Introducing a refreshed design, task chat, and more in Microsoft Planner
We’re excited to announce that a modernized user interface and new features are now rolling out to basic plans in both Planner in Teams and Planner for the web. The updated design offers enhanced navigation, responsive layouts, a new goals view for setting objectives and priorities, and task chat—one of your most requested features—to enable real-time collaboration and @ mentioning team members. This release aims to make planning easier for everyday users while preparing for future AI-powered capabilities. Our goal is to streamline planning by making it more intelligent and connected, so teams can concentrate on achieving results rather than managing tasks. What's new in Planner A refreshed design: With this rollout, users will be able to manage their plans in a cleaner, more modern interface that brings a more consistent planning experience across work. Planner’s new look was designed to feel simpler, allowing users to find what they need. It reduces visual clutter, improves layout and spacing, and creates a more focused workspace. Task chat with @ mentions: A new task chat is coming to basic plans, bringing real-time, threaded conversations directly into tasks, including @ mentions, rich formatting, emojis, and notifications to help keep decisions tied to the specific task at hand. Plan members who are @ mentioned in a task will receive a notification in their Teams Activity feed and via email and can select the notification which takes them directly to the task card for additional context. Note that previously, users received notifications for every task comment, but as a result of customer feedback, we now only send notifications to mentioned users. The ability to @ mention team members directly in a task has been a top request, and we’re excited to roll this out in a familiar, chat-based experience. Please note, premium plans will continue to utilize the existing task conversation experience. This will converge into the new experience at a later point in time. Goals view: Basic plans will now include a dedicated Goals view, allowing teams to set clear, well-defined objectives to help prioritize work. By connecting tasks to shared goals, teams achieve greater alignment, gain clarity on priorities, and track progress and outcomes—driving the plan forward together. Access to Goals view in basic plans requires either a Planner premium license or a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Notes on availability Please note that not all users will see the new Planner interface at the same time. This refreshed interface, along with Task chat and Goals view, begins rolling out to basic plans today and will continue to roll out over the coming weeks. This is only the beginning This redesign lays the groundwork for many more improvements coming to Planner in the next few weeks and months, including: Project Manager agent in basic plans – to help with task execution and the creation of status reports. Custom templates. Planner in Outlook. Stay tuned for announcements regarding these updates and more aligned to our long-term vision for integrated work management. Feature availability, naming, and timelines are subject to change. Please refer to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap for the latest status. Addressing your feedback We heard your feedback about inconsistencies between basic and premium plans. This refresh starts closing those gaps, so features appear consistently across plans based on your license. For example, users with a Planner premium license will now see Goals in basic plans, and users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license will soon have access to Project Manager Agent in basic plans as well. Tell us what you think about the new Planner interface, Task chat, and Goals view by selecting More (circled question mark icon) in the top right corner of the app, then selecting Feedback from the dropdown menu. We also encourage you to share any feature requests by adding your ideas to the Planner Feedback Portal. Your feedback helps inform our feature updates, and we look forward to hearing from you. Learn more Visit planner.cloud.microsoft to access Planner directly from your browser. Sign up to receive future communication about Planner. Learn more about Planner in our Frequently asked questions. Check out the Planner adoption page and Planner help & learning page to learn more about Planner. Visit the Microsoft 365 roadmap for feature descriptions and estimated release dates for Planner. Walk through the interactive demos for Project Manager Agent in Planner and Project Manager Agent skills in Teams meetings.I built a free, open-source M365 security assessment tool - looking for feedback
