What’s New in Microsoft Teams | February 2025
Hi everyone, and happy February. This may be the shortest month, but there’s no shortage of new updates for Teams! This month, we’ve got some really intelligent and time-saving features to talk about. Right at the top of the list is the ability to add agents or bots to a chat that everyone in the chat can use and interact with. There’s also the newly added functionality that allows you to schedule messages in channels to send at a specific day/time, just like you already can in chats. Another feature that both Teams Webinar and Town Hall users, as well as Teams Rooms users will find useful is the ability for a Teams Room to join an event as a presenter, allowing you to manage an event from the console of a live meeting room just like you can from your computer. Stay warm and scroll through all of the new features we’ve released! Chat and Collaboration Meetings, Webinars, Town Halls, and Immersive Teams Phone Teams Rooms and Devices Frontline Worker Solutions Chat and Collaboration Add agents or bots in Teams chat Whether answering questions or taking care of mundane tasks, agents and bots in Teams save you and others time so you can focus on what's most important. You can now add an agent or bot in your 1:1 or group chat and access it directly from that chat. To add, click on ‘Add people, agents and bots’ -> ‘Add agents and bots’ and search for the agent or bot you want to add. Once added, everyone in the chat can interact with the agent. Users can '@mention' the agent along with a relevant prompt, and everyone in the chat will see the agent’s response. This update is available for Teams on Windows desktop, Mac desktop, and the web. Learn more here. Scheduled message delivery in channels Similar to delaying the delivery of chat messages in Teams and emails in Outlook, you can now manually select the future date and time for a channel message to be published. To schedule a channel post or a message reply, click on the plus icon and select schedule message from the menu. This will open the date picker, where you can choose the desired publishing time. This feature allows you to send channel messages confidently, knowing they will be delivered at the right time. Whether you're coordinating with team members across different time zones or scheduling a message to be sent after a meeting, scheduling channel messages provides flexibility and control over your messages. Customize notification location on screen Enhance your focus and productivity by customizing the location of notifications. Previously, Teams notifications would appear in bottom right corner of the screen, but now you can set them to appear in the most convenient and least intrusive location for you: the bottom right, top right, bottom left, or top left. To change the location of the notifications, open your settings > Notifications and activity > Display and select the location that suits your needs and preferences best. Users can easily discover apps previously used Easily find apps you've used in group chats, channels, meetings, and other Teams areas. This enhancement streamlines the app installation process by prominently displaying apps you've previously installed in group chats, meetings, or channels when searching for an app. This app list is unique to each user, based on the apps they have used and installed. Meetings, Webinars, Town Halls, and Immersive Intelligent Meeting Recap for events (Premium) Intelligent recap is now available for town hall and webinar event instances, just like the intelligent recap experience you are used to in meetings. Event organizer, co-organizers, and presenters can now easily explore the meeting recording by speakers and topics, and access AI-generated meeting notes, AI-generated tasks, and name mentions. In addition to availability with a Teams Premium license, intelligent event recap features are available with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Meeting recap can be shared via link Meeting participants can now share a link to the meeting recap from the meeting thumbnail in chat and the recap tab, making it easier to reference and share the meeting recap insights with others. Meeting participants can share the meeting recap link with anyone in their organization. Users who don't have access to the recording or transcript, can request recording and transcript access. New admin policy to enable Copilot for multi-tenant organizations This new admin policy in Teams admin center allows admins to enable or disable access to Copilot in meetings between Business-to-Business members in Multi-Tenant Organization set ups. Teams admins can toggle the ‘Allow Copilot for B2B members’ setting in the Teams admin center or with PowerShell. This setting is turned on by default, allowing B2B members within the multi-tenant organization who have Copilot licenses to use Copilot when they join meetings hosted by their organization. For more details visit Manage Copilot access for B2B members within multitenant organizations (MTO) in