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M365 Perspective

The new Copilot super app explained, credits switch on for Copilot Business, ACS retires

Microsoft's new Copilot with Home, Code and Autopilot, and what it means for licensing and admin settings. Plus usage-based billing on by default for Copilot Business, Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Sol in Copilot, and Azure Communication Services retiring as a standalone offering.

The new Copilot super app explained, credits switch on for Copilot Business, ACS retires

Many thanks again to Ribbon, our September community Benefactor, for supporting Empowering.Cloud. If you are in the US, Ribbon INSIGHTS Americas is in Florida on 10–12 November.

Microsoft used the last week of the quarter to announce "the new Copilot". This issue covers what it means for licensing and admin settings, plus lots of important Microsoft 365 and Teams updates and the end of Azure Communication Services as a standalone product.

Microsoft Teams Enterprise Update — September 2026

Everything you need to know in 15 minutes or less. Watch on YouTube, read it on Empowering.Cloud, or listen on the Podcast.

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Microsoft 365 and Copilot News

The new Copilot — Home, Code and Autopilot in one app

Microsoft announced "the new Copilot" on 25 September: one app, three tabs, Home, Code and Autopilot. Jared Spataro's post, Introducing the new Copilot with Home, Code and Autopilot, landed the same day.

I've written up what you need to know in The New Copilot Explained: Home, Code and Autopilot, and what it means for Microsoft 365 admins, but here is the TLDR:

  • Home is the new landing tab and brings Chat and Cowork together on one screen, with "the full power of Word, Excel and PowerPoint" inside the Copilot app. Chat is included in your licence; Cowork is still usage-based billing (MC1479277).
  • Code is a new dedicated place to build "apps", trackers and dashboards with natural language, on "the same underlying technology as GitHub Copilot", hosted inside your tenant on the new Copilot Managed Runtime. Code is usage-based billing and needs a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence plus a spending policy.
  • Autopilot is Scout with a new name, moved to the cloud: "a persistent, proactive and personal agent that keeps working even when you're not", living in your tenant with its own identity, memory and workspace. It is built on "a hardened version of OpenClaw". If you piloted Scout, MC1479273 says the desktop app enters maintenance mode on 30 September, the same day Autopilot expands in private preview, with "broad availability by end of year".

Two things every licensed user will notice from October (MC1479277). The Cowork, Code and Autopilot entry points become visible by default to everyone with a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, whether or not they have a spending policy; users without one get a "Request access" message (enterprise) or "Learn more" (education), and a new admin centre setting chooses which message they see and whether they can request access.

The existing setting in the admin centre used to hide usage-based experiences (“Allow users to discover and use AI experiences enabled by usage-based billing”) will be removed.

New Copilot - What's coming when?

  • Home: rolling out through the Frontier programme in October (MC1479277); Code reaches Frontier "at the end of the month", broad availability "in the coming weeks" after that.
  • Autopilot: private preview expanding at the end of September.
  • Office in Copilot: consumers and Frontier "in the coming weeks".
  • Today: private preview in October.
  • Improved @Copilot in Teams: private preview by end of September.
  • Copilot Managed Runtime: public preview now.
  • Plugin registry: GA in the coming weeks.
  • Code for Microsoft 365 Premium and Pro (consumer) subscribers: preview "later this year".

Copilot pricing — seat plus Copilot Credits, and usage-based billing off by default for enterprise, but on for Copilot Business

The companion post for anyone who owns a budget is Nicole Herskowitz's Evolution of the Copilot pricing model, and Spataro's earlier Building the system for AI at work sets up the same two terms. The Copilot User Subscription License (USL), still $30 per user per month list, covers "everyday AI": Chat, Copilot in the Office apps, Office in Copilot and model choice. GPT-5.6 and Sonnet 5 are included; "new models like Opus 5 will be included with limits".

Hit the limit as a heavy user, and you get "a clear warning first, then a choice: switch your model selection to Auto at no additional cost or move to credits". No numbers for those limits have been published.

Usage-based billing (UBB) in Copilot Credits covers "advanced AI": Cowork, Code, Autopilot, the new agentic SharePoint and OneDrive work, and the frontier models Astra and Fable. MC1479276 adds the dates the blog leaves out: "UBB will begin to roll out in Copilot in Q4 CY2026" and is switched on inside the Frontier public preview.

The default for enterprise is "UBB services stay off until an admin creates a spending policy in the Microsoft 365 admin center, and nothing is billed before that."

Copilot Business is different. MC1476200 says eligible *new* Copilot Business purchases get usage-based billing configured/enabled by default, with Microsoft creating the Azure resource and a spending policy with default limits: from 19 October for purchases direct from Microsoft, and from 2 November through CSP (Partner Center announcements).

Claude Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Sol land in Copilot on launch day

Both arrived on 22 September across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Chat, Cowork and Copilot Studio (More models, one Copilot), and both are cheaper than their predecessors: Opus 5.5 about 40% below Opus 5, Sol 50% below GPT-5.6. Claude still needs the existing Anthropic subprocessor opt-in.

The industry response to Opus 5.5 has been particularly positive. We are seeing Anthropic, OpenAI and Microsoft, with their own models, focus more on cost/performance.

Grok also arrived on 12 September, off by default with its own SpaceXAI subprocessor setting and excluded from EU, EFTA and UK tenants during preview (MC1474124). The Anthropic controls have been renamed under "Choose which users can access Anthropic models" (MC1476342), with a separate opt-in for retained-data models such as Fable 5.0 and Mythos 5.

Azure Communication Services retires as a standalone offering

Microsoft has published an Azure retirement notice and a retirement and breaking changes guide for Azure Communication Services: no new sign-ups from 23 October 2026, and standalone retirement on 30 September 2028.

