Teams updates to watch: malicious link warnings, blocked risky files, and a new private backroom chat

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Microsoft has announced three Teams updates the past months. Two that strengthen security and one that will improve how organizers coordinate events: Malicious URL Protection, Weaponizable file type protection and Private chat for organizers, co‑organizers, and presenters. Please note that timelines can shift, so treat the dates as guidance rather than guarantees. Malicious URL Protection (Roadmap ID 499893 ) Microsoft has announced link‑scanning in Teams chats and channels that warns senders and recipients about unsafe URLs. The feature reached general availability rollout by the end of November 2025, while the separate change to make it ON by default, originally planned as part of that release, has been postponed to early 2026.  If you don't want to wait for it to be on by default, or feel the need to configure it, you can do so in the Teams admins center: "Teams admin center → Messaging settings → Scan messages for unsafe URLs”. Or you can mange the configuration with Power...

Teams to Skype for Consumer federation is coming

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Here is a feature many of my customers have asked for ever since switching from Skype for Business Online to Teams: Teams/Skype Consumer chat and calling interop. 
The feature is listed as Roadmap ID: 53935

According to the message center, the feature will be rolling out in a disabled state, and admins will have to log into the Teams Admin Center to configure it under "external access":


Once configured, users can search the external directory, the same way they can search for internal chat users:

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Once set up, users can chat, call by audio or video, just as they can with other Skype for Business or Teams users. There are a couple of limitations in this initial release, such as no rich formatting, no mentions or emojis. It also looks like you can't search for a Skype ID or phone number, but it is all documented in the interop description found at docks.

And just like that, the world became a little smaller.....