Teams. Meeting organizers, co-organizers, and transcript initiator can change spoken language setting The default permissions for who can set the spoken language for a meeting have been updated. Now, when transcription is enabled (whether by itself or when recording or Copilot are enabled) only the meeting organizer, co-organizer, and person who initiated the transcript can change the spoken language for the meeting. This is to ensure accurate transcription of everyone’s speech during the meeting since the spoken language setting and the spoken language used during discussion must match for transcript accuracy. If transcription is not enabled, all meeting participants will be able to change the meeting spoken language. Copilot in Teams meetings now available for GCC Copilot helps you run more effective meetings, get up to speed on the conversation, organize key discussion points, and summarize key actions so it’s clear what you need to do next. Users can type any question or use predetermined prompts during or after the meeting, and their interactions with Copilot are only visible to them. This feature is already available in worldwide multitenant and is now available for customers in GCC. Default policy for transcription updated to “on” The default policy for transcription has been updated from “off” to “on” for any new tenant, aligning the default transcription policy with that of recording. For tenants that never set their global policies, their transcription policy will be changed to “on” from the previous default setting “off.” This change doesn’t mean that every meeting will automatically have transcription enabled, it means that transcription is available, and users will have the ability to turn it on if needed. Teams meeting Notes now available in Microsoft Teams for Education Teams meeting Notes, powered by Loop, is now available in Microsoft Teams for Education. Notes are Loop components in Teams meetings and chats that allow end users to co-create and collaborate on their meeting agenda, notes, and action items that can be co-authored and edited by everyone. Since Notes are Loop components, they stay in sync across all the places they have been shared. Assigned tasks automatically sync with ToDo and Planner. Enhancements to Apple CarPlay for iOS devices The Teams view in Apple CarPlay has been updated with improved visuals to provide a clearer view of your mute/unmute state, and the option to raise your hand has been added. These updates to CarPlay expand your ability to navigate meetings and messages hands-free, safely participate in meetings, catch up on conversations, and initiate urgent communications while on the go, without the need to divert your attention from driving. For more details please visit Place Microsoft Teams calls with Apple CarPlay. Enhancements to iPad Teams calendar We’ve updated the iPad Teams calendar to leverage the iPad’s form factor and make the scheduling process more seamless for iPad users. Users will now enjoy a default 5-day work week view, with options to switch to agenda, day, and 7-day week views. Enhanced features include a join button for easy access to upcoming meetings, synced category colors from the desktop, and the ability to reschedule events by simply dragging and dropping. Join and present events from Teams Rooms on Windows Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows devices can now join events in Teams (webinars and town halls) as presenters. See full description in the Teams Rooms and devices section. Allow presenters to moderate Q&A in Town hall and Webinars Organizers of town halls and webinars can now select and assign presenters to also be Q&A moderators, allowing them to manage and publish questions asked during the event. This feature lets organizers make changes to the group of moderators at any time, before or during the event, and it is available to all users organizing a town hall or webinar, regardless of license. Automatic installation and update of the Network Device Interface (NDI) in Teams (Windows Only) This update now enables users to install and update the Network Device Interface (NDI) automatically in Teams without any manual process. This allows organizations to broadcast audio and video streams from Teams instances to a user's local network. It is currently available exclusively on Windows devices. End the Session for attendees and presenters return to green room Organizers and presenters can now end the session with this new "End Event" button for town halls, webinars, and structured meetings. After selecting this button, attendees will see a message on stage stating that the session has concluded, and presenters will return to the Green Room. Teams Phone Extensibility for PSTN calls Third-party application developers can now extend the PSTN calling experience in Teams with contextual information, making it possible for Teams users to access relevant data without leaving the call experience. This brings additional context and workflow integration into calling experiences and makes