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Teams Customer Connect: Now available globally in 26 languages

BettyKeren — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 22:52:55 GMT

We're excited to announce that Customer Connect web chat in Microsoft Teams (previously called Live Chat) is now available globally, supporting 26 languages and bringing seamless customer engagement to businesses worldwide.

For small and medium-sized businesses, every customer interaction matters. Whether someone discovers your business through a Google search, a social media post, or a friend's recommendation, the moment they land on your website is critical. With Customer Connect in Teams, you can now connect with these potential customers instantly no matter where your business is based in the world.

A better way to connect with customers

Your website is often the first-place potential customers interact with your business. When they have questions, waiting hours or days for an email response isn't ideal – neither for them nor for you. Customer Connect let you respond instantly to website visitors directly within Teams. No more switching tools.

What's new with global availability

With support for 26 languages, businesses can now provide customer support no matter where you operate. Whether you are based in Tokyo, São Paulo, or Berlin, you can set up Customer Connect to interact with customers in your preferred language.

Supported languages

Czech, Danish, German, English (Canada), English (United Kingdom), English (United States), Spanish (Chile), Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Mexico), French (Canada), French (France), Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian Bokmål, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Swedish, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese Simplified (China), Chinese Traditional (Taiwan)

Key capabilities

Simple setup

Add the Customer Connect chat widget to your website in minutes. Configure your welcome message, set your availability, and you're ready to start conversations.

Native Teams integration

Chats appear alongside your regular Teams conversations. All customer interactions are automatically tracked and organized in Teams channels and Microsoft Lists, giving your team full visibility into every conversation. Customers can also book appointments directly with members of your team, making it easy to schedule follow-ups or provide high touch support.

Getting started

If you're already using Microsoft 365 Business, Customer Connect is included - no additional licensing required.

To enable Customer Connect:

Open the Admin app in Teams
Configure your Customer Connect chat widget settings
Add the chat widget to your website
Start receiving and responding to customer chats in Teams

Learn more

Set up Customer Connect for your business

Start a discussion with us

Microsoft Teams - Small Business Community

Introducing New Frontline Innovations at Microsoft 365 Community Conference

Nataliepienkowska — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 17:39:36 GMT

We announced several exciting updates at the Microsoft 365 Community Conference this week: you can now scale Teams pilots to your broader frontline organization faster, fill open shifts automatically with smart scheduling, deliver official operational updates with the new Communicator App, and conduct site walkthroughs handsfree in Frontline Agent.

Scale your frontline pilot with a guided deployment wizard

Deploy and manage a consistent Microsoft Teams experience to your frontline workforce from the Teams Admin Center. Within the Frontline section, admins can start a new deployment or expand an existing frontline pilot to your broader organization through a guided deployment wizard. Use the wizard to select capabilities, add frontline users, organize them into static teams, and apply a standardized pinned app configuration across your frontline environment.

Use this feature to:

Extend a frontline pilot to additional users. If you have already validated a frontline pilot, you can use this experience to extend to additional frontline users across the organization. The capability configurations carry forward automatically so you can build on what you have already tested.
Create and manage a pinned app configuration. Define one standardized pinned app configuration that can be applied to frontline workers across teams and groups in your deployment. Updates to pinned apps are applied for frontline users automatically.
Organize your frontline workforce into teams. Create static frontline teams organized by location or business unit by uploading a CSV file with workforce data or by adding teams individually.
Manage your deployment from a central location. After deployment, admins can use the Manage organization section under Frontline in the Teams admin center to add more teams or groups, update pinned apps organization-wide and manage team membership.
Track adoption. Visit the Usage insights section under Frontline in the Teams admin center to measure activity across all your frontline users and teams.

To learn more about this feature, please read the documentation here that describes the end-to-end experience.

If you are interested in joining private preview for additional solutions that accelerate your Microsoft Teams frontline deployment, please sign up here.

Automatically assign open shifts with Smart Scheduling in Shifts

Automatically assign open shifts using past schedules, employee availability, and scheduling rules.

