Archive

Agent Framework adds AG-UI, memory providers and resilient execution

Microsoft Agent Framework ships AG-UI, an event-based protocol for driving interactive application interfaces from an agent, stable in Python and in public preview for .NET alongside a new AG-UI .NET SDK built on Microsoft.Extensions.AI. Memory gains FoundryMemoryProvider for long-term memory backed by Foundry Agent Service and a preview CosmosMemoryContextProvider doing hybrid vector and full-text retrieval. A Resilient Responses Host adds background execution with checkpointing and recovery in both Python and .NET, with a separate durable path for .NET through the Azure Functions Durable extension, and CodeAct with Hyperlight reports roughly 50 percent lower latency. Microsoft warns that recovery does not imply exactly-once execution of external effects, so handlers must be idempotent, and that a session ID is not an authorization boundary.

Why it matters: The idempotency and session-ID caveats are the ones to read before shipping: resilient execution can replay external calls, and treating a session ID as an access check would be a real vulnerability.

devblogs.microsoft.com

Agent Registry consolidates duplicate agent entries and adds version history

MC1477184 collapses duplicate Agent Registry records in the Microsoft 365 admin center into one entry per agent. An agent that previously appeared several times because it was published across different scopes or in multiple versions now shows once, defaulting to the most recently published organizational version, with a version selector in the agent details flyout covering published and in-progress draft versions. Governance actions such as Block continue to apply to the whole agent across all versions. Rollout is worldwide, beginning mid-September 2026 and expected to complete late September 2026, and affects Global Administrators, Global Readers and AI Administrators.

Why it matters: Total agent counts in the Registry will drop even though no agent is removed, so any report, dashboard, export or custom process keyed on per-entry counts needs rebasing before someone reads the fall as a governance win.

m365admin.handsontek.net

Agent 365 CLI setup drops the tenant-owned client app requirement

MC1477186 introduces a Microsoft-managed Agent 365 CLI enterprise application for eligible tenants, available now worldwide. New Agent 365 CLI setups no longer require an administrator to create and maintain a tenant-owned client application, and admins will see a new enterprise application named Agent 365 CLI in Microsoft Entra. Existing configurations that explicitly use a customer-owned application keep working and need no change. The CLI still uses delegated access and runs with the signed-in user's privileges, and Conditional Access policies and Security Defaults continue to be enforced.

Why it matters: Onboarding a tenant to Agent 365 loses an app-registration step and its ongoing secret and consent upkeep, which is the part that usually stalls in a customer's change process.

m365admin.handsontek.net

Routines in Foundry Agent Service reach general availability

Routines, announced in public preview a week ago, are now generally available as a managed way to run a published agent on a schedule, at a future time, or in response to an external event, replacing self-assembled schedulers, event listeners, webhooks, queues, authentication, run history and monitoring. Three trigger types ship: timer for a single future run, recurring with cron expressions, and event-based, with GitHub and Microsoft Teams as the first event sources and more planned. A routine runs either under the creator's delegated identity or under an agent identity holding its own Microsoft Entra ID permissions. A reminder tool is added in preview, letting an agent schedule itself to run again after a delay.

Why it matters: The identity choice is the design decision worth making deliberately: creator identity inherits a person's access and breaks when they leave, agent identity needs its own permission set but survives.

devblogs.microsoft.com

Foundry adds voice agents, Insights and agent optimization

Microsoft's roundup of Foundry agent capabilities confirms several first releases beyond the GPT-6 and Claude Opus 5.5 model GAs already covered. Voice agents in Foundry Agent Service enter public preview with support for more than 80 languages and 140 locales, and long-running resilience for hosted agents is also in public preview. Toolboxes extend to prompt agents in preview, having been generally available for hosted agents, and tool search inside Toolboxes plus agent-to-agent (A2A) are now generally available. Insights in Foundry enters public preview, and the rubric evaluator, traces-to-dataset generation and Agent Optimizer are stated as reaching general availability later this month. Azure API Management AI Gateway tier integration is flagged for October 2026.

Why it matters: Voice agents and A2A are the two that change solution shapes: voice moves Foundry into contact-centre scenarios, and A2A at GA makes multi-agent designs supportable rather than experimental.

azure.microsoft.com

Admin policy to turn off profanity filtering in meeting transcripts

MC1478003 adds a Teams meeting policy setting controlling whether profane words are masked in live transcription and saved meeting transcripts. Filtering stays on by default; turning it off for a policy lets otherwise-masked words appear in both the live and the saved transcript for meetings that policy holder organizes. There is no organizer-level control, and each participant's own live-caption profanity preference is unchanged. Targeted Release (Worldwide) runs early to mid-October 2026 and general availability (Worldwide, GCC) mid to late October 2026.

