Microsoft 365 Community Conference: A Beacon for Builders, Innovators, and Icons of Intelligent Work
You’re passionate about what you do, and we’re passionate about empowering your potential. Microsoft 365 Community Conference - is your chance to keep up with AI, build game-changing skills, and take your career (and business) even further. With over 200 sessions, workshops, keynotes, and AMAs, you’ll learn directly from the experts and product-makers who are reimagining what’s possible in the workplace. Conference Details Join us in Las Vegas April 21-23. 2026 for the premier Microsoft 365 community event. We want to help you get the most out of the tools you use every day, so we’re bringing back the conference you know and love—with even more opportunities to learn, connect, and level up. Here’s what you can expect: Meet one-on-one with the people who create Microsoft products—ask questions, share feedback, and discover real-world solutions Explore Microsoft’s latest product updates and learn about what’s on the horizon Build and sharpen skills you can use immediately to be more productive, creative, and collaborative with the Microsoft tools you use every day Grow your network, dive deep, and have fun with the best community in tech How to Register Register today and get ready to transform the way you work. Save $150 with our exclusive customer code SAVE150. https://aka.ms/M365ConfWebsite Explore Sessions and Workshops There’s plenty of breadth—and depth—to the learning opportunities at the Microsoft 365 Community Conference. No matter your role or experience level, we've got something for everyone! https://aka.ms/M365ConfSessionsWebPage Meet the Speakers Our lineup of speakers includes some of the brightest minds behind the most powerful Microsoft innovations. You’ll hear from experts like: Jeff Teper | President, Collaborative Apps and Platforms Charles Lamanna | President, Business Apps and Agents Vasu Jakkal | Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Security Business Rohan Kumar | Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Security, Purview & Trust The Microsoft 365 Community Conference is more than an event. It’s the gateway to what’s next for your career, community, team, customers, and business—and for work itself. Claim your front-row seat to the future of work today!Teams Delivers a Slack Migration Tool
Microsoft announced the availability of a Slack to Teams migration tool in the Microsoft 365 admin center. The new tool exists to assist the 79 million monthly active users of Slack who might want to move to Teams and don’t know how to get there. ISVs have been helping people move off Slack to Teams for years, so other migration options exist. https://office365itpros.com/2026/01/07/slack-to-teams-migration/Copilot Pages & Notebooks, Microsoft Loop: IT Admin Update – December 2025
For background, check out last year's Nov 2024 IT Admin update. Here's this year's progress and summary: Many key governance, lifecycle, and compliance features for Loop workspaces and Copilot Pages & Notebooks are now available. Learn more here Key deliverables remaining: M365 Group enforcement for shared Loop workspaces Departed User workflows for Copilot Pages, Notebooks, and the My workspace in Loop Multi-Geo Create in user's PDL for shared Loop workspaces Read the rest for details What’s Delivered (since Nov 2024) Sensitivity Labels for Loop workspaces Learn more here Guest Sharing for Loop (Entra B2B: Jul 2024 | for orgs with Sensitivity Labels: Mar 2025) Learn more here Retention Labels for Loop pages and components Learn more here Admin Management: Membership, ownership, deletion, restoration, search, filter, in SharePoint Embedded Admin Center and PowerShell for containers Learn more here Promote Members to Owners for Loop workspaces Learn more here M365 Group owned workspaces: managed by M365 Groups for workspaces created within Teams channels Learn more here Also, check out the latest from Ignite 2025 on Unlocking Productivity with Copilot Pages. What’s In Progress / Coming Soon Feature / Scenario Status Target Date Notes Enforce Microsoft 365 group-owned Loop workspaces In development Q1 CY'26 - 422725 IT policy to require Microsoft 365 groups for lifecycle management of shared Loop workspaces Multi-Geo Create In development Q4 CY'25 - 421616 All new Loop workspaces saved in creator’s PDL geo Departed User Workflow In development Q1 CY’26 - 421612 Temporary or permanent reassignment of existing user-owned containers, copy capability for data URL to Open Containers in app In development Q1 CY'26 - 421612 Application Redirect URL that opens in app when clicked if user has permissions User-Accessible Recycle Bin In development H1 CY’26 - 421615 Restore deleted Copilot Pages, Notebooks from Microsoft 365 Copilot app, restore deleted workspaces from Loop app Groups as Members (tenant-owned) In development H1 CY’26 Invite Microsoft 365 groups as members to Notebooks and workspaces Graph APIs for management In development H1 CY'26 For organizations with dev teams and in house management tools Read-only members Paused Due to lower overall feedback volumes, this work is paused Target date disclaimer: dates and features are estimates and may change. For the latest status, see the Microsoft 365 Public Roadmap links. Instead of creating and repeating content directly in the post this year, our IT Admin documentation on learn.microsoft.com and the Microsoft 365 Public Roadmap has been updated based on the above. We recognize that lack of some of these capabilities may still block your rollout. Please drop questions in the comments or reach out to us through your account team. We're excited to be enabling the rollouts of Copilot Pages, Notebooks, and Loop workspaces in your organization.How are you keeping your associates up to date on Microsoft changes? HELP