I work as an IT consultant, and a good chunk of my time is spent assessing Microsoft 365 environments for small and mid-sized businesses. Every engagement started the same way: connect to five different PowerShell modules, run dozens of commands across Entra ID, Exchange Online, Defender, SharePoint, and Teams, manually compare each setting against CIS benchmarks, then spend hours assembling everything into a report the client could actually read. The tools that automate this either cost thousands per year, require standing up Azure infrastructure just to run, or only cover one service area. I wanted something simpler: one command that connects, assesses, and produces a client-ready deliverable. So I built it. What M365 Assess does https://github.com/Daren9m/M365-Assess is a PowerShell-based security assessment tool that runs against a Microsoft 365 tenant and produces a comprehensive set of reports. Here is what you get from a single run: 57 automated security checks aligned to the CIS Microsoft 365 Foundations Benchmark v6.0.1, covering Entra ID, Exchange Online, Defender for Office 365, SharePoint Online, and Teams 12 compliance frameworks mapped simultaneously -- every finding is cross-referenced against NIST 800-53, NIST CSF 2.0, ISO 27001:2022, SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS v4.0.1, CMMC 2.0, CISA SCuBA, and DISA STIG (plus CIS profiles for E3 L1/L2 and E5 L1/L2) 20+ CSV exports covering users, mailboxes, MFA status, admin roles, conditional access policies, mail flow rules, device compliance, and more A self-contained HTML report with an executive summary, severity badges, sortable tables, and a compliance overview dashboard -- no external dependencies, fully base64-encoded, just open it in any browser or email it directly The entire assessment is read-only. It never modifies tenant settings. Only Get-* cmdlets are used. A few things I'm proud of Real-time progress in the console. As the assessment runs, you see each check complete with live status indicators and timing. No staring at a blank terminal wondering if it hung. The HTML report is a single file. Logos, backgrounds, fonts -- everything is embedded. You can email the report as an attachment and it renders perfectly. It supports dark mode (auto-detects system preference), and all tables are sortable by clicking column headers. Compliance framework mapping. This was the feature that took the most work. The compliance overview shows coverage percentages across all 12 frameworks, with drill-down to individual controls. Each finding links back to its CIS control ID and maps to every applicable framework control. Pass/Fail detail tables. Each security check shows the CIS control reference, what was checked, what the expected value is, what the actual value is, and a clear Pass/Fail/Warning status. Findings include remediation descriptions to help prioritize fixes. Quick start If you want to try it out, it takes about 5 minutes to get running: # Install prerequisites (if you don't have them already) Install-Module Microsoft.Graph, ExchangeOnlineManagement -Scope CurrentUser Clone and run git clone https://github.com/Daren9m/M365-Assess.git cd M365-Assess .\Invoke-M365Assessment.ps1 The interactive wizard walks you through selecting assessment sections, entering your tenant ID, and choosing an authentication method (interactive browser login, certificate-based, or pre-existing connections). Results land in a timestamped folder with all CSVs and the HTML report. Requires PowerShell 7.x and runs on Windows (macOS and Linux are experimental -- I would love help testing those platforms). Cloud support M365 Assess works with: Commercial (global) tenants GCC, GCC High, and DoD environments If you work in government cloud, the tool handles the different endpoint URIs automatically. What is next This is actively maintained and I have a roadmap of improvements: More automated checks -- 140 CIS v6.0.1 controls are tracked in the registry, with 57 automated today. Expanding coverage is the top priority. Remediation commands -- PowerShell snippets and portal steps for each finding, so you can fix issues directly from the report. XLSX compliance matrix -- A spreadsheet export for audit teams who need to work in Excel. Standalone report regeneration -- Re-run the report from existing CSV data without re-assessing the tenant. I would love your feedback I have been building this for my own consulting work, but I think it could be useful to the broader community. If you try it, I would genuinely appreciate hearing: What checks should I prioritize next? Which security controls matter most in your environment? What compliance frameworks are most requested by your clients or auditors? How does the report land with non-technical stakeholders? Is the executive summary useful, or does it need work? macOS/Linux users -- does it run? What breaks? I have tested it on macOS, but not extensively. Bug reports, feature requests, and contributions are all welcome on GitHub. Repository: https://github.com/Daren9m/M365-Assess License: MIT (free for commercial and personal use) Runtime: PowerShell 7.x Thanks for reading. Happy to answer any questions in the comments.
