Calling all IT Admins - webinar on configuring Copilot Chat and updates for Students 13+
This IT Admin-focused workshop walks through how to configure Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, from your tenant all the way to the end-user experience. When you enable Copilot Chat for students 13+, they will also get access to the new Study & Learn agent, Copilot Notebooks, Learning Activities and more. We cover the latest features that are available — including the new 13+ student configuration options, CSV, SDS and Powershell uploads, Copilot agents & extensibility, and updated licensing & security controls. By the end, you’ll be able to confidently deploy, manage, and optimize Copilot Chat in your environment so your users can safely harness AI productivity from day one. This 45-minute webinar will be led by Bill Sluss Principal Product Manager from the Microsoft Education team. When: Wednesday, August 19th @ 8am Pacific time Register: https://df.events.teams.microsoft.com/event/df.95feda23-419a-4d99-bfad-f7e4fd52a498@72f988bf-86f1-41af-91ab-2d7cd011db47?source=copyLinkOneEventsShareDialog Mike Tholfsen Group Product Manager Microsoft EducationFrom Leadership Engagement, Town Halls to Communities: Put Viva Engage to Work at Comms Camp
The best way to learn Viva Engage is not by watching someone else publish another perfectly prepared demo post. It is by starting with a real communications challenge. Maybe you are planning a leadership campaign and want employees to do more than simply read an update. Perhaps you are trying to build a community with a clear purpose, improve an AMA, make a town hall part of an ongoing conversation, or understand what employee questions are telling you. Bring that challenge to Comms Camp, a free, hands-on workshop taking place October 12–13, 2026, at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington. Comms Camp is designed for corporate communications teams and the IT, adoption, employee experience, and community partners who support them. Participants will use Viva Engage, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and practical agent patterns to turn real communications scenarios into reusable plans and workflows. Start with the outcome, not the feature Viva Engage can support leader visibility, employee conversation, community building, campaigns, events, and knowledge sharing. But successful communications programs rarely begin with a list of product features. They begin with questions: Who needs to understand or do something differently? What does meaningful participation look like? Which leader, community, or conversation can create trust? What should happen after employees respond? Which signals will tell us whether the communication worked? Where can AI help without replacing the communicator’s judgment? At Comms Camp, you will start with those questions and use Viva Engage as part of a practical communications plan. What you will work through The workshop takes participants through a complete communications scenario, from the original ask to activation and measurement. Choose your challenge and bring a scenario or select a sample. Define your audience, intended outcome, risks, and the action you want employees to take. Design the Viva Engage activation Determine how Viva Engage, Copilot and other Microsoft products can support the communication. Depending on your scenario, that could include: A leader or executive communication A community activation A campaign moment An AMA or event An employee prompt designed to encourage useful participation A follow-up plan that keeps the conversation moving Turn conversations into signals Publishing is not the finish line. Employee questions, comments, reactions, and event inputs can provide important context about what people understand, what remains unclear, and what should happen next. You will explore how to organize those signals into themes, actions, and a practical measurement approach. Share what you built Participants will share their developing playbooks, learn from one another, and get feedback they can apply when they return to their organizations. Explore Copilot and agent workflows Identify where AI could save time or improve consistency across planning, drafting, summarizing, and follow-up. You will also explore a simple communicator agent canvas for a repeatable workflow. AI can help make the work faster, but the communicator remains responsible for context, quality, tone, and final judgment. Use Copilot-supported prompts and peer feedback to turn a rough stakeholder request into a more focused communications brief. What you will take home Comms Camp is designed to create reusable outputs, not just inspiration. Depending on your chosen scenario, you can leave with: A strategic communications brief A Viva Engage activation plan Copilot prompts and workflows A leader communication, event, AMA, campaign, or community plan A communicator agent canvas A signal and measurement plan