customer-facing professionals more efficient by having data from line of business applications readily available. This functionality is available for developers to integrate their applications and add new functionality to calls. Learn more through related developer documentation and admin documentation. Delayed simultaneous ring For teams with shared call responsibilities, delayed simultaneous ring will ensure calls configure the intended recipient first, instead of notifying everyone the moment a call comes in. This helps reduce noise and minimizes distractions —especially for roles like delegates and customer service teams. Direct Routing phone number management Tenant administrators can now more easily manage Direct Routing (DR) phone numbers. The new capabilities can replace manual management of DR phone numbers in Excel or with third-party tools through the ability to upload unused or unassigned DR phone numbers to the Teams Phone Number Management system and manage these numbers within Teams admin center (TAC) or via Teams PowerShell cmdlets. Admins can also leverage TAC or Teams PowerShell cmdlets to manage existing assigned on-premises DR phone numbers, making it easier to convert any on-premises sourced DR phone numbers to online sourced DR phone numbers. Teams Rooms and Devices Find certified for Teams devices for all types of spaces and uses at aka.ms/teamsdevices. Join and present events from Teams Rooms on Windows Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows devices can now join events in Teams (webinars and town halls) as presenters. You can present directly from the Teams Room, with features like green room access and stage control for presenters, supported on both single and dual screens. This feature requires a Teams Rooms Pro licensed room. Learn more. The Owl Bar Newly certified for Teams, the Owl Bar is a 4K front-of-room camera, microphone, and speaker device with a 30MP lens, four omnidirectional microphones, and an integrated speaker. It can work alone or pair with the Meeting Owl to focus on speakers and switch cameras for remote participants. The Owl Intelligence System™ uses visual and audio cues to capture the best view of in-room speakers, ensuring effective hybrid discussions. Ideal for huddle and small meeting rooms, the Owl Bar can also pair wirelessly with a Meeting Owl for larger spaces. Yealink MCore-OPS-T The Yealink MCore-OPS-T is a modular computing solution specially designed meeting board for Windows systems. With its powerful processor, it delivers enhanced computing performance and efficient graphics processing, allowing you to run multiple applications simultaneously without any lag. The sophisticated structural design eliminates the need for external equipment, greatly simplifying installation and deployment. Rally Board 65 for Teams Rooms on Android The Rally Board 65 for Teams Rooms on Android is the ultimate all-in-one video conferencing solution for meeting rooms and open spaces. The expansive 65” touchscreen enables seamless and intuitive collaboration in any environment. Enjoy quick setup, flexible installation options for natural eye contact, and innovative AI-driven features. Simplify the way you meet and collaborate. Frontline Worker Solutions QR Code Authentication Multiple frontline workers often share the same device across shifts throughout the day. Manual sign-in processes are time consuming and decrease productivity, especially on shared devices. Beginning this month in Public Preview, Microsoft will be launching a new, simple authentication option – QR code. This new, highly requested feature enables sign-in with the scan of a unique QR code and entry of a personal PIN number, significantly decreasing time to log in without affecting security. Learn more about QR code authentication and how to enable it. Shared Device Mode – iOS support for Jamf Shared Device Mode now enables more efficient and secure device sharing for Frontline workers. Microsoft's Shared Device Mode (SDM) allows frontline workers, whose device may be shared among multiple users, to login once to access the device and every app on the device and sign out across apps so the device is ready for the next user. In addition, SDM enables conditional access policies to enable customized security policies. This month, we’re excited to announce that Jamf support for Shared Device Mode is now generally available. Customers with iOS Jamf-managed devices can now enable Shared Device Mode at scale with zero-touch provisioning and leverage device compliance conditional access. To learn more about supporting Shared Device Mode and about managing shared frontline devices, click here.Revolutionizing IT administration for small and medium sized businesses