Microsoft Teams Interop, Teams Phone, and Teams Phone Extensibility (TPE) are not impacted.

“This decision reflects our evolving strategy to prioritize deeply integrated communication experiences within Microsoft platforms, specifically Teams, Dynamics 365, and Azure, while working with leading Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) providers to fill gaps and accelerate innovation for Azure customers.”

Some services retire outright; others will remain supported only through Teams integrations. My read is that Microsoft is stepping back from standalone CPaaS to focus on integrated communications/AI and agents.

Interesting Microsoft 365 Changes

  • Apps built in Copilot Studio are now inventoried in the admin centre with owner, data sources and usage, and can be blocked or retired; building and running are metered as two separate credit services (Managing apps built in Copilot Studio). For a real-world cost, Daniel Anderson built a SharePoint CRM in under an hour for US$46.54 of credits.
  • Agent 365 gains Registry Sync for agents on Bedrock, Google Cloud, Databricks and Claude, a Tools view of every MCP server and connector with block and approve, and finance caps with per-user limits and alerts. Related: duplicate-agent consolidation with version history (MC1477184) and agent value insights (MC1477183).
  • OneDrive accounts over 5 TB go read-only between November 2026 and February 2027 (Tony Redmond). The fix is a meter: pay-as-you-go storage at $0.20 per GB per month, up to 25 TB per user, GA in November (MC1477185). Find anyone over 5 TB now.
  • Browser Use in Cowork gets an admin control, off by default and scoped to users or groups (MC1474461). Existing Copilot DLP policies apply to Cowork automatically (MC1477182).
  • Skills in declarative agents are GA by the end of September (MC1476977), and Brand Skills for PowerPoint go GA late September (MC1473166).
  • Microsoft-provided SMS and voice MFA retire on 1 February 2027 (1 July 2027 for Global Admins and external users), and SMS first-factor sign-in retires the same day (MC1426371, MC1474104).

Deadlines

  • 30 September — Teams web redirect to teams.cloud.microsoft (MC1465764); Project Online retires (MC1478955); CSP E5, E7 and Copilot promotions end.
  • 1 October — EWS retirement enforcement; check EWSAllowedAppIDs (MC1191252).
  • 5 October — Teams Live Chat support ends (MC1449174).
  • 13 October — Office LTSC 2021 end of support (MC1472429); Windows 11 24H2 Home and Pro end of updates (MC1471964).
  • 16 October — legacy Whiteboard export closes and content is deleted (MC1469957).
  • 16 December — Microsoft 365 Companion apps stop working, manual removal required (MC1474111).

Microsoft Teams and AI-Powered Workplace

@Copilot in Teams gets an upgrade

Alongside the Copilot super app announcement we heard: "And now when you invoke @Copilot in Teams, your entire team gets the shared context and permissions of the channel, group chat or meeting".

Ask why a product decision was made, and Copilot pulls the background from across conversations — no digging, no re-explaining. When that decision ripples into manufacturing, packaging and launch timing, Copilot goes further: it offers to prepare a cross-functional review with dependencies, owners, open questions and decisions, so everyone can see how their work connects and what still needs resolving.

The @Copilot capability will be in private preview in Teams by the end of the month." I'll be looking out for more details.

Key Teams Changes

  • A new EnableGraphTranscriptAccess switch defaults to off, which breaks third-party apps pulling transcripts through Graph until you enable it (Tony Redmond · MC1393806). Check with any recording, compliance or CRM vendor that reads Teams transcripts.
  • Facilitator in channel meetings has slipped from late September to a mid-November to early December window (MC1461165), a correction to last issue.
  • Profanity filtering in meeting transcripts becomes an admin meeting policy, on by default (MC1478003).
  • Teams user reporting to Defender is on by default from 25 October unless you opt out (MC1478463); Advanced Hunting gains a MessageContents table for Teams messages (MC1474106).
  • External meeting bots can be auto-blocked by policy; bot detection GA has slipped to the end of October (MC1251206).
  • AI meeting archive files, generated to improve Copilot and Facilitator answers, start from early November (MC1429018), one for the compliance-minded.
  • Third-party agents get a home in the Teams admin centre from October (roadmap 569608), and Vercel Connect adds a Teams connector, another agent platform treating Teams as the front door for enterprise users.

Teams Rooms and Devices News

Teams Rooms on Android September release

The September Android release, build 1449/1.0.96.2026249711, adds a new Gallery view, the Interpreter agent, town hall event-group chat and SIP/H.323 via partner (the last three Pro), and fixes devices still using EWS for calendar, which is a prerequisite for the 1 October EWS enforcement.

Rooms and Intelligent Spaces Updates

  • IntelliFrame people labels come to Teams Rooms on Windows in mid-November, with names and contact cards for enrolled in-room participants (MC1419798). Express face enrolment follows in November (roadmap 570846).
  • Facilitator AI notes for in-person meetings on Android Rooms are now early November (MC1307888), and additional Android health signals in the Pro Management Portal now have an MC (MC1472011).
  • Teams Android device management deprecation in the Teams admin centre is expected to complete by the end of September (MC1227622).
  • New certified hardware: the Barco ClickShare Hub Pro bundle with Huddly L1 and Shure MXA902, and the DTEN D7X AI Board 55-inch.

Two new device write-ups from me: MAXHUB Teams Rooms portfolio explained and a first look at Jabra Reach alongside PanaCast 55 VBS and SpeakerMic.

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As always, if you have any questions, corrections, thoughts, or feedback, please reply. I read all the replies.

Thanks

Tom

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