Why it matters: Transcript fidelity matters for regulated recording and for HR or investigation workflows, where a masked word can make a transcript useless as evidence.

m365admin.handsontek.net

Alternate text for images shared from OneDrive and SharePoint in Teams

Roadmap item 571687 lets users add alternate text to images shared into Teams from OneDrive and SharePoint. The entry is dated November CY2026 at Targeted Release, Desktop only, and lists Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) as the only cloud instance, with no GCC, GCC High or DoD availability.

Why it matters: Accessibility conformance work that treats Teams image sharing as a gap gets a first-party fix, though not in government clouds.

microsoft.com

Pay-as-you-go storage billing for OneDrive in public preview

MC1477185 introduces consumption-based billing for additional OneDrive storage. Administrators select which accounts may exceed their licensed storage quota, and those accounts are billed automatically on usage. The public preview is available now worldwide to commercial tenants only. General availability spans Worldwide, GCC, GCC High and DoD, beginning early November 2026 and expected to complete by early December 2026. No action is needed unless an organization opts in.

Why it matters: It removes the forced choice between blocking users at quota and buying add-on storage plans, but it also means storage growth turns into an unbudgeted monthly charge unless the account list is kept tight.

m365admin.handsontek.net

OneDrive sync raises the macOS item limit to 1 million

MC1477187 raises the OneDrive sync limit on macOS from 300,000 to 1 million items per sync instance per device, matching the Windows increase announced in MC1294528. Public preview (Worldwide) begins mid-October 2026 and completes late October 2026, first for devices enrolled in the Insiders ring, with general availability later. Devices that do not meet the minimum hardware and configuration requirements keep syncing at the existing 300,000-item limit with no disruption, and Microsoft notes performance is not yet optimized for syncing a high volume of read-only files.

Why it matters: Mac users on large SharePoint libraries were the group most often forced onto Files On-Demand workarounds, and this closes the parity gap with Windows.

m365admin.handsontek.net

Duplicate an event in the Outlook mobile apps

Roadmap item 570666 adds a "duplicate event" action in the event details view of the Outlook mobile apps. General availability is dated October CY2026, iOS only, across Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), GCC and GCC High; DoD is not listed.

Why it matters: A small but frequently requested calendar action, and one of the few Outlook mobile items shipping into GCC High at the same time as commercial.

microsoft.com

Insert Symbol comes to Outlook

Roadmap item 571683 lets users insert symbols into a message while composing, from Insert > Symbols. The entry is at Targeted Release with general availability dated October CY2026, on Desktop and Web, across Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), GCC, GCC High and DoD.

Why it matters: Full cloud-instance coverage including DoD is unusual for a composer feature, so public-sector tenants get it on the same schedule as commercial.

microsoft.com

Cascading combo boxes and list boxes in Access without VBA

Access adds Link Master Fields and Link Child Fields properties to combo boxes and list boxes, so a dependent control filters its row source from a value elsewhere on the form with no AfterUpdate event procedure and no requery code. The child field only needs to be present in the row source, not visible in the dropdown, and multi-field relationships work by entering comma-separated, positionally matched names in both properties. Linked controls also work on continuous forms, filtering per visible record. Existing VBA-based cascading controls keep working. Microsoft states the feature is in Access Version 2609 (Build 20430.20092), now available in Current Channel, and that the build and the feature are both rolling out gradually.

Why it matters: Cascading dropdowns are one of the most common pieces of hand-written VBA in line-of-business Access apps, and this removes the code that has to be maintained per form.

techcommunity.microsoft.com

Word for the web retires the "@" entity insertion menu

MC1478006 removes the CIQ-based "@" entity insertion entry point from the document canvas in Word for the web, aligning it with Word desktop, Excel and PowerPoint where it is already gone. Typing "@" on the canvas will no longer open the CIQ menu, and no replacement experience is included. @mentions in comments are unaffected. Retirement runs across Worldwide, GCC, GCC High and DoD, beginning and completing in late October 2026, and there is no admin control to enable, disable or postpone it.