I’m looking for ideas or best practices from other organizations on how you're keeping associates up to date with the constant changes across Microsoft 365 especially in Teams, Outlook, SharePoint, Planner, Visio, and Copilot. With so many updates rolling out daily from the roadmap and message center, it’s a challenge to make sure users are aware of new features and understand how to use them in our environment. Do you have an intake process for all changes or just some? Do you vet all changes? Do you have a self-service model? Do you have a centralized communication or training strategy? Are you using internal champions, newsletters, Viva tools, or other methods? How do you make updates engaging and easy to understand? Any tips for turning roadmap and Message Center updates into actionable guidance? Thanks in advance for sharing what’s working for you!The City Leader's Dilemma: How AI Is turning urban strain into strategic advantage
Ready to transform how your city plans and operates? Download the Trend Report 2025: Planning and operating thriving cities – innovation for smarter urban living to access the complete playbook on AI-powered urban innovation, complete with case studies from Bangkok, Singapore, Barcelona, and Manchester. Urban challenges aren’t slowing down. Populations are growing, climate pressures are intensifying, and residents expect seamless services, while budgets remain flat and workforces stretch thin. Traditional approaches can’t keep pace. The good news? Cities worldwide are showing that AI and digital innovation can drive meaningful improvements. Recent studies indicate that more than half of surveyed cities are already using AI to upgrade operations, and most plan to expand adoption in the next three years. For many leaders, the question is less about whether to act and more about how to act responsibly and effectively. After studying the latest research and real-world deployments, three strategic shifts stand out, each offering a different lens on how forward-thinking city leaders are turning pressure into progress. Shift One: From Fragmented services to unified citizen experiences Residents expect seamless problem-solving, not organizational complexity. Yet many cities operate in silos, transit systems, permitting offices, 311 reporting, and community engagement often run on separate platforms. The result? Multiple apps for residents, duplicated effort for staff, and missed insights locked in departmental databases. Leading cities are breaking this pattern through unified digital platforms powered by AI. Bangkok’s Traffy Fondue: Citizens report issues like broken streetlights or flooding via a mobile interface. AI categorizes each report and routes it to the right department. By mid-2025, the platform handled nearly one million citizen reports, improving engagement and reducing administrative overhead. The outcome? Reduced administrative overhead, and something harder to measure but equally important: residents who believe their government actually listens. Buenos Aires took a similar path with "Boti," a WhatsApp chatbot that evolved from a COVID-era tool into a citywide digital assistant. Citizens report issues, ask questions, and access services through the messaging app they already use daily. Technology that meets residents where they are improves efficiency and strengthens trust, when guided by principles of transparency and fairness. Shift Two: From reactive planning to predictive foresight Traditional urban planning relies on static models: masterplans, zoning maps, historical growth trends. These tools served their purpose. But they cannot capture the complexity of future risks, extreme weather, evolving mobility patterns, or the cascading effects of a single development decision. Digital twins complement human expertise by integrating geospatial data, climate models, and policy scenarios, helping cities make smarter decisions with limited budgets. Singapore's Digital Urban Climate Twin integrates geospatial data with climate models to simulate how different policies would affect temperature and thermal comfort across neighborhoods. These tools support informed decision-making while maintaining human oversight and accountability. The result? Strategic adaptation rather than reactive firefighting. Sydney built an urban digital twin that correlates environmental conditions with traffic accidents, using machine learning to predict crash risk on specific road segments. City planners can now test interventions virtually, what happens if we lower speed limits here? Add a bike lane there? Before committing resources. Even smaller cities are finding value. Imola, Italy uses a microclimate digital twin to model heat distribution street by street, guiding decisions about where to plant trees or specify cool pavement materials. The paradigm shift is profound: instead of planning based on what happened, cities can now plan based on what's likely to happen. This is how you make smart bets with limited budgets. Shift Three: From tech adoption to governance architecture Here's where many cities stumble. They invest in flashy pilots without building the institutional structures to sustain them. The cities getting this right treat governance as a strategic asset, not a compliance burden. Singapore's Model AI Governance Framework provides practical guidelines for transparency, fairness, and human-centric design. Its AI Verify toolkit lets organizations test their systems for resilience, accountability, and bias before deployment. Barcelona takes a different but equally rigorous approach, treating municipal data as a public asset under its Data Commons program. The city's procurement strategy favors open-source solutions, preventing vendor lock-in while supporting local innovation ecosystems. Both models share a common insight: rapid innovation doesn't automatically produce equitable outcomes. Governance creates the guardrails that allow experimentation without derailment. For city leaders, this means building cross-sector governance councils, adopting clear data strategies, creating ethical AI frameworks, and investing in workforce capability. These aren't obstacles to innovation; they're the foundation that makes sustained innovation possible. The Path Forward Cities that thrive in combine strategic vision with disciplined, responsible technology use. They embed digital capabilities into decision-making, supported by robust policies and cross-department collaboration. Learn how Microsoft helps governments build tech-empowered cities and resilient infrastructure at Microsoft for government. The Smart Cities World 2025 Trend Report provides the detailed case studies, governance frameworks, and implementation roadmaps to make this real. Download your copy now and start building the city your residents deserve.The Files tab in channels is now "Shared"