At Ignite 2024, we announced the upcoming general availability of Copilot in the Microsoft 365 admin centers, a set of groundbreaking Copilot features that revolutionizes IT administration by leveraging generative AI to streamline and enhance the Microsoft 365 management experience. Designed to help IT access real-time, contextually-relevant information and enhance productivity and decision-making, we’ve begun by rolling out Copilot to the Microsoft 365 admin center, with Copilot in the specialized admin centers like Teams and SharePoint being added in the coming months. Empowering IT Admins in SMBs generative AI IT administration can pose numerous challenges for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). One of the primary hurdles is the need to manage a wide variety of tasks. With limited resources and smaller teams, IT admins often find themselves juggling multiple responsibilities, from ensuring cybersecurity and managing user access to maintaining hardware and software systems, and staying updated on the latest technological advancements. Microsoft 365 Copilot is already having an incredible impact boosting the productivity of employees in businesses of all sizes, and we’re excited to expand those capabilities to those who also have IT management responsibilities. If your organization has purchased 1 license of Microsoft 365 Copilot, anyone with access to the Microsoft 365 admin center can take advantage of these new AI-powered capabilities, without needing a Microsoft 365 Copilot license assigned to their account. You can access Copilot in the Microsoft 365 admin center by selecting the Copilot icon on the top ribbon. Copilot respects Role-based Access Controls (RBACs), only surfacing information that the user has access to, upholding privacy and security. Here are some of the most powerful ways you can use Microsoft 365 Copilot in the Microsoft 365 admin centers today! Focus on what’s most important in your tenant Microsoft 365 Copilot can quickly get a personalized and concise summary of key insights and trends across all admin areas, such as Service Health, Message Center, Experience Insights, and more all in one place so you can save time jumping from one report to another. Simply ask Copilot to “Recap relevant info from across the admin center”. Copilot checks your tenant status against current service advisories and quickly lets you know whether any of them affect your tenant. It also reviews all the updates from the message center and identifies messages that are most relevant to your tenant so you can immediately focus on what’s most important. Lastly, Copilot surfaces relevant information about your user groups and suggests action items based on recommended actions so you can ensure continuity through the lifecycle of the group and reduce risk of data access loss. Find relevant solutions in an instant Microsoft 365 Copilot taps into the wealth of support and technical articles that have been published to surface support and guidance for IT admins to quickly get help when needed. Following the example above, Copilot can identify service incidents that might be affecting your organization and even provide solutions to guide you on how to take action. For example, you can ask Copilot “How do I restore a deleted user?” or “How do I setup Multi-factor authentication?”. Copilot not only provides you with the steps, but surfacing links to the appropriate setting so you can take action, saving you time navigating the admin center. Optimize your admin workflow Copilot can help create more efficiency in your workflow by providing end-to-end guidance for tasks like deploying Microsoft 365 Copilot to your users by providing steps and guidance, including links to specific configurations where appropriate. Ask Copilot to “Review Copilot user readiness” and Copilot can check that the user has the appropriate device configuration and whether tenant policies are appropriately configured. It surfaces links to the configuration page, saving you time navigating, and also suggests recommended actions that help drive more adoption with your users. Try it out now Copilot in the Microsoft 365 admin center is simply the start. We continue to invest in delivering new skills for Copilot to help admins, and to more surfaces including the specialist admin centers. We invite you to try out these prompts and explore how Copilot can transform your IT administration workflow. Your feedback is invaluable, as it helps us refine and enhance these tools to better meet your needs so we encourage you to use the thumbs up/down button as you explore the feature. For more detailed guidance and to discover additional ways to leverage Copilot in the Microsoft 365 admin centers, please refer to this article.Azure Lighthouse support for MSSP use of Security Copilot Sentinel scenarios in Public Preview