Bot not receiving message events in shared channels (RSC)
Hi folks, Running into an issue with a bot in Microsoft Teams shared channels. I've configured RSC permissions to listen for new messages. This works as expected in standard channels - I receive events for every new message. However, in shared channels, the behavior is different: I only receive events when the bot is explicitly tagged Regular messages in the channel don’t trigger any events Permissions currently granted: Channel.ReadBasic.All (Application) ChannelMember.Read.All (Application) ChannelMessage.Read.All (Application) Has anyone faced this with shared channels? Is this expected behavior or am I missing something in setup? Thanks!Licensing updates extend access to advanced capabilities in Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Places
UPDATE: These changes will go into effect on April 1, 2026 for customers with users on any license that includes access to the calendar in Outlook and Teams (including Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Basic, Business Standard, and Business Premium; Outlook 365 E1, E3, and E5; Exchange Online; various Teams licenses; additional Microsoft 365 and Office 365 licenses). Access to the Places management portal remains available for all Places customers. At Microsoft, we empower organizations to achieve more through intelligent communication, inclusive collaboration, and connected workplace experiences. Our customers are looking for scaled, widespread access to powerful tools that enable workforces to interact and communicate with more intelligence and precision. To facilitate that, we’re announcing Teams licensing updates that make it easier for customers to unlock their full communication and collaboration potential. These licensing changes simplify access to capabilities spanning across Microsoft Places and Teams town halls and webinars, so you can deliver experiences that enhance virtual and in-person collaboration. Read on to learn about the changes ahead and new ways to empower your organization. Access enhanced workplace coordination capabilities Places enables an AI-powered workplace experience by connecting employees to colleagues, spaces, and services in the office. We are expanding access to end-user functionality in Places by making it available in all licenses that include access to the calendar in Outlook and Teams (including Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Basic, Business Standard, and Business Premium; Outlook 365 E1, E3, and E5; Exchange Online; various Teams licenses; additional Microsoft 365 and Office 365 licenses). Functionality included in this change: Places Finder: Make more informed decisions about bookings with enriched context like images, floorplans, custom attributes, and available technology in the spaces around you. This change enables organizations to upgrade at scale from Room Finder to the full Places Finder experience by onboarding spaces to the Places Directory. Places Explorer: Enable map-based space reservations and explore details about all workplaces, including the people, spaces, and experiences in each location. Access to Places Explorer is through the Places app inside Microsoft Outlook and Teams. These changes will go into effect on April 1, 2026 for customers with users on any license that includes access to the calendar in Outlook and Teams (including Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Basic, Business Standard, and Business Premium; Outlook 365 E1, E3, and E5; Exchange Online; various Teams licenses; additional Microsoft 365 and Office 365 licenses). Manage shared spaces more efficiently Across our AI-powered workplace solutions, we’re continually looking for ways to streamline how organizations manage their inventory of shared desks, spaces, and assets. The newly renamed Teams Shared Space license (formerly Teams Shared Devices license) will be the way that organizations manage this inventory of assets, adding the ability to manage up to four desks with a single license (in addition to the previous ability to manage either a common area phone, a Teams panel, shared space like a room, or a hotdesking device included in the Teams Shared Device license). IT admins will be able to assign licenses to bookable shared spaces individually and control which workspaces are available for employees to use with this new functionality. This license will provide space management capabilities, including: Desk booking: Employees can reserve desks in advance before arriving at a location. Space management: Admins can manage advance reservation policies for desks and set auto-release policies for rooms with a shared spaces license. Space Analytics: Inventory and utilization reports are available for licensed shared spaces (desks). This license will be available on April 1, 2026. For customers with legacy Teams Shared Device licenses, admins will not be required to take any action to transition to this license (but will have to assign additional spaces like desks with an additional no-cost license to take advantage of the new increased allotment of four spaces per license). Communicate and connect at scale Managing communication to thousands or tens of thousands of attendees can be a daunting process for anyone. Built directly on the Teams platform, Teams town hall and webinar enable events at scale with improved capabilities, reliability, and capacity. To empower more organizations to plan and execute high-quality