I've found this Roadmap article about this feature: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?id=470597 The Microsoft 365 Admin Message Center Message ID MC1025217 says "Before rollout, we will update this post with new documentation." But I can't find any documentation and users in my organisation have this new feature. It's not in any of the blog posts here. Any thoughts on where to find useful end user materials?AI for Personalized Government Services: Building Trust and Inclusivity in Cities
Cities today are under unprecedented pressure. Residents expect services that are fast, accessible, and tailored to their needs, yet many local governments still rely on fragmented systems and manual processes that create long queues and frustration. In a digital-first society, these gaps are no longer acceptable. Artificial intelligence (AI) offers a transformative opportunity to close them, enabling governments to deliver personalized, proactive, and inclusive citizen experiences. On December 4, Smart Cities World Connect will host a Trend Report Panel Discussion bringing together city leaders, technology experts, and public sector innovators to explore how AI can reshape the citizen experience. This virtual event will highlight practical strategies for responsible AI adoption and showcase lessons from pioneering cities worldwide. Register today: Trend Report Panel Discussion (4 Dec) Why AI Matters for Cities Urban populations are growing, budgets remain tight, and climate and social pressures are mounting. Against this backdrop, AI is emerging as a critical enabler for smarter governance. By integrating AI into service delivery, cities can: Support improved wait times through AI-powered assistants and multilingual agents. Deliver proactive services using unified data and predictive analytics. Ensure equity by extending digital access to underserved communities. Build trust through transparent governance and responsible AI deployment. These capabilities are no longer theoretical. Cities from Abu Dhabi to Singapore are already embedding AI into core operations—modernizing citizen portals, automating case management, and using digital twins to plan with foresight. The panel will explore five essential areas for AI-driven transformation: 1. Smarter Citizen Engagement AI-powered virtual assistants and chatbots can handle routine inquiries, guide residents through complex processes, and provide real-time updates—across multiple languages and platforms. This not only reduces queues but also makes services more inclusive for diverse communities. 2. Proactive, Personalized Services Unified data platforms and predictive analytics allow governments to anticipate citizen needs, whether it’s notifying residents about benefit eligibility or streamlining license renewals. By moving from reactive to proactive service delivery, cities can improve satisfaction and reduce backlogs. 3. Equity at the Core Efficiency must never come at the expense of fairness. AI-enabled systems should be designed to reach underserved populations, bridging the digital divide and ensuring that innovation benefits all residents, not just the most connected. 4. Governance and Trust Responsible AI adoption requires robust frameworks for transparency, data protection, and ethical oversight. Cities must implement clear governance models, conduct algorithmic audits, and engage communities in co-design to maintain public trust. 5. Practical Steps for Integration From piloting high-impact use cases to building cross-department governance and investing in workforce training, the discussion will outline actionable steps for scaling AI responsibly. Partnerships with industry and academia will also play a vital role in accelerating adoption. Lessons from Frontier Cities Several global examples illustrate what’s possible: Manchester City Council is advancing smart urban living through AI-driven planning and operations, using integrated data platforms and predictive analytics to optimize city services, improve sustainability, and enhance citizen engagement across transport, housing, and community programs Abu Dhabi’s TAMM platform, powered by Microsoft Azure OpenAI, delivers nearly 950 government services through a single digital hub, simplifying processes and enabling personalized interactions. Singapore’s Virtual Singapore project uses AI and digital twins to simulate urban scenarios, helping planners make evidence-based decisions on mobility, safety, and climate resilience. Bangkok’s Traffy Fondue civic platform leverages AI to categorize citizen reports and route them to the right department, reducing administrative overhead and improving response times. These cases demonstrate that AI is not just a tool for efficiency, it’s a catalyst for inclusion, resilience, and trust. What Attendees Will Gain By joining the December 4 session, city leaders will leave with: A clear understanding of AI’s transformative potential for improving citizen satisfaction and reducing service backlogs. Real-world examples of successful deployments in citizen portals, case management, and service automation. Insights into ethical and regulatory considerations critical to building trust in personalized government services. Guidance on preparing organizations to adopt and scale AI effectively. Looking Ahead Cities that thrive in the coming decade will be those that combine strategic vision with disciplined, trustworthy use of technology. AI can help governments deliver services that are smarter, more inclusive, and more responsive to the needs of every resident, but success depends on strong governance, cross-sector collaboration, and a commitment to equity. To learn more and register for the Trend Report Panel Discussion on December 4.