The Assign open shifts feature in Shifts helps managers distribute open shifts using available scheduling information—such as employee availability, scheduled time off, constraints like maximum weekly or daily hours— and historical data about what shifts people usually work to quickly build a fair schedule. Start by creating open shifts for the required number of positions, then select "Assign open shifts" to begin the process of assigning them to available workers. If all constraints cannot be met, some shifts may remain unassigned and can be reviewed and assigned manually by the manager. Learn more about auto-assign open shifts here.

Send operational updates with Communicator in Teams

The Communicator app in Microsoft Teams allows operations teams to publish structured, action‑oriented messages to frontline workers within the Teams Channels they use. It provides a centralized way to share day-to-day operational updates—such as safety alerts, training reminders, or system outages— and track message delivery and engagement without requiring recipients to install an additional app or change how they work. Sign up for the limited public preview here .

Run hands-free inspections with voice-driven Site Walkthrough in Frontline Agent

Site walkthrough in Frontline Agent allows frontline workers to conduct inspections, document issues, and complete compliance checklists through natural speech. Voice inputs are captured and organized into structured digital records within the workflow. This experience supports hands‑free data entry during site walkthroughs to help reduce manual paperwork, improve reporting efficiency, and ensure critical operational insights from the field are consistently recorded. Sign up for the limited public preview here.

Explore our learn docs for more information on all of our Teams for frontline solutions.

Direct Routing PSTN calls to Teams Auto Attendant does not forward to Shared Voicemail

rudimentaire — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 20:51:16 GMT

Hi all,

I’m running into a strange issue with a Teams Auto Attendant and I’m hoping someone here has seen it before.

We have a Direct Routing number where business hours calls go to a Call Queue, which works, and after hours calls should go to Shared Voicemail for a Microsoft 365 Group. If I call the Auto Attendant from inside our Teams tenant, the after-hours Shared Voicemail works correctly. I can leave a message and the voicemail is delivered to the group inbox as expected.

If I call the same number from the PSTN over Direct Routing, I hear the after-hours greeting, so the schedule and call flow are clearly being hit, but once the greeting finishes I get: “Sorry, we cannot connect your call at the moment, please try again later.”

I have already verified that the resource account has the correct Teams Phone Resource Account license, Enterprise Voice is enabled, the LineURI is assigned, the Online Voice Routing Policy is assigned, the Direct Routing route and SBC look healthy, the Auto Attendant is associated with the correct resource account, the after-hours call flow points to the correct Microsoft 365 Group, and the group mailbox exists and is healthy.

What makes this more confusing is that redirects to internal or tenant-side destinations work, but redirect to Shared Voicemail from a PSTN-originated call does not work. I also tested redirect to an external PSTN number, and that fails with the same error as well.

Because the after-hours greeting plays correctly, and because internal Teams calls can successfully leave voicemail in the shared mailbox, I do not think the issue is with the Auto Attendant configuration itself or with the Microsoft 365 Group mailbox. At this point it looks more like the handoff or redirect path for PSTN-originated calls over Direct Routing is where things break.

Has anyone run into this with a Teams Auto Attendant, Shared Voicemail, and inbound PSTN over Direct Routing? I’m trying to figure out whether this is a known limitation, a bug, or if there is some specific setting related to PSTN-originated redirects that I am missing.

Thanks!

Surface Laptop/Pro shuts down during Teams Meeting

Thilo Langbein — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 10:03:23 GMT

Has anyone experienced the issue where their Surface computer suddenly shuts down during a long Teams meeting (with multiple participants)?

New MRCA Diagnostic: Teams Meeting Add-in For Classic Outlook

Carlos Farrica — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 09:50:23 GMT

Hi Teams Community,

We're back with another great addition from Christopher Tart to Support Diagnostics for Microsoft Teams. We're excited to share that the

Teams Support team has added a new diagnostic to the Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer — the Teams Meeting Add-in For Classic Outlook diagnostic.

If you manage Teams in your organization, you've likely seen this scenario come through your support queue more than once: a user opens classic Outlook to schedule a meeting and the Teams Meeting button is simply nowhere to be found.

This new diagnostic is here to help you quickly pinpoint what's blocking the add-in — whether it's a policy misconfiguration, a licensing gap, or a coexistence mode that's incompatible with the Teams add-in.