Security Copilot support for Azure Lighthouse Sentinel use cases for managed security service provider (MSSP) tenants is now in public preview. With this support, MSSPs can purchase SCUs and attach them to the managing tenant in Azure Lighthouse and use those SCUs to run Security Copilot skills related to Microsoft Sentinel on their customer tenants via Azure Lighthouse. All the Sentinel skills available in Security Copilot will be invokable from the Azure Lighthouse tenant without the customer needing to have Security Copilot, thereby making Security Copilot available to MSSPs who manage multiple customers. Supported scenarios include querying the customer Sentinel incident, incident entities/ details, querying Sentinel workspaces, and fetching Sentinel incident query. These skills can be invoked on per customer Sentinel workspace. Managing tenants using Azure Lighthouse now can do the following, without their customers needing to provision SCUs: Use the same natural language based prompts using Sentinel skills on customer data Create custom promptbooks using Sentinel skills to automate their investigations Use Logic Apps to trigger these promptbooks While this release doesn’t support all Security Copilot skills across customer tenants for MSSPs, it is an important development on the road to full support for Security Copilot for MSSPs using Azure Lighthouse. Read on to learn more about what this means for your practice, and how to get started. What is Azure Lighthouse? Azure Lighthouse is built into the Azure portal and allows IT partners to manage multiple tenants for Azure services. It provides a unified management experience, enabling partners to view and manage resources across all their customers' Azure environments from a single pane of glass. It supports multi-customer management, meaning partners can perform actions across multiple customer tenants simultaneously. This is particularly useful for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) who need to manage resources at scale. What is changing? We are introducing Azure Lighthouse support for MSSPs to use Security Copilot on their customer tenants without requiring customers to purchase Security Compute Units (SCUs). With Azure Lighthouse support, SCUs should be purchased by a MSSP admin for use on their customer’s tenant . To get started, MSSPs can go to Azure to onboard on to Security Copilot and apply their purchased SCUs to their Azure Lighthouse subscription. In Azure Lighthouse, the MSSP needs to ensure that they have access setup to their customer’s Sentinel environment. Once the setup is completed, MSSPs can invoke Sentinel skills on the customer tenant via the Security Copilot Standalone portal and use the SCUs associated to the Azure Lighthouse subscription. MSSPs can further use custom promptbooks and logic apps to automate their workflows. In future, managed service support will continue to expand to include other skills and capabilities such as Entra, Intune and Purview skills. We will also add support to run the skills in parallel on multiple workspaces across customer tenants so that the same prompt can return the response from multiple tenants for better analysis. What other access controls are supported? As of December 2024, we now support M365 Partner Center GDAP (Granular Delegated Admin Privileges) which allows the managing tenant to operate directly in their customer’s environment using their customer’s Security Copilot tenant. M365 Partner Center GDAP: GDAP is focused on Microsoft 365 services and is available through the Partner Center. It provides more granular and time-bound access to customer workloads, addressing security concerns by offering least-privileged access. Unlike Azure Lighthouse, GDAP relationships are more specific and time-bound, with a maximum duration of two years. Partners can request and manage these relationships through the Partner Center. GDAP is designed to help partners provide services to customers who have regulatory requirements or security concerns about high levels of partner access. MSSPs can get access to customer tenants via GDAP and log into the Security Copilot standalone portal or the embedded experience to get their jobs done. The MSSP will be able to execute all the skills in Security Copilot (Entra, Defender, Purview, Intune, XDR etc.,), a full list of skills is available here as GDAP supports all these services. In this configuration, the customer is the one purchasing Security Copilot SCUs and the MSSP uses these SCUs associated to the customer tenant, rather than SCUs associated to the MSSP’s tenant. Since Entra, Defender, Purview, Intune are not supported in Azure Lighthouse, the only way for MSSPs to use Security Copilot on their customer tenant for these products is by directly logging into the customer tenant and utilizing the SCUs purchased by customers. Additional Resources Understand authentication in Microsoft Security Copilot | Microsoft Learn Grant MSSPs access to Microsoft Security Copilot | Microsoft Learn Microsoft Security Copilot Frequently Asked Questions | Microsoft Learn Microsoft 365 Lighthouse frequently asked questions (FAQs) GDAP frequently asked questions - Partner Center | Microsoft LearnWhat’s new in Microsoft 365 Copilot | Jan 2025
Welcome to the January 2025 edition of What's new in Microsoft 365 Copilot! Every month, we highlight new features and enhancements to keep Microsoft 365 admins up to date with Copilot features that help your users be more productive and efficient in the apps they use every day.
