Friday, 11 September 2026

Microsoft Copilot: Enhanced personalization with memory

Copilot now improves response relevance by learning from a user's previous communications, with those memories private to the user. Rolling out to Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) as well as GCC, GCC High and DoD.

Why it matters: Memory reaches the sovereign clouds in the same wave as commercial, so regulated tenants get the same personalization behaviour and the same user-level data question to answer.

microsoft.com

Microsoft Copilot: New Rich Answer Cards

Model-driven Answer Cards are now placed dynamically across seven segments - weather, sports, finance, images, video, places and news - for Entra and MSA users on all Copilot surfaces. GA date September CY2026, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant).

Why it matters: Answer cards change what Copilot returns for everyday queries, so demo scripts and adoption material that show plain text answers need refreshing.

microsoft.com

Microsoft Viva: Copilot Enhanced Topic Assignment

The Viva Glint topic assignment pipeline is now powered by Copilot, improving accuracy when categorizing survey comments into topics. Listed as Launched for Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant).

Why it matters: Employee-listening topic models shift under customers who already report on Glint topics, so trend comparisons across the change need a caveat.

microsoft.com

OneNote: Multimodal capture in Copilot Notebooks (Android)

Android users can transcribe audio, capture images and type notes in one session, after which Copilot builds a structured Copilot Page saved to a chosen Copilot Notebook. Already GA on OneNote for iPhone and iPad; GA date September CY2026.

Why it matters: Closes the Android gap for field and frontline capture scenarios that until now only worked on iOS.

microsoft.com

Microsoft Copilot: Ask Copilot about highlighted response content

Users will be able to highlight a sentence, paragraph or table inside a Copilot response and ask Copilot to work only on that selection, with the selection previewed in the prompt before sending.

Why it matters: A cheap precision win for long Copilot answers, and one of the few controls that reduces over-broad follow-up prompts.

microsoft.com

Microsoft Copilot: Copilot Chat matching text inside embedded images

Copilot Chat will match search results against text that appears inside images embedded in Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, such as scanned contracts, screenshots of tables and whiteboard photos. GA date October CY2026, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant).

Why it matters: Scanned and pasted content stops being invisible to Copilot, which changes what customers should expect grounding to reach.

microsoft.com

Microsoft Copilot: Realtime voice interactions in Word and PowerPoint

Voice conversation with Copilot about the open document or presentation was updated on September 9, 2026 with a note that the feature will be re-released with changes in October. GA date October CY2026.

Why it matters: This is a re-release after an earlier pull, so treat October as the first date worth planning enablement against.

microsoft.com

Planner: Planner Agent chat in Basic Plans

Planner Agent chat is rolling out to Basic Plans with natural-language Q&A, smart task discovery and in-plan task management. GA date September CY2026, Targeted Release then Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant).

Why it matters: Basic Plans are the free Planner tier, so this puts a first-party agent in front of a much wider user base than Premium plans reach.

microsoft.com

GPT-Live-1 and GPT-image-2.5 available in Microsoft Foundry

OpenAI's GPT-Live-1 (audio) and the GPT-image-2.5 family (gpt-image-2.5-sunburst and gpt-image-2.5-flare) are available in Microsoft Foundry for applications that listen, speak, generate and edit content in one multimodal session. The model retirement schedule lists both image models at version 2026-09-09 with a 2027-09-09 retirement date. Pricing is $8.00 per 1M image input tokens and $30.00 output for the image models, and $3.00 per hour of audio for GPT-Live-1.

Why it matters: A one-year retirement clock is already on the clock for both image models, so anything built on them needs a version-pinning plan from day one.

techcommunity.microsoft.com

Azure AI Speech LLM 2607

LLM Speech 2607 lands with latency up to 3x faster than the 2605 release and phrase lists that now hold 2,000+ entities for more context-aware transcription. The update deploys automatically on the service side with no customer action required, and is available in the Foundry Playground.

Why it matters: Voice agents and meeting-transcription builds get the speed and accuracy gain without a redeploy, but the automatic server-side swap means output can change under existing workloads.

devblogs.microsoft.com

Breakout rooms in meetings with up to 1,000 attendees

Organizers can now use breakout rooms in meetings with up to 1,000 attendees, lifting the previous ceiling for small-group work inside large sessions.

Why it matters: Large training and all-hands formats that previously had to be split across separate meetings can now run breakouts in one session.

learn.microsoft.com

Enhanced bookable desk experience on Teams desk hub devices

Teams desk hub devices such as the Yealink Linkhub now let users find and reserve available desks directly from the device. A Teams Shared Space license is required for each device.