Some common symptoms this diagnostic helps you troubleshoot:

The Teams Meeting button is missing from the Outlook ribbon
The Teams add-in doesn't appear in Outlook's list of COM add-ins
Users are unable to schedule a Teams meeting directly from Outlook
Only the Skype Meeting option appears in Outlook, with no Teams option in sight

To access the new diagnostic, navigate to Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer, select Microsoft Teams, then click on Teams Meeting Add-in For Classic Outlook.

You'll need to sign in with a Teams account to run the test. Once authenticated — the diagnostic will then validate that user's configuration end to end.

At a high level, the test checks a couple of things:

The user is licensed for Microsoft Teams
The Teams Outlook add-in policy is enabled (TeamsUpgradePolicy / Teams meeting policies)
The user's coexistence and upgrade mode is compatible with the Teams Meeting add-in — users set to Skype for Business Only mode will not see the Teams add-in in Outlook
The Teams desktop client is installed and signed in on the user's machine
Exchange Online or on-premises connectivity is verified to confirm Outlook can reach Teams for meeting scheduling
Admin policies that may be suppressing the add-in are flagged (e.g., Outlook add-in management policies)

For more information, check out these resources:

Please give the new diagnostic a try — and let us know if it helped!

Thanks! Microsoft Teams Support

Phishing Simulation Training with Teams?

Schnittlauch — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 09:31:37 GMT

Hey all,

while setting up some Exchange Online Phishing Simulation Training, I saw the (greyd-out) option to use a teams payload when it comes to setting up a phishing simulation. I didnt find any very useful articles, why this is greyed out. Business Premium+ Defender and Purview Suite for BP is licensed. How do I set this up and configure it? Does this also support all types of attacks (Credital harvest, ...)

I'd be happy for any recommendations!

Schnittlauch

New MRCA Diagnostic: Guest Invite to Teams

Carlos Farrica — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 06:40:37 GMT

Hi Teams Community,

We're back with another great addition from RuiTabaresMsft to Support Diagnostics for Microsoft Teams. We're excited to share a new test now available in the Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer — the Guest Invite to Team diagnostic.

Getting guest access working properly in Teams requires several settings across Microsoft 365 to all line up correctly, and when one of them is misconfigured it can be frustratingly difficult to pinpoint. This new diagnostic is designed to help admins quickly identify exactly where the configuration has gone wrong.

If you're experiencing any of the following symptoms, you should give this diagnostic a try:

A team owner is unable to add or invite a guest user to a Microsoft Team.
You receive an error such as "You don't have permission to add guests" when attempting to invite an external user.
Guest access appears to be enabled in the Teams admin center, but external users still can't join a team.
Guest users were previously able to be invited to teams, but invitations have stopped working after a recent configuration change.

To access the new diagnostic, navigate to Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer, select Microsoft Teams, then click on Guest Invite to Team.

We recommend signing in with a Teams or Microsoft 365 Administrator account. Because this diagnostic validates tenant-wide settings and Microsoft 365 group configuration, admin-level credentials are needed to return complete and accurate results.

At a high level, the test checks a couple of things:

Tenant guest access setting — Validates that "Allow guest access in Teams" is enabled in the Teams admin center.
Microsoft Entra ID external collaboration settings — Confirms B2B external collaboration is not blocked at the Entra ID level.
Microsoft 365 Groups guest settings — Checks that group owners are permitted to add external people as guests.
Team ownership — Verifies the team has at least one owner, as required to invite guests.

For background reading:

Please give the new diagnostic a try — and let us know if it helped!

Thanks! Microsoft Teams Support

Empowering.Cloud Community Update – April 2026

LyndsayCA1986 — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 15:00:00 GMT

The latest Microsoft Teams and Microsoft365 expert community briefings, podcasts and upcoming community events.

Expert Briefings:

Enterprise Voice Infrastructure Options On-Prem. Private Cloud and Cloud-Native with Ribbon and AWS

https://empowering.cloud/enterprise-voice-infrastructure-options-on-prem-private-cloud-and-cloud-native-with-ribbon-and-aws/

Gordon Eddy, VP of Product Management at Ribbon Communications, discusses the evolution of enterprise voice infrastructure—from on-prem appliances to cloud-native, public cloud deployments—and Ribbon's new strategic collaboration with AWS.