events, we are bringing all town hall and webinar features that were previously only available with a Teams Premium license to Teams Enterprise, including: Streaming chat: Chat for town hall events reduces any message sending lag, enabling smoother communication between attendees and organizers. Reactions interactivity: Enjoy the same reactions from Teams meetings in town hall and webinar, allowing the audience to express themselves and react to presented content. Real-time event insights: Hosts of town hall and webinar instances can get feedback on the performance and reliability of their broadcasts, helping to ensure a smoother experience for attendees. Meeting theme and email customization: Use organizational branding to customize the event-related artifacts that are delivered to attendees. Enterprise Content Delivery Network (eCDN): eCDN helps to manage the bandwidth load of streaming events to large audiences, providing stability and reliability. Immersive events in Teams: Host immersive experiences in custom 3D environments where attendees join as avatars to interact and collaborate. All users with a Teams Enterprise license will soon be able to host Teams events for up to 3,000 attendees, including the ability to use advanced Teams town hall and webinar features. To fully enable events at scale, customers will be able to purchase attendee pack licenses that increase the cap on the total number of attendees up to 100,000 with the same suite of robust features. Attendee pack licenses will come in a range of sizes to provide added flexibility, and will be available to assign through the Teams Admin Center (TAC) after transacting. Summary of licensing changes These changes reflect our commitment to helping organizations confidently embrace the future of work with greater impact across their communication and collaboration. The full slate of changes will go into effect on April 1, 2026: End-user workplace coordination features from Microsoft Places available for licenses that include access to the calendar in Outlook and Teams (including Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Basic, Business Standard, and Business Premium; Outlook 365 E1, E3, and E5; Exchange Online; various Teams licenses; additional Microsoft 365 and Office 365 licenses) Introduction of the renamed Teams Shared Space license with additional capabilities for space management and analytics for admins Advanced Teams events features available for all Teams Enterprise users. For organizations without attendee pack licenses, the maximum attendee capacity for a Teams event instance is 3,000 concurrent attendees with engagement capabilities like reactions, raise hands, polls, and Q&A. For Teams events that require full attendee interactivity, including the ability for attendees to join with their cameras on and use their microphones (similar to the former webinar experience), the product supports up to 1,000 concurrent attendees to ensure a consistently optimized and well‑controlled experience. Introduction of attendee pack add-on licenses for town hall events starting from 5,000 up to 100,000 attendees Independent of these changes, we are committed to continuing to provide a robust set of experiences for organizations that have invested in Teams Premium. Teams Premium will still be the only way for customers to experience advanced communication features in Teams meetings, meeting protection, Advanced Collaboration Tools for admins, Intelligent recap, Queues app for Teams Phone, and enhanced capabilities for Bookings and virtual appointments. For a full list of current Teams Premium features, please click here. More information about these new licensing changes, including impacts for existing Teams Premium customers using these products and features, are available below. Read more about these changes in our licensing update FAQ attached below Explore more Teams experiences: Microsoft Teams Learn more about Microsoft Places: Microsoft Places Learn more about Teams town hall and webinar
Office 365 issues
We have an end user that started with us approximately a year ago. Shortly after he started he began noticing that his status would go away on a fairly regular basis on MS Teams. We tried uninstall/reinstall, resetting, repairing and the problem persisted. Since he was a relatively new hire we were thinking it was something with his laptop so we replaced and the issue returned. Turned in a ticket with our Office 365 vendor who in turn opened a ticket with Microsoft. After some initial testing they sent a Teams install file that seemed to fix the issue. Since that time he has regularly had issues with Teams disconnecting, Outlook just stop receiving emails, while showing connected. Typically the only fix was a restart and on some occasions that did not work. Sometimes a reset or repair might fix this issue. Throughout this we did clear credential manager, caches, etc...This got a point yesterday where I created a new user profile for him, basically like a new laptop and it temporarily fixed the Teams and Outlook issue, however when attempting to sign into MS Edge it would just spin and had to use task manager to close the app. Tried a repair on the app as you cannot uninstall and same result it would hang up and have to forcibly closed. Just wondering if someone else has encountered something like this and possible fixes. Thanks
Error ColdStoreNotSupportedForMessageException when sending message MS Teams via Graph API.