Why it matters: Users who insert people and file entities by typing "@" in the body of a web document lose the habit in October with nothing offered in its place.

m365admin.handsontek.net

Lists and arrays in a single Excel cell in preview

Excel can hold more than one value per cell for the first time. Lists put several values in a cell via Insert > List or Ctrl+J, separated by commas or semicolons depending on regional settings, and stay individually filterable and referenceable. Arrays can now exist natively in a cell as a value or formula result of any size or shape, created by wrapping a formula body in braces so a spilling result stays in one cell, and arrays can nest inside arrays, where a formula such as TEXTSPLIT previously returned a truncated result or #CALC!. Four new functions ship: FLATTEN, HAS, HASANY and HASALL. These are preview features released initially to the Excel for Windows and Mac Beta Channels, and Microsoft says behavior may change and does not recommend using them in important workbooks before general availability.

Why it matters: This changes the Excel data model rather than adding a function, so any add-in, Power Query flow or Graph-based reader that assumes one value per cell needs testing well before this leaves Beta Channel.

techcommunity.microsoft.com

Viva Insights personal insights and Viva Learning usage reports retire from the admin center

MC1477996 retires the Viva Learning usage report and the Viva Insights personal insights active-user trend chart from the Microsoft 365 admin center. Rollout is Worldwide, beginning early October 2026 and expected to complete by mid-November 2026. Viva Learning analytics continue through the Viva Learning reporting experience in the app itself; no replacement is named for the personal insights trend chart.

Why it matters: Adoption reporting that pulls Viva numbers from the admin center breaks during October and November, and the Viva Learning figures have to be collected from a different surface.

m365admin.handsontek.net

Nonprofit CSP promotions stack on the existing Copilot nonprofit discount

Eligible nonprofit customers can now combine CSP promotional offers of 15, 20, 30 and 40 percent on top of the existing 15 percent nonprofit promotional offer included with the Microsoft 365 Copilot SKU. Previously a customer could take either nonprofit pricing or a commercial promotion, not both. The promotions run through 31 December 2026, and Microsoft tells partners to check customer eligibility, base SKU, pricing type and promotional ID requirements before transacting. It affects CSP distributors, indirect resellers and direct bill partners serving nonprofit customers.

Why it matters: Nonprofit Copilot deals that were priced before this change are now materially cheaper to land, and the stacking window closes at the end of the year.

learn.microsoft.com

Advanced hunting shows who approved a remediation action

MC1478005 adds an ApproverUpn column to the EmailPostDeliveryEvents table in advanced hunting, identifying who approved a remediation action. Analysts can attribute remediation decisions inside a hunting query instead of switching to the Action Center. The change is worldwide, enabled by default, and requires no administrator action.

Why it matters: Approval attribution stops being a manual cross-reference, which shortens email incident write-ups and audit responses.

m365admin.handsontek.net

Auto-labeling applies a SharePoint library's default label to data at rest

MC1477181 adds a Purview auto-labeling policy that applies a SharePoint document library's default sensitivity label to files already stored there, including files that predate the default label being configured. Until now a default library label reached only new or modified files. Unlabelled files receive the default label, files carrying a lower-priority label may be upgraded depending on the policy setting, and no user has to open or edit a file. The policy is opt-in, requires administrator configuration, and supports up to 10 SharePoint sites per policy. General availability (Worldwide) begins early October 2026 and is expected to complete by mid-October 2026.

Why it matters: The 10-sites-per-policy ceiling is the planning constraint: labelling a large estate at rest means many policies, so scoping and sequencing need designing before October.

m365admin.handsontek.net

Cloud Update extends rollback to two releases back on Monthly Enterprise Channel

Roadmap item 572673 lets administrators roll a Monthly Enterprise Channel device back to a release two versions prior, carrying the latest available security updates for that release, and hold the device in the rolled-back state across subsequent releases until they choose to resume updates. It is managed from the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center. Both the preview and general availability dates are September CY2026, and the entry lists Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) as the only cloud instance.

Why it matters: A compatibility regression on Monthly Enterprise Channel no longer forces a choice between staying broken and losing security updates, but the capability is commercial-cloud only.

microsoft.com

Control where your hosted agent connects with network egress in Foundry Agent Service

A step-by-step walkthrough for the network egress controls announced in preview on 18 September: defining destination policies through ARM templates, attaching them to hosted agents with the Python SDK, and testing in Audit and Enforced modes. Microsoft repeats that the feature is not GA, has no preview SLA and is not intended for production use.

devblogs.microsoft.com

Copilot UX components is the final name for SharePoint Copilot Apps

The capability that shipped as "SharePoint Copilot Apps" in the July public preview, then became "Copilot Components" in August, is now finalized as "Copilot UX components": SPFx-built interactive components implementing the MCP Apps model that render charts, maps, KPIs, forms and approvals inside the Microsoft 365 Copilot canvas. The refreshed docs confirm SharePoint hosts component assets automatically and, depending on tenant configuration, can serve them through the Microsoft 365 CDN, and that an admin must explicitly select "Add to Teams" after uploading the package to sync the agent. No Microsoft 365 Copilot license is needed to develop or test during public preview; GA licensing is still undecided.