Lessons from Ribbon's 25-year journey from on-prem SBCs to virtualised and fully containerised cloud-native solutions
The new AWS strategic collaboration agreement and what it means for deployment optimisation, and customer engagement
How enterprises are navigating hybrid deployments across private data centres and public cloud and the benefits of cloud
Acumen: Ribbon's intelligent automation platform spanning DevOps, AIOps, and security ops
Getting started with voice in AWS and leveraging existing cloud infrastructure and CI/CD practices

Real AI Use Cases in the Contact Centre with Luware Nimbus - Costs, Risks and Benefits

https://empowering.cloud/real-ai-use-cases-in-the-contact-centre-with-luware-nimbus-costs-risks-and-benefits/

Marcel Gaufroid, Head of Sales – EU, at Luware shares a practical, step-by-step approach to implementing AI in the contact centre using Luware Nimbus, drawn from real-world experience with over a thousand customers.

Luware's three AI pillars for the contact centre: automation, augmentation, and analytics
Why post-call transcription and summarisation are the essential low-risk first step for any AI strategy
How post-call processing slashes LLM costs by up to 80% compared to real-time transcription
Building a feedback loop: using verified agent interactions to train virtual users over time
Replacing traditional IVR with AI intent detection — achieving over 90% routing accuracy for one insurance customer
Cost realities of deploying customer-facing virtual agents and why a step-by-step approach matters

Microsoft Teams Monthly Update April 2026

https://empowering.cloud/microsoft-365-ai-workplace-update-march-2026/

MVP Tom Arbuthnot shares all the latest Microsoft Teams and Copilot news and announcements in less than 15 minutes for April 2026.

Many thanks to AudioCodes for their continued support.

PowerPoint Deck

Places Insider Live
Microsoft 365 Copilot Cowork Updates
Anthropic Models for Copilot
AI Flex Routing in EU and EFTA
New SharePoint Experience
Microsoft Teams & AI Powered Workplace News and Roadmap
Teams Devices News & New Devices
Upcoming Events

Microsoft Teams Insider Podcast

Damian Lewis at BSI on Creating a First Class Microsoft Teams Rooms Experience at Their New London HQ

Audio Podcast | YouTube

Damian Lewis, Digital Workplace Specialist at BSI, shares the story of designing and deploying Microsoft Teams Rooms across BSI's new London headquarters, the Acre.

Microsoft Teams for Frontline Workers: Market Opportunity and Enterprise Mobility with Spectralink

Audio Podcast | YouTube

Patrick Watson, Director of Research at Cavell, and Stewart Wright, Business Development Director for Spectralink EMEA, discuss the untapped opportunity in enabling frontline workers with Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Teams Queues App Explained — Shared Call History, Copilot, and What's Next

Audio Podcast | YouTube

Sean Gilmour, Principal Lead PM for Advanced Calling Experience at Microsoft, discusses the evolution of the Microsoft Teams Queues app — from its origins as a purpose-built workspace for collaborative calling to the latest capabilities, including shared call history and some of what is coming next.

Inside Novo Nordisk's Microsoft Teams Rooms Journey — Thousands of Rooms and Counting

Audio Podcast | YouTube

Christopher Amdi Mark, Senior IT Architect at Novo Nordisk, shares how the global pharmaceutical company transformed its meeting room estate — from traditional Cisco room systems and telepresence to over 2,500 Microsoft Teams Rooms with plans for more

Upcoming Community Events

Copilot Fireside Chat

Join Microsoft MVPs Zoe Wilson and Kevin McDonnell for Copilot Fireside Chat on April 29th 16:00 UK / 08:00 PT.

Al will be talking about real orgs on Copilot adoption journeys, hurdles they are facing, and how their aspirations line up to reality.

Copilot Fireside Chat is a virtual event that usually takes place on the last Wednesday of each month at 16:00 GMT. All are welcome to come along and discuss everything Copilot. Bring along your Copilot questions and get them answered by the experts, with special guest appearances alongside hosts Zoe and Kevin.