I'm using the Graph API to send a message to a Microsoft Teams channel, but I'm getting the following error. Endpoint: https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/teams/{team_id}/channels/{channel_id}/messages Reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/ja-jp/graph/api/chatmessage-post?view=graph-rest-1.0&tabs=http#http-request Error response: { "code": "NotFound", "message": "NotFound", "innerError": { "code": "1", "message": "MessageNotFound-Message does not exist in the thread: ColdStoreNotSupportedForMessageException:ColdStoreMessageOperations is not supported if cutOffColdStoreEpoch is not provided. (msgVersion:1773201279001, cutoff:1773137924398)", "date": "2026-03-17T10:18:44", "request-id": "7e4d1acd-05d0-4ff6-82ac-4cf0549bfa56", "client-request-id": "7e4d1acd-05d0-4ff6-82ac-4cf0549bfa56" } } I couldn't find any documentation related to ColdStoreNotSupportedForMessageException. Has anyone encountered this before or have any insight into what's causing it?
Cannot create new subscription to resource
APP BACKGROUND I have an app that integrate with Microsoft Graph API in order to create subscriptions for some resources. In order to keep subscriptions valid for a long period, I have to update it to continue receiving change notifications on these resources. Basically my workflow for refresh a subscription is: First I try to patch the subscription through this endpoint: PATCH https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/subscriptions/{subscription_id} If something fails and I couldn't update it I have a fallback process that deletes it and recreate the subscription after. To delete the subscription I call this endpoint: DELETE https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/subscriptions/{subscription_id} And right after I call the endpoint to create the subscription again: POST https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/subscriptions/ ISSUE This process works well the most part of the time, but during some hours ( generally during 1~3h) on random days, it stop to work for some random resources. Basically I receive a 404 status from Microsoft when trying to patch or delete the subscription (which is expected on this case), but when I attempt to create a new subscription it returns a 403 error saying: Operation: Create; Exception: [Status Code: Forbidden; Reason: App 'aaaa-bbbb-cccc-dddd-ffff' has reached its limit of '1' 'USERS/AAAAA-BBBB-CCCC-DDDD-EEEE/CHATS/GETALLMESSAGES' subscription on tenant 'aaaaa-hhhhhh-jjjj-uuuu-zzzz How could the subscription already exists if previously it returned a 404 saying that it doesn't exists? SAMPLE REQUEST ID Following the request id a sample of this issue: PATCH https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/subscriptions/{subscription_id} date: 2024-07-15T17:08:03 request-id: f5504a6c-b571-4ee4-893c-b96aae64a759 client-request-id: f5504a6c-b571-4ee4-893c-b96aae64a759 result: 404 - Not found DELETE https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/subscriptions/{subscription_id} date: 2024-07-15T17:08:03 request-id: 1d3c601d-f761-43f2-8260-c30bf7a3540e client-request-id: 1d3c601d-f761-43f2-8260-c30bf7a3540e result: 404 - Not found POST https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/subscriptions/ date: 2024-07-15T17:08:03 request-id: c06196f7-d3c2-4a7d-8e7b-6fc9d63ec496 client-request-id: c06196f7-d3c2-4a7d-8e7b-6fc9d63ec496 result: 403 - Forbidden - App 'aaa-bbb-cc' has reached its limit of '1' 'USERS/DDD-FFF-GGG/CHATS/GETALLMESSAGES' subscription on tenant 'bbb-dddd-aaa-eeeee'
New teams app is extremely slow to start on Mac
The new version of the Teams app is extremely slow to start it can take up to 1-2 minutes to get it running and join a call, why is it so slow? It wasn't like this before, and now I need to prepare a couple of minutes before joining a meeting because it takes such a long time to start. Is there any solution, do you plan on optimize the app?Teams window stuck on top of all others
I'm using the new Teams, having switched just a few days ago. Right now my Teams window is "stuck" on top of my other windows. Any window I try to move into the same space as Teams on my desktop results in Teams being over that window. This happens randomly. I've seen this behavior occasionally with Chrome as well, but not with any other app. Does anyone know why/how my Teams window got stuck on top? Is there a way to correct this without having to shut down Teams and restart it?
Teams webinar poll participant numbers
I'm trying to work out whether a Teams webinar using a premium account will allow more than 300 people to take part in a poll. At a recent webinar with over 500 attendees the polls crashed because too many people were trying to vote. According to some info I'm finding online, a webinar set up with a premium account will enable 1000 people to take part in the poll. However, other places seem to suggest that still capped at 300. Anyone know for sure? Thanks