Why it matters: teams building Copilot UI surfaces should settle on the final name now and plan for the explicit "Add to Teams" deployment step, which is easy to miss and leaves the agent unsynced.

learn.microsoft.com

SharePoint Framework 1.24 beta.5

SPFx 1.24 beta.5 rolls the tool-resolution model back to the beta.3 behavior after an issue was found with the approach introduced in beta.4. Microsoft states the next step is most likely an initial release candidate, with SPFx 1.24 general availability targeted for October 2026. The 1.24 preview line carries React 18.x as the default React version, build-time validation of declarative agent manifests against the agent schema, and newly scaffolded Copilot UX components targeting declarative agent manifest v1.8. No deprecations are listed for the 1.24 preview.

Why it matters: the October GA target is now explicit, so solutions still on React 17 have a short window left to validate against React 18 before the stable release.

learn.microsoft.com

Control information density in model-driven apps

Model-driven apps gain three display density options - Comfortable (default), Cozy and Compact - that adjust layout spacing while preserving accessibility requirements. Admins and makers set a default at environment and app level, an individual user preference takes precedence, and the feature requires the Header and Navigation Refresh to be enabled, where it is on by default. Preview is dated September 2026 with general availability in November 2026, across Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), GCC and GCC High. Some controls do not yet support display density.

Why it matters: it is on by default wherever the Header and Navigation Refresh is enabled, so custom PCF controls that have not adopted Fluent design spacing tokens will render out of step with the rest of the app.

microsoft.com

Validate eligibility for CSP growth margins through APIs

From 00:00 UTC on 23 September 2026, CSP distributors and direct bill partners can validate customer eligibility for license-based growth margins through the eligibility API, and discover and download growth margins information such as eligible SKUs and minimum seat requirements from the Pricing workspace in Partner Center. Growth margins transactions remain generally available from 1 October 2026, and the Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 E7 and Copilot promotions end on 30 September 2026 as part of the transition.

Why it matters: the promotions being quoted against expire on 30 September, so eligibility and SKU lists are worth checking this week rather than repricing deals after 1 October.

learn.microsoft.com

Purview auto-labeling per-policy coverage report

For each enforced auto-labeling policy, admins get a coverage report correlating the files processed during enforcement against the latest simulation run, showing how many files were labeled or left unlabeled and whether they appeared in the last simulation snapshot. General availability is dated November 2026, across GCC, GCC High and DoD.

Why it matters: it closes the gap between a clean simulation and what enforcement actually touched, which is the usual blind spot when defending a labeling rollout to a compliance team.

microsoft.com

Copilot Dev Camp Summit Fall Edition on September 30

Microsoft announced the first of a new quarterly Copilot Dev Camp Summit, on 30 September 2026 at 08:00 Pacific, covering Microsoft 365 Copilot, Cowork, GitHub Copilot and Microsoft IQ capabilities for the extensibility community.

devblogs.microsoft.com

Building the system for AI at work

A customer letter from Jared Spataro setting out Microsoft's enterprise AI approach across platform (models from OpenAI, Anthropic and others), business model (subscription plus usage-based billing) and partnership (forward deployed engineers); no new capabilities or ship dates are announced.

microsoft.com

Local inferencing

Local inferencing expands Microsoft Copilot’s sovereign controls by enabling AI inferencing for supported Copilot interactions to occur within the applicable local geography.

mc.merill.net

Word document summarization moves off Top of Doc

The Top of Doc summarization experience in Microsoft Word is being retired and its summaries move to other Copilot in Word surfaces: a proactive "Summarize this document" suggestion, and natural language prompts in Copilot. MC1454113, updated September 21 to clarify the timeline; GA rollout began early September 2026 across Worldwide, GCC, GCC High and DoD, and no admin action is required.

