AI Model Wars Heat Up

Teams Premium features including Places and the new Shared Space License move into Teams Core in April, plus ISE 2026 hardware news from Neat, Jabra, Shure, Crestron, Cisco and Logitech, MCP agent widgets in Copilot Chat, the pay-as-you-go Copilot Retrieval API, and Opus 4.6 versus Codex 5.3.

Many thanks to Neat, this month's community Benefactor. I really appreciate all their support of the community. Neat have a new MDEP 10-inch Pad Pro — more details in this ISE interview.

Microsoft 365 and AI Workplace February Update

You can check out my February update video briefing to get all the news in under 15 minutes on YouTube, LinkedIn and on the podcast.

Microsoft 365 and Copilot News

MCP-based agents getting rich interactive widgets — This is one I'm personally excited about. MCP-based agents in Copilot Chat will support rich interactive UI widgets, so when you connect to third-party services via MCP, the output renders as structured, visual tables and cards rather than plain text. Rolling out in March. MC1227627

Pay-as-you-go Copilot Retrieval API (Preview) — This is an interesting one. API access to workplace data for non-Copilot licensed users. Think about a Copilot Chat user in an agent scenario that needs access to enterprise data — you can now do this on a pay-as-you-go basis. It won't give users access to their personal data like OneDrive or email, so it's not the same as full Work IQ. MC1222980

Opus 4.6 and Codex 5.3 — Two very exciting frontier models from Anthropic and OpenAI, respectively, were released the same day! Both are already integrated into GitHub Copilot. I've been playing with Opus 4.6 in particular, and I'm really impressed.

Is Anthropic putting pressure on Microsoft 365 Copilot? — Microsoft is now offering Anthropic models on Microsoft Foundry and is integrating them into Copilot. Internally, Microsoft are also increasingly using Claude Code. But at the same time, Anthropic has launched Claude plugins for Excel and PowerPoint that have been very well received, plus Cowork — essentially Claude Code for knowledge workers (Mac only right now, coming to Windows soon).

There is no doubt that Microsoft 365 Copilot Excel and PowerPoint Agents will be benchmarked against these. It's an exciting time seeing the power of these models coming into Knowledge work.

Microsoft Teams and AI Powered Workplace

ISE 2026

We're just back from ISE in Barcelona. It was a great week. Ilya Bukshteyn's keynote explained that AI in Teams is no longer just about meeting notes — it's about multiplying what every person can achieve. Microsoft is positioning Teams as the hub for human-to-human, human-to-agent, and agent-to-agent collaboration, with a wave of updates. You can read my full breakdown of the keynote on LinkedIn.

I gathered the news from key Microsoft partners across the ecosystem — links below:

Graham Walsh from Neat — new Neat Pad Pro and Board 32, both MDEP devices
Ron Wolfe, VP of Microsoft Practice at AVI-SPL — key themes from the show and the new value from licensing changes
Calum MacDougall at Jabra — new modular Teams Room system with Hudley cameras and the new SpeakerMic
Nati Davidi from AudioCodes and Albert Kooiman from Microsoft — the new AudioCodes C456HD, an MDEP phone for education and government with panic button integration
Alex Peras at Crestron — a new ecosystem of solutions for the Microsoft Teams AI workplace (webinar coming up where we go over all the new devices)
Rich Bayes at Cisco — new Desk Pro (MDEP device) and Microsoft Teams announcements, and Pratik Chanda — Workspace Designer improvements
Tyler Troutman at Shure and Yoav Barzilay, Microsoft MDEP — the new Shure IntelliMix Bar Pro with unique camera placement (cameras on the edges and middle of the bar)
Nathan Coutinho at Logitech — Rally AI and Rally AI Pro cameras with slim wall-mount profiles and in-wall mounting options

Microsoft Teams Licensing Changes Coming April

Some of the biggest news this month is good news licensing changes. Capabilities that were previously Teams Premium are moving into Teams Core:

Places end-user features move from Teams Premium to Teams Core licenses
Shared Device License becomes Shared Space License — make a space or up to four desks bookable with a single license, enables desk booking, space management of booking policies, space analytics, and third-party API integration
Advanced Town Hall and Webinar features (up to 3,000 interactive attendees, 10,000 view-only) move into Teams Core
Attendee Pack Licenses available as add-ons to scale events up to 100,000 participants

I did a full blog breakdown and a discussion with Brennan McReynolds, walking through all the changes and what they mean for customers.

A couple of new items on the Places roadmap: map-based room booking is in development (Roadmap ID 553225, due August) — replacing the side panel with a full-screen map view in Places Finder across Outlook and Teams. Plus new profile cards for buildings, rooms, and desks (Roadmap ID 553219, due June) — giving additional data about spaces, their capabilities, and location. A really neat way to integrate the Places experience.

Express Voice Enrolment

One of the key points from ISE. If your admin allows (on by default) it and you agree to it, Teams will listen to your speech in meetings, and when it has enough content, it'll prompt you: "I have enough to make a voice profile for you. Is that okay?" A lot of people don't go through the settings to proactively enrol, so this just nudges them to know the feature's available. Rolling out in March. MC1197146

Meet App Becomes Events App

The Meet app in Teams is being redesigned as the Events app, bringing together meetings, webinars, and town halls into a unified experience. Targeted Release rolling out early February; GA rolling out early April. MC1227087

Teams Live Events Retiring — June 30, 2026

We knew this was coming, but now we have an official date. Teams Live Events and associated Microsoft Graph APIs will retire on June 30, 2026. Existing events will continue to function through February 28, 2027. Town Hall now has all the capabilities to replace the scenario. MC1226495

The Graph v1.0 endpoint is also going on June 30th. Microsoft's own documentation says that GA Graph APIs should receive a 24-month deprecation notice before removal. Microsoft has the data, and maybe usage is low, but it's a little worrying if you're a developer relying on that support commitment.

Queues App — Shared Call and Voicemail History

A big one that many people have been waiting for. The Queues app is getting the shared history of calls and voicemails. Long time coming. A big unlocking capability for the Queues app. MC1188999

Communities in Teams (Public Preview)

Communities (previously Yammer / Viva Engage) is coming into the Teams experience in public preview. Appears alongside chats and channels for browsing feeds, posting updates, and discussions. There's also an AI agent in communities that drafts suggested responses to unanswered questions. If you're a Viva Engage user, this is worth a look. GA due April–May 2026. MC1218423

Multiple phone numbers per user/device — A big one for Teams Phone. Assign multiple numbers to the same user account and the same Teams IP phone. Due April. (Roadmap ID 553590)

Direct Guest Join — Google Meet ↔ Teams Rooms

Teams Rooms can now join Google Meet meetings and vice versa. Initially, Windows only — we'll see when the Android option drops. MC1226223

Android Device Management Moving to Pro Management Portal

Management of Teams Android devices is moving from the Teams Admin Center to the Teams Rooms Pro Management portal. This consolidates all device management into a single portal. Public preview April; GA June 2026. Be aware that this will change some of your operational procedures. MC1227622

Passwordless Resource Accounts

Not necessarily a headline grabber, but a really big improvement. Moving from passwords on resource accounts (which can be a problem with password cycling policies) to key-based exchange with automatic rotation. Much more secure, especially as we get more AI capabilities in the room. Public preview March for Entra ID cloud accounts, April for on-prem, target GA June 2026. Check out Matt Slomka's ISE session for more details.

Digital Signage on Teams Rooms Android

Digital signage capabilities rolling out to Teams Rooms on Android in early March — similar to what we've had on Windows. Supports Appspace, XOGO, and custom URLs. Configured via the Teams Rooms Pro Management portal. MC1227077