Friday, 25 September 2026

Copilot entry point removed from the Teams chat list

MC1477999 removes the Copilot entry point from the Microsoft Teams chat list, leaving the Copilot app in the Teams app bar as the single access point. Rollout covers Worldwide and GCC, beginning mid-October 2026 and completing late October 2026, on Teams desktop and web only; mobile users are not affected. A coachmark will point users from the chat list to the Copilot app before the entry point is removed, and Microsoft notes the chat list gave a more limited experience than the app. No admin control is offered to keep or postpone it.

Why it matters: Adoption material, training decks and internal guidance that show the chat list entry point stop matching the product in October, and there is no setting to defer the change.

m365admin.handsontek.net

Skills in Brand Kit for Copilot in PowerPoint

Roadmap item 569018 lets users upload a skill as a Markdown (.md) file into Brand Kit and use it from Copilot in PowerPoint. General availability is dated October CY2026, Desktop only, and the roadmap lists Worldwide (Standard Multi-Tenant) as the sole cloud instance, with no GCC, GCC High or DoD availability.

Why it matters: Brand and template owners get a supported way to ship reusable prompt logic alongside a Brand Kit, but only in commercial tenants for now.

microsoft.com

Microsoft 365 Copilot: Use Microsoft Agent 365 agents as connected agents in declarative agents

Microsoft 365 now supports Microsoft Agent 365 agents using the Agent2Agent protocol as connected agents in declarative agents, enhancing AI interactions and workflows. Administrators manage and approve these agents via the Microsoft 365 admin center. Rollout begins late August 2026, expanding flexibility and governance for developers and users.

mc.merill.net

Purview Data Loss Prevention extends to Microsoft Cowork

MC1477182 extends Microsoft Purview DLP from Microsoft 365 Copilot to Microsoft Cowork, so the same policies apply across both. Three capabilities are covered: grounding DLP that stops Copilot and Cowork processing knowledge sources carrying specified sensitivity labels, prompt DLP that blocks prompts containing built-in or custom sensitive information types, and web search DLP that lets a prompt run but keeps sensitive content out of the Bing Search call. Prompt DLP and web search DLP apply to prompt text only, not to uploaded files. Public preview begins late September 2026 and completes early October 2026; general availability (Worldwide) runs mid-October to late October 2026.

Why it matters: Cowork stops being a gap in an existing Copilot DLP posture, which is usually the blocker to letting it touch labelled content at all.

m365admin.handsontek.net

Sites control retires from Researcher for Frontier users

MC1478004 retires the Sites control in Microsoft 365 Copilot Researcher for users enabled for Frontier, worldwide, beginning and completing in late September 2026. Users can no longer add or manage a website list through the control and must instead name websites or URLs directly in the prompt, for example "Research this topic using information from contoso.com and fabrikam.com". Microsoft states that naming sites in a prompt expresses a user preference and is not an administrator-managed allowlist or blocklist; existing tenant-level web search controls still decide whether Researcher may use web content at all. No admin action or new setting is involved.

Why it matters: Any Researcher prompt guidance that told users to pin sources through the Sites control is already out of date, and the replacement is a preference rather than an enforced scope.

m365admin.handsontek.net

Skills in declarative agents reach general availability

MC1476977 takes Skills in declarative agents to general availability worldwide, with rollout starting mid-September 2026 and completing end of September 2026; the capability was already available to Frontier. A skill packages instructions, scripts, templates and related assets into a reusable module that can be added to user-created and admin-deployed declarative agents, loading only when needed to save context. Script execution runs in a secure sandbox, MIP sensitivity labels on skill files are retained and honored, and existing governance controls continue to apply. Organizations using Information Barriers cannot use skills at this time.

Why it matters: Skills become a supported reuse unit across a tenant's agent estate, but the Information Barriers exclusion rules out the segregated-customer scenarios where many regulated clients run agents.

m365admin.handsontek.net

Sessions for Teams agents in public developer preview

A one-to-one chat with a Teams agent was previously a single long-running conversation. Sessions let a user or the agent split that chat into separate conversations, each keeping its own context, with start, switch and return controls in the chat header and a sessions panel showing the latest message per session. Agents can also create a session proactively for a notification, ticket, pull request or approval. Sessions are opt-in per agent through "supportsSessions": true in the app manifest, and all existing one-to-one capabilities keep working inside a session. Microsoft advises routing external activity updates into one dedicated notifications session rather than creating a session per message.

Why it matters: Long-running agents finally get per-task context isolation without custom state plumbing, and it is a one-line manifest change to try on an existing agent.

learn.microsoft.com

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