What's new in Viva Insights
This month, we’re excited to announce new features that include improved usability of the Copilot Dashboard, new controls for managing and requesting access to insights, and a sample code repository to help analysts model and structure their queries. First, a wider set of metrics for the Copilot Dashboard now lets customers analyze the frequency of employee usage patterns of Microsoft 365 Copilot. Let’s dive in for more details. Copilot Dashboard usage and retention metrics In response to customer requests for deeper insights into how often employees use Copilot, we’ve expanded the capabilities of the Copilot Dashboard, to now include usage intensity and retention metrics. With usage intensity, customers can see which groups of employees are using Copilot one to five times per time period, six to 10 times per time period, and 11 times or more. Customers can also see how consistently employees are using Copilot on a monthly basis, based on the number of weeks employees are actively using Copilot each month. Customers can also see a ranking of the most active employee groups. The new retention metrics, meanwhile, let customers see the number or percentage of active Copilot users who return to using Copilot on a weekly or monthly basis. Employees who take at least one Copilot action in both the current and preceding time periods are deemed to be “returning users.” Like the usage intensity metric, customers can also filter the insights by employee group. These new metrics can be found on the adoption page of the Copilot Dashboard. Learn more about how to access the metrics and customize the filters. Expanded controls for excluding employees from the Copilot Dashboard The Copilot Dashboard’s exclusion list feature allows Microsoft 365 global admins to exclude certain employees from the dashboard’s aggregated insights. Admins might want to exclude specific employees for legal, compliance or ethical concerns. Previously, admins could only exclude employees individually by using a .csv file. Now, we’re excited to announce that admins can also exclude employees by identifying groups of people they’d like to exclude using Microsoft Entra ID. This method streamlines the exclusion list process for admins. Learn more. New functionalities for “delegate access” in Viva Insights With delegate access, those with access to organizational insights or the Copilot Dashboard can “delegate” that access to others in their company on their behalf. Now, an expansion of this capability allows employees who don’t have that access to request it from their group manager. (Employees can request access to organizational insights, but not the Copilot Dashboard.) Once the employee is given access by the group manager, they’ll have the same view of organizational insights as the manager who approved their request. Learn more about how to request delegate access to organizational insights. In addition, Viva Insights admins can now assign delegate access to both organizational insights and the Copilot Dashboard using Powershell cmdlets. There are three applicable cmdlets, depending on whether the admin is assigning access, viewing existing access, or removing access. Learn more. Viva Insights sample code repository Customers who already use R or Python for analyzing data from Viva Insights might already be familiar with the open source libraries (R, Python) that are designed for creating visuals and analyses from flexible queries. The Viva Insights Sample Code repository is an expansive new resource that contains vignettes and example code for more complex scenarios, including: Top Performers modelling Information Value and Weight-of-Evidence calculations Pairwise Chi-square tests – for org attributes and survey variables Unlike the R and Python libraries, the scripts in the sample code repository are designed to serve as reference scripts to be modified and tailored for the customer’s own specific needs. This allows scripts to be easily integrated into any existing HR analytics or data science workflow, and enable maximum flexibility on controlling for filters, groups, and input variables for predictive modelling. If you have any questions about the new repository, please contact Martin Chan (martin.chanmicrosoft.com). Expanded insights for the Skills landscape report (private preview) We’ve broadened some of the insights and capabilities available in the Skills landscape Power BI template. These enhancements help customers search for and discover the top skills amongst their employees, identify skill groups based on subskills and adjacent skills, and facilitate discussions on resource allocation and skilling initiatives. This report is currently only available to private preview customers. With the report, customers can discover the top employee skills being used in their organization, see how critical skills might be distributed across employee groups, and explore other insights such as skills grouping and connections. The insights are powered by Skills in Viva. One of the report’s insights is focused on skills distribution. This insight category lets customers see how skills are distributed between employee groups, as determined by organizational attributes. Customers can then use these insights to understand the skill profile for a group, compare differences across groups, and identify potential gaps in skills. Now, as part of this update, customers can also identify other relevant skills, such as subskills or adjacent skills, after they select a primary skill. Customers can then drill down further into the skillset for distribution insights across different employee groups. If you’d like to participate in the Skills landscape report private preview or want to learn more, please indicate your interest through this form.