A reusable communications playbook You will also leave with ideas from other communicators who are navigating many of the same challenges, including channel complexity, leader visibility, responsible AI adoption, employee participation, and demonstrating impact. Who should attend? Comms Camp is intended for: Corporate and employee communications professionals Leader and executive communications teams Viva Engage community managers Change and adoption professionals Employee experience leaders IT partners supporting communications and communities Organizations may send multiple participants, and communications and technology partners are encouraged to attend together. Participants should have access to Microsoft 365 and Viva Engage. Microsoft 365 Copilot access is recommended. Register for Comms Camp in Redmond Join us October 12–13, 2026, at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington. The workshop is free, and registration is required. Explore the Comms Camp experience: https://adoption.microsoft.com/comms-camp Register directly for the Redmond Comms Camp: https://aka.ms/CommsCamp/Joinus Cannot join us in Redmond? Comms Camp is planned as a multi-city experience. Visit the Comms Camp site to learn when more locations are announced. Tell us where you want us to bring camp next! Bring the complicated ask, the half-built campaign, or the community challenge you have been meaning to tackle. We will help you turn it into something you can use. Learn. Share. Build.Partner Blog | From AI curiosity to Copilot adoption in 30 days
A focused, partner-led 30-day Copilot trial is now available, backed by record FY27 investments to accelerate SMB growth. Thirty days. Twenty-five users. One clear path to AI. For small and medium-sized businesses, AI is no longer a someday conversation, it's a right-now decision. SMB customers aren't asking whether AI matters anymore; they're asking how to put it to work in ways that are practical, fast, and secure. The hard part isn't interest. It's the starting line. Customers are looking to identify relevant use cases, experience AI in their everyday work, and evaluate its value before making a broader commitment. This creates a significant opportunity for Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partners to lead customers from initial interest to sustained adoption. The SMB segment represents a Microsoft-estimated $625 billion* market opportunity in FY27, yet most organizations remain early in their AI transformation journey. As shared at MCAPS Start for Partners, FY27 brings record levels of CSP and programmatic incentive investments through the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, alongside investments in partner capabilities, skilling and go-to-market resources designed to enable growth, bring new customers and workloads to the Microsoft ecosystem, and deliver customer success through Frontier transformation, starting with Microsoft Copilot. One of the primary investments we are making for the partner ecosystem is Copilot in 30, now available through CSP New Commerce. Copilot in 30 is a new, limited-time, CSP partner-led Microsoft 365 Copilot Business trial offering designed for SMB customers with fewer than 300 employees. It is available through December 31, 2026. This offer combines a 25-user, 30-day Microsoft 365 Copilot Business trial with partner-ready resources and customer guidance, campaign materials, setup resources, adoption content, and conversion guidance. Together, these resources give you a structured way to turn AI interest into hands-on Copilot experience. What’s new For partners, Copilot in 30 provides a repeatable path to turn customer engagement into adoption planning and growth. Rather than positioning Copilot as a standalone product trial, you can lead a guided experience centered on real business needs. Customers can explore how Microsoft 365 Copilot Business fits into their daily work, test scenarios across roles, and build confidence with a focused group of users. Copilot is the on-ramp. It enables people to work smarter and faster today, and it opens the door to the agents and workflows that follow. You can use the 30-day experience to guide customers through practical scenarios, identify high-value use cases, and create a clearer path from evaluation to paid Microsoft 365 Copilot Business deployment. Continue reading hereRestricted Content Discovery Gets a Makeover
Restricted Content Discovery (RCD) is an important guardrail for Microsoft 365 Copilot deployments. Microsoft is tightening how RCD works to eliminate a corner case where recently accessed files from protected SharePoint Online sites could still surface in Microsoft Search and become available to Copilot. The update closes that loophole by ensuring that recently accessed files from RCD-enabled sites remain hidden from Search and Copilot. https://office365itpros.com/2026/08/05/restricted-content-discovery-2/PowerPoint Live Just Got MUCH Better! 