Why it matters: The per-device Teams Shared Space license is the cost line to raise early in any hot-desking rollout.

learn.microsoft.com

Microsoft Teams: Clearer text highlighting in dark mode and high contrast mode

Highlighted text when composing messages renders more consistently in dark mode and high contrast mode. GA date September CY2026, rolling out to Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), GCC, GCC High and DoD.

Why it matters: An accessibility fix that ships to the sovereign clouds in the same wave, which is unusual enough to be worth noting in compliance-sensitive accounts.

microsoft.com

Microsoft Teams: Connect Teams meeting to existing Planner Plans

Users will be able to attach a Teams meeting to an existing Planner plan instead of the meeting auto-generating its own plan, keeping tasks from a long-running initiative in one place. GA date November CY2026.

Why it matters: Fixes the plan sprawl that shows up wherever recurring meetings are the main collaboration surface for a project.

microsoft.com

Microsoft Teams: Call quality feedback surveys for Teams Rooms on Android

Teams Rooms on Android will prompt users to rate call and meeting quality and give feedback on calling, video and screen sharing. GA date November CY2026, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant).

Why it matters: Gives room-estate owners per-room quality signal from actual users rather than telemetry alone.

microsoft.com

Microsoft Teams: Breakout room support on Teams Rooms on Android

Teams Rooms on Android will be able to join a breakout room and be moved in and out of the main room. GA date November CY2026, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) and GCC.

Why it matters: Removes a long-standing reason to prefer Windows rooms for training and workshop spaces.

microsoft.com

Microsoft Teams: Ability to separate out the Townhall attendee invites

A backend change will let town hall organizers keep attendee invites separate from the event crew invites. GA date November CY2026, Targeted Release then Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant), GCC and GCC High.

Why it matters: Stops attendees and production crew sharing one invite thread, which is a recurring complaint in large internal broadcasts.

microsoft.com

Exchange Online: review and configure EWSAllowedAppIDs before EWS access changes

MC1469960: from October 1, 2026 the final phase of Exchange Web Services retirement requires tenants to maintain a configured EWSAllowedAppIDs list. Microsoft will auto-generate a list from the previous 60 days of observed usage for tenants that have not configured one, and that list may miss infrequently used applications. Rollout begins early October 2026 and completes late June 2027 across Worldwide, GCC, GCC High and DoD. Admin-configured lists are never overridden, and changes take up to 24 hours to propagate.

Why it matters: Any customer still running EWS integrations has a hard October 1 deadline to audit 60 days of usage and pin the allowlist, or unlisted apps silently lose access.

m365admin.handsontek.net

Microsoft Excel: Insights Services extended to GCC High and DoD sovereign clouds

GCC High and DoD customers can now use Excel features run by Insights Services, including Analyze Data on the Data tab. GA date September CY2026, rolling out to GCC High and DoD only.

Why it matters: Closes a visible capability gap for sovereign-cloud customers who until now saw Analyze Data missing from Excel.

microsoft.com

Release notes for Office for Mac Version 16.112.4 (Build 26090911)

The September 10, 2026 Office for Mac build ships quality and performance improvements across Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word, with no new features listed.

Why it matters: A fix-only build, so it is a safe one to let Mac fleets take without change-management overhead.

learn.microsoft.com

Microsoft Viva: Viva Glint survey taking experience refinements

Viva Glint's survey-taking experience gets improved auto-save, streamlined navigation and more user control over question progression. GA September 2026 for Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) and GCC.

Why it matters: Survey completion rates are the metric customers watch here, so a smoother taking experience is an easy adoption talking point.

microsoft.com

Microsoft Viva: Viva Glint Topic Assignments included in Comment Report Export

Exporting comments to a spreadsheet from the Glint Comments report now includes the topic or topics assigned to each comment. Listed as Launched for Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) and GCC.

Why it matters: Makes offline analysis of survey comments viable without re-tagging them by hand.

microsoft.com

Microsoft Viva: Custom branding in Engage

Engage-level admins can set a tenant-wide brand name, large and small logos and a theme colour applied across the Engage web and mobile apps, managed from the new Brand Center in the Viva Engage admin center.

Why it matters: First real tenant branding surface in Engage, and the Brand Center is a new admin location to add to governance documentation.

microsoft.com

Whiteboard standalone apps retire on Windows, iOS and Android

MC1469557: Microsoft retires the standalone Whiteboard apps for Windows, iOS and Android on October 16, 2026, after which those apps no longer reach Whiteboard galleries or existing content. Users must move to Whiteboard in Microsoft Teams or the supported web experience. Rollout mid-October 2026 across Worldwide, GCC, GCC High and DoD.