M365 Change in the Real World: How a Fortune 500 Insurance Firm Manages 2,500 Message Center Updates a Year

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Contact Center Insider Live

Teams Fireside Chat

Teams Fireside Chat – 14^th May – 08:00 PST / 16:00 GMT

Joining us for May’s Teams Fireside Chat is a trio of Teams Phone experts from Microsoft:

Sean Gilmour, Principal Product Manager Lead - Advance Calling, Microsoft
Wendy Arnett, Principal Product Manager Lead, Microsoft
Scott Plette, Partner Group Product Manager - Teams Calling and Premium, Microsoft

Talking about the latest in Teams Phone. Bring all your Teams Phone and Teams questions.

Microsoft Teams Devices Ask Me Anything

May sessions

APAC - 19 May | 16:30 AEDT Hosted by MVP Graham Walsh, Phil Clapham, Justin O'Meara and Andrew Higgs at Microsoft

EMEA/NA - 19 May | 16:00 BST / 08:00 PDT Hosted by MVP Graham Walsh, Jimmy Vaughan at Microsoft and MVP Michael Tressler

Microsoft Teams Devices Ask Me Anything is a monthly community event which gives you all an update on the important and Microsoft Teams devices news, as well as the chance to ask questions and get them answered by the experts. We have 2 sessions to cover different time zones, so there's really no excuse not to come along to at least one!

M365 Change Community Round Up

Join MVPs Darrell Webster and Daniel Glenn from the M365 Message Centre Show on Thursday 28th May at 13:00 UK / 08:00 ET / 07:00 CT

The M365 Change Community Round Up is a live monthly call open to all, where we take a closer look at the most impactful Microsoft updates and what they really mean for your organisation.

From urgent action items in the Microsoft 365 Message Center to exciting new features on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap, many changes will significantly impact your organisation's productivity and even have implications for your security and compliance policies.

Stay in the know —not just on new, shiny features, but also on the all-important, high-admin and high-user-impacting items.

Continuous feedback in Teams without it getting lost in chat?

ElisaDelaney — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 05:36:06 GMT

Our company is trying to move from annual reviews to continuous feedback. The idea is that managers and peers give quick feedback throughout the year and it all gets captured somewhere. Right now people just send feedback in Teams chat or email and it vanishes. By the time reviews come around nobody remembers what was said 6 months ago. Is there a structured way to give and receive feedback inside Teams that actually saves it and makes it retrievable later?

Focus on the Teams Phone calls that matter most with Copilot call delegation

JohnnyMcCormick — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 21:30:05 GMT

Incoming calls don’t wait for a break in your day. Whether you’re leading a meeting or juggling back-to-back commitments, every new call creates the same dilemma: answer and risk losing momentum, or ignore it and risk missing something important.

We're excited to announce that Microsoft 365 Copilot can now help answer your incoming Teams calls and schedule follow-up appointments on your behalf. This experience helps users focus on engaging with the calls that matter most and is available through the Frontier program.

What is call delegation?

Here's how the experience works:

After turning on call delegation in the Teams Call settings, it answers an incoming call on your behalf and starts a conversation with the caller, helping filter out spam and capturing context so you can understand why the caller is contacting you.
When a call is time-sensitive, call delegation identifies the urgency and attempts a live transfer so you don’t miss out on important conversations.
When a call isn't urgent, call delegation offers the caller the option to leave you a voicemail or book a follow-up appointment on your calendar through an integration with Microsoft Bookings.
After every screened call, Copilot automatically generates a summary with key topics, caller context, and suggested next steps, enabling you to act quickly instead of reading full call transcripts.

The result: reduced interruptions, fewer missed opportunities, and an easier way to connect with the most important callers.

Call delegation in action

Here are a few example use cases for how this experience can help workers stay more focused and responsive throughout the day.

Resolve what's urgent

A supply chain manager in a live meeting receives a call from a supplier about a delayed shipment to the warehouse. Call delegation screens the call, identifies it as urgent, and attempts a live transfer. The supply chain manager glances at the summary context in the transfer notification, steps out of the meeting to accept the call, and successfully resolves the issue.

Let AI handle the noise

A sales director is working on a time-sensitive deliverable and gets three non-urgent calls in an hour. Call delegation handles each one: it screens out a spam call, directs a colleague to leave a voicemail, and schedules a callback appointment with a customer prospect. All without a single interruption.

