New Year, New Momentum: Here are three Copilot updates to get you started into 2026

It's a new year, so I thought I'd start the year by mentioning three features already released, or soon going to be released. One of the features improves the workflow of sharing files with comments, the other improves the application specific Copilot, and the last feature makes it easer to find the nest available timeslot for a 1:1 meeting. As with all of my other posts, timelines can shift, and the timelines in this post is as written in the Message Center at the time of posting. AI-Summary experience when sharing files. With this new feature, copilot intent to help users share files with clearer context in just a few steps. Users will get the capability to generate a concise summary of a file and include it when sharing from the File Explorer share dialog or the OneDrive activity center. This will make it easier to share the context of a file and giving the receiver a faster understanding of what a document or file contains before they open it. General Availability announced...

Teams - Summer summary

A lot of things have happened in world of Teams (and Skype for Business) over the summer. And here is a blogpost where I will try to catch the highlights of the past month.

Direct Routing for Office365
The "biggest" news early in July, was probably the release of Direct Routing for Teams for both the enterprise and the carrier (hosted) market. I've been participating in the TAP for this service, and will be looking at some in-depth material this fall. Read about this exciting feature here.

Teams for GCC
Teams was released for the US Government Community Cloud on July the 17th:

Auto Attendant and Call Queue
These features we already know from Skype for Business is now also available in Teams. This is part of the ongoing effort to bring Teams at par with SFBO.

Live events
Microsoft announced a new feature called "Live events" within Teams, bringing the capability of broadcasting meetings to a wide audience. The feature is now in public preview.

Free Teams version
Microsoft also announced a free version of Teams, suitable for smaller organizations who want to try out the application. Check out this comparison chart to see what you get with the different versions of Teams (Free, Essentials and Premium)

Client updates
Both desktop and mobile clients have been updated with features and fixes.

Microsoft posts on features
Microsoft published their monthly overview of updates at the techcommunity, and some of the features I have mentioned in my posts are covered in more detail in these posts.
Office 2019 Servers in Preview
The Office2019 servers are ready for public preview, and that includes Skype for Business 2019