Why it matters: This lands two weeks before the October 16 legacy-storage deletion deadline already in flight, so both Whiteboard changes need to be communicated as one message.

m365admin.handsontek.net

Planner: My Tasks redesign

A redesigned My Tasks experience brings tasks into a single place for capture, prioritization and focus. GA date September CY2026, Targeted Release then Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant).

Why it matters: My Tasks is the most-visited Planner surface, so a redesign this month is worth a heads-up before users notice it themselves.

microsoft.com

Microsoft Purview: apply a retention policy to Microsoft Planner content

Compliance admins can create Data Lifecycle Management retention policies covering Microsoft Planner content, such as tasks in plans attached to a Microsoft 365 Group. Listed as Launched for Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant).

Why it matters: Planner was a documented gap in M365 retention coverage, and closing it removes a standing finding in records-management reviews.

microsoft.com

Change in sender email address for Copilot emails

MC1469962: Copilot educational, enablement and transactional service emails move to a new Microsoft Copilot sender address (microsoftcopilotupdates@microsoft.com) by mid-September 2026, aligning with the Microsoft 365 Copilot to Microsoft Copilot rename. Email content is unchanged and no tenant configuration is required, but existing mail flow rules, safe sender entries and allow lists referencing the old address may break. GA Worldwide mid-September 2026.

Why it matters: Tenants that allow-listed the old sender will silently start filtering Copilot enablement mail, so this is a two-line change request worth sending before mid-September.

m365admin.handsontek.net

Microsoft Purview: auto-labeling simulation scale increases from 4 million to 20 million items

MC1469958: Information Protection auto-labeling simulation capacity rises fivefold to 20 million items, with targeting of up to 1,000 individual SharePoint sites (50,000 via adaptive scopes) and new reporting showing detected Sensitive Information Types plus a 30-day processing activity chart. Public preview early to mid-September 2026, GA late October 2026, Worldwide.

Why it matters: The 4 million ceiling was the practical blocker on simulating auto-labeling in large tenants, so full-estate dry runs become possible before GA.

m365admin.handsontek.net

Microsoft Purview: delete inactive OneDrives and mailboxes for departing employees

Data Lifecycle Management will let admins delete both content and containers for departed users at scale. Preview date October CY2026, GA date November CY2026, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant).

Why it matters: Leaver cleanup is manual in most tenants today, and this is the first first-party path to do it at scale rather than by script.

microsoft.com

Microsoft Purview: insights and policy recommendations on sensitive M365 data

Data Lifecycle Management will surface insights on sensitive OneDrive and SharePoint data plus recommended retention policies. Preview date October CY2026, GA date December CY2026, Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant).

Why it matters: Turns retention policy design from a workshop exercise into something seeded from the tenant's own data.

microsoft.com

Microsoft Purview: retention based on when files were last accessed in OneDrive and SharePoint

Retention labels and policies will be able to key off the date an item was last accessed by a user rather than created or modified. Preview date November CY2026 and GA date January CY2027 for Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant); the GCC, GCC High and DoD track is listed separately at GA February CY2027.

Why it matters: Last-accessed retention is the control customers ask for when justifying storage cleanup, and sovereign-cloud tenants wait roughly a month longer than commercial.

microsoft.com

New incentives for Microsoft Copilot Cowork adoption

The Copilot Cowork CSP Activation Incentive launched September 1, adding an earning opportunity for indirect resellers and direct bill partners driving Cowork adoption and usage.

learn.microsoft.com

Copilot Extensibility Community Call - September 9th, 2026

Community call introduced Work IQ Dev Tools for agentic development and framed the Work IQ family as Work IQ, Fabric IQ, Foundry IQ and Web IQ, with dev tools and cookbooks on GitHub.

youtube.com

Join Partnering for Success Together

Registration opened for the monthly partner skilling session on September 23 on the Microsoft Partner Skilling Hub, covering commercial solution area priorities and go-to-market guidance.

learn.microsoft.com

OneDrive Office Hours | September 2026

The September OneDrive customer office hours session, an open Q&A on recent OneDrive announcements and updates.

techcommunity.microsoft.com

AFT, UFT and Microsoft announce National AI Safety & Privacy Standard for schools

Press release on an agreement establishing AI safety and privacy protections for schools, with guardrails and controls for parents and educators.

news.microsoft.com

7 features it's not too late to try out this year

Microsoft 365 Insider roundup of seven already-shipped features across the Microsoft 365 apps, no new product change.

techcommunity.microsoft.com

AI Agent ROI Framework

Guidance post setting out adoption and operational metrics for measuring business value from AI agents.

techcommunity.microsoft.com

ESPC 2026 is coming to Amsterdam

Event announcement for ESPC 2026 in Amsterdam, November 30 to December 3, with Jeff Teper keynoting on AI-powered productivity and agents.

microsoft.com