Catch up on high priority calls in seconds

Call delegation answers several incoming calls on behalf of a consultant while she’s in back-to-back meetings. The consultant later opens the Call app in Teams to review the Copilot recaps for each call handled through call delegation, which include notes about the reasons for the calls and suggested follow-ups. The consultant identifies an issue from an important client and prioritizes an immediate callback.

Get started today

Call delegation is available to users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license via the Frontier program. Organizations can join Frontier to get early access to Microsoft’s latest AI innovations. Learn more about call delegation.

Service limits may apply at the call level and across monthly tenant usage. Licensing details and usage limits are subject to change and additional information will be communicated at general availability.

Customizing Participant Data in Teams Meetings

dtruzman1 — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 18:23:34 GMT

Hello,

I have a Teams Premium account, and I would like to customize the participant data. Most of the participants are outside of my organization. Ideally, I would like participants to add their full names as well as their department when they log into the meeting. Otherwise, I am having to ask participants to add that information into the chat, and they don't always do it. What is the best way to achieve this?

Thanks,
David

Teams Transcription (Licensing / Button greyed out for some users)

AndiY — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 10:29:58 GMT

Hello,

i have questions regarding transcription in Teams. Our org has Microsoft 365 Business Standard licenses, two users have icrosoft 365 Copilot Business on top of that.

First question: is transcription possible for users without Copilot Business License?

If the meeting policy is specified as something other than "off", some people can start the transcription, even if all participants of the meeting have no Copilot Business License. Is this on purpose or am i using a loophole and am i violating my license agreement in any way?

Second question: some users can start the transcriptions, while others with the same teams version, license and meeting policy can not

I read that having the personal setting disabled to identify yourself automatically in meetings will prevent you from starting the transcription, but that setting is enabled for every participant. On the teams app for android, one participant can enable the transcription, in the same meeting in the desktop app it is not available (disabled by Administrator per Policy)

Teams version is 26072.519.4556.7438.

Any pointers how i can locate the user specific difference, that is responsible for the transcription? I checked the assigned meeting policy and it is the same.

Thanks for your time and help! Best regards,

AndiY

CRM Teams Connection Problem

jrbuero — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 09:11:56 GMT

I have CRm integreated in Teams and every time i need to use crm app function like email-sync i get an error.

ad-hoc call transcripts via graph api endpoint

ldruker — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 14:01:27 GMT

I have an app with the below permissions. I can successfully get list of transcripts and transcript content for online meetings. But when I try to get list for ad-hoc calls, I get the 400 Bad Request error. Any suggestions on how to get ad hoc call transcripts?

Permissions

Error:

Teams SMB at Microsoft 365 Community Conference

angelamsft — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 22:31:34 GMT

We are looking forward to meeting SMBs and SMB partners attending the Microsoft 365 Community Conference next week.

📅 Learn more about the conference and register today.

We have a wonderful lineup of Teams SMB-focused events:

🎤 Teams SMB Breakout Session – Deepening Customer Connections for Your SMB Through Teams
Learn about the latest ways Teams is making it easier for SMBs to get started, deeply connect with their customers, and collaborate effectively with other businesses.
Thursday, 9:00 AM – 9:45 AM | Oceana Grand 10 (Pacific Resort)

⚡ Teams SMB Lightning Talk – How Teams Helps SMBs Build Real Customer Connections
Deep dive into how live chat in Teams is helping SMBs build stronger customer connections.
Wednesday, 3:15 PM – 3:35 PM | Microsoft Booth in the Expo Hall

🤝 SMB Meet and Greet
Meet other SMBs, SMB partners, and members of the Teams SMB product team. Make a connection, share feedback, and grab some swag stickers made with SMBs in mind.
Wednesday, 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM | Caicos 1

🗣️ Teams SMB Roundtables
Shape the future of Teams SMB by sharing your feedback and insights.
Tuesday, 2:45 PM and Thursday, 10:00 AM | Java Sea 1 (Pacific Resort)

🏢 SMB Office Hours
Meet product team members focused on improving Microsoft 365 for SMBs. Share feedback, ask questions, and make connections.

Check the conference app for the latest times and venues.

Wishing you safe travels to Orlando — see you there!