Why it matters: The capability survives but the entry point does not, so adoption material and help desk documentation referencing Top of Doc need rewriting before users report summarization as missing.

mc.merill.net

Copilot web app redirects to copilot.cloud.microsoft

Microsoft began redirecting users from m365.cloud.microsoft to copilot.cloud.microsoft in early September for tenants that already allow the domain, and will redirect the remaining users in early October 2026. MC1462915, updated September 21; devices, proxies, firewalls or security gateways blocking any URL under *.cloud.microsoft will break Copilot in the web app, the desktop app and Microsoft Edge, and connectivity can be checked with the Microsoft 365 Connectivity Test tool.

Why it matters: This is a network allow-list change with a hard October deadline, and tenants that miss it lose Copilot access outright rather than degrading gracefully.

mc.merill.net

Reference files saved in SharePoint libraries and OneDrive folders when creating a presentation with Agent Mode in PowerPoint

You can now reference files saved in SharePoint libraries and OneDrive folders when creating a presentation with Agent Mode in PowerPoint.

mc.merill.net

Claude Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Sol roll out across Microsoft Copilot

Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 and OpenAI's GPT-6 Sol began rolling out to Microsoft Copilot across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Chat, Cowork and Copilot Studio, with Work IQ grounding responses in the organization's files, meetings, chats and business data. Microsoft states availability may vary by license, access and region, and points to the AI at Work Roadmap and the Microsoft 365 Copilot release notes for rollout status.

Why it matters: Two frontier models land in the same picker on the same day, so model guidance and any per-tenant availability promise need re-checking before the next customer conversation.

techcommunity.microsoft.com

Microsoft OneNote: Copilot notebook available in OneNote on Mac

Copilot Notebook, a new AI-powered workspace in OneNote on Mac, helps users organize and analyze notes using Microsoft 365 Copilot. It requires a Copilot license, is enabled by default, and will roll out worldwide from late August to mid-October 2026. No admin action is needed.

mc.merill.net

GPT-6 Astra, Sol and Luna reach GA in Microsoft Foundry

All three GPT-6 models are generally available in Microsoft Foundry: Astra for work needing judgment and action including software engineering and computer use, Sol as the general-purpose production model, and Luna for high-volume extraction, summarization and routine interactions. Standard deployment covers 28 Global regions plus the US and EU Data Zones for all three; Provisioned Throughput covers Astra and Sol across Global regions and the US and EU Data Zones; Priority Processing covers Sol across Global regions and the US Data Zone only.

Why it matters: The EU Data Zone carries standard and provisioned deployments but not Priority Processing, and that split is what decides which serving option an EU or Swiss customer can actually use.

azure.microsoft.com

Microsoft Teams: Removing Copilot from the chat list

Starting October 2026, Microsoft Teams will remove the Copilot chat list entry point, directing users to access Copilot solely through the Copilot app in the Teams app bar for a streamlined experience. Mobile users are unaffected, and no data will be lost. No action is required.

mc.merill.net

Claude Opus 5.5 available in Microsoft Foundry

Anthropic's most capable Opus model is available in Microsoft Foundry for developers and enterprises building AI applications and agents, aimed at long-running coding, investigation and knowledge work across large codebases and long documents. Microsoft cites lower per-token prices and cheaper cache reads than Opus 5, plus agentic communication improvements that surface what the model did, what it found and what it needs next.

Why it matters: Long-running agent sessions are where token cost compounds, so a cheaper Opus tier changes the economics of agent workloads already sized on Opus 5.

techcommunity.microsoft.com

User and session isolation for Foundry hosted agents

Foundry hosted agents gain two isolation controls surfaced through Microsoft Agent Framework: user isolation, which decides whose data an agent may use based on the caller's Microsoft Entra identity or a delegated identity from a trusted middle tier, and session isolation, which keeps code and files in VM-isolated sandboxes keyed by agent_session_id. Foundry hosted agents are GA, but the AgentServer SDKs and the Agent Framework Foundry hosting packages for .NET and Python remain pre-release.

Why it matters: A multi-tenant agent deployment needs both controls to be defensible, and the pre-release SDK status means the contract can still shift before a production rollout.

devblogs.microsoft.com

Microsoft Purview | Data Lifecycle Management: Retention based on “last accessed” for OneDrive and SharePoint files

Admins can apply retention policies in OneDrive and SharePoint to delete Office files based on their last accessed date, starting preview in late November 2026 and general availability in January 2027. This improves data relevance for Microsoft 365 Copilot. No admin action is needed before rollout.

mc.merill.net

Customized Viva Insights Power BI reports stay on their original version

Customized Viva Insights Power BI reports stay tied to the report version they were created from and are no longer migrated automatically when a major out-of-the-box report update ships. MC1476322, available now; older versions may stop receiving refreshed data and users see "A newer version of this report is available", so anyone needing current data must build a new customized copy from the latest report version. No admin configuration and no tenant setting changes.