Create Bot without Developer Studio

Petri-X — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 14:16:34 GMT

Hi,

We have a bit hard policies and users are not able to use the Developer Studio by they own to make new Bot:

If you press [New Bot] you can give the name, but then [Create Bot] start hanging and does nothing. Previously on Azure had a user setting which block or allow users to register apps.

Now I need our tenant admins or application administrators (?) to setup the bot(s) manually.

Does anybody knows if the bot registration for Teams is possible to do without developer studio? The Developer Studio shows only your own Bots, so they cannot do that for me using Developer Studio.

Simplified controls for managing external collaboration in Teams admin center

angelamsft — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 21:48:31 GMT

We know that collaboration with customers, vendors, and partners outside of your small or medium business is critical to your success. We also know that many SMBs have limited IT admin resources, and setup can be a challenge.

To make external collaboration setup in Microsoft Teams easier for your SMB, we have introduced a new overview page in Teams admin center that consolidates settings into a single view and have simplified how we describe the settings you can apply.

From the new settings, you can select from pre-configured modes that quickly set smart defaults that are right for your business.

If your business is open to external collab across chats, calls, meetings, and teams and channels, you can select Open mode to quickly get setup
If your business is more conservative, you can select Controlled to align to pre-existing external collab defaults
If you want full control of what is enabled and disabled for your business, you can always select Custom as well

We're looking forward to hearing your feedback about the new settings experience.

Learn more about how you can use these settings, Unified external collab settings management

Planner task comments no longer send email notifications – critical regression

JörgWR — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 13:09:56 GMT

This change removed a previously existing core functionality without providing an adequate replacement.

With the new Planner experience, task comments no longer trigger automatic email notifications to assigned users. This breaks a critical communication mechanism that many teams relied on for reliable task coordination.

As a result, assigned users are no longer consistently informed about updates, introducing a high risk of missed information and operational issues in day-to-day work.

There is currently no supported or enforceable alternative to ensure users are notified.

Previous behavior:

Task comments triggered automatic email notifications
Assigned users were reliably informed
Communication was traceable and consistent

Current behavior:

No automatic email notifications
No configuration to restore this
@mentions required (manual, error-prone, not enforceable)

Microsoft Support has confirmed that this is by design and cannot be reverted.

From an enterprise perspective, this is not just a design change, but a regression of critical functionality without an equivalent replacement.

Request:
Please restore automatic email notifications for task discussions or provide a reliable, enforceable alternative for notifying assigned users.

Question to the community:
How are you handling this change in real-world scenarios?

Switching tools?
Enforcing @mentions?
Moving communication out of Planner?

Would appreciate hearing how others are dealing with this.

Inaccessible colour contrast for high text in Microsoft Teams in Dark mode on desktop

jlimbath — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:17:57 GMT

Issue:

All highlighted text in Teams has poor colour contrast when in Dark mode on desktop. While some may be readable, none of the highlight colour options meet WCAG colour contrast minimums.

How to reproduce

Go to MS teams app on Win 11 and set appearance to dark mode.
Create any default coloured text (this is white in dark mode) and apply any text highlight colour
The result is inaccessible: it does not meet WCAG colour contrast thresholds and is very hard to read.

Notes on behaviour

On mobile (android MS Teams app) - the text colour changes to black which does meet the colour contrast minimum.
This behaviour (illegible white text) on light backgrounds is also found on high contrast mode.
This is different behaviour from MS word, which meets colour contrast minimum in a different way. Here highlight colours in dark mode are adjusted (e.g. the background highlight ffff00 --> is shifted to 393900 when dark mode is selected), and the text colour remains unchanged so there is enough contrast between the highlight and the white text colour.

What happens next

This needs a fix in make this accessible to users in dark mode so content can be read if another user has highlighted text.

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this but I was unable to register my MS account on the Microsoft Q&A - Microsoft Community page

Teams & channels names are blank

TCEQJackie — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 14:41:30 GMT

So fun UI issue on Desktop application (26072.519.4556.7438).. Teams and channels are blank and not clickable.. I've reset & repaired app, cleared the cache and reinstalled (temp fixed but same issue came back) Web version works good, but user wants a fix not a "workaround"

Any ideas?