Why it matters: A customized adoption or Copilot report goes quietly stale instead of breaking, so report owners need a recurring check that their copy still sits on a supported version.

mc.merill.net

Skills in Brand Kit

Upload skill (.md file) in Brand Kit and use within PPT Copilot

mc.merill.net

Teams message remediation from the Defender entity flyout

Security admins investigating Teams messages through Submissions, Alerts, Advanced Hunting or Quarantine can open the Teams message entity flyout and run a Take action wizard that submits the message to Microsoft, blocks the external sender and blocks associated domains in the Tenant Allow/Block List, with sender and domain details prepopulated and several actions allowed in one pass. MC1476237, GA Worldwide from late September 2026 completing mid-October, for Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 and Plan 2, with no configuration change required.

Why it matters: Teams phishing response collapses from several portals into one workflow, which is the difference between a runbook that gets followed and one that gets improvised.

mc.merill.net

MessageContents table in Advanced Hunting for Teams messages

A new MessageContents table in Microsoft Defender XDR Advanced Hunting exposes Teams message snippets and related metadata so analysts can correlate Teams activity with other security signals. MC1474106, GA Worldwide from late September 2026 completing mid-October; the table can contain message content, so access is permission controlled and needs both Advanced Hunting and message preview permissions, and it currently covers messages available through the Teams message metadata source, including messages carrying URLs and federated messages.

Why it matters: Teams message bodies become queryable in hunting, which is a real investigative gain and a real data-access question for works councils and privacy reviews in EU tenants.

mc.merill.net

Clinical Applications specialization for Dragon Copilot

From September 30 2026 eligible partners can earn a new specialization for deploying Dragon Copilot in healthcare, unlocking co-sell and referral eligibility, funding, Azure bulk credits, deployment support and go-to-market assets.

learn.microsoft.com

Microsoft Ignite session catalog is live

The session catalog and registration opened for Microsoft Ignite, running in person and online November 17-20 2026.

learn.microsoft.com

Prepare your tenant estate for AI: upcoming webinars

Microsoft Entra webinar series on multi-tenant visibility, consistent policy and shadow-tenant risk, following the GA of Microsoft Entra Tenant Governance.

techcommunity.microsoft.com

Demystifying dynamic AI routing with the Foundry model router and RouteLab

Walkthrough of the Foundry Models model router's Balanced, Cost and Quality routing modes, evaluated locally with the RouteLab playground.

techcommunity.microsoft.com

In-app browsing in the Copilot app

Websites that Copilot shares in chat can now open inside the Windows and Mac desktop app, side by side with the chat conversation (MC1474455). Admins control it with the BrowsingEnabled policy through device management; opt-in early access is available now, with broad rollout late November 2026. Browsing data is stored locally in the user profile directory using Microsoft Edge storage mechanisms.

Why it matters: The browsing surface is policy-gated, so the allow-or-block decision has to be made in device management before the November default rollout.

m365admin.handsontek.net

Local inferencing in Microsoft Copilot

Copilot will run AI inferencing for supported interactions inside the applicable local geography, launching in Australia, India, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States (roadmap 571886). No EU, EFTA or Swiss geography is named in the launch set.

Why it matters: This is the first Copilot control over where inferencing physically happens, but the launch list leaves out the EU and Switzerland, so European customers cannot plan against it yet.

microsoft.com

Updates to the Researcher experience

Researcher moves onto shared Copilot platform components and retires several of its own controls: the report length control (length is now determined automatically), the Saved Prompts tab, the History tab, the Reports tab (status tracking moves to Task Hub), and the Explore tab with its recommended prompts (MC1476269). Rollout runs October 21 to December 30 2026 across Worldwide, GCC and GCC High, as an automatic service update with no tenant opt-in.

Why it matters: Users who built habits around Researcher's own tabs lose them with no opt-out, so adoption and training material needs updating before the October start.

m365admin.handsontek.net

Browser use admin control for Copilot Cowork

Admins can now turn Cowork's Microsoft Edge browser use on for no users, all users, or named security groups, from the Microsoft 365 admin center under Copilot > Settings > View all > Cowork settings (MC1474461). The capability is disabled by default and is rolling out worldwide mid to late September 2026.

Why it matters: Cowork browser use stays off until an admin enables it, so it is a deployment step to schedule rather than a feature that turns up on its own.

m365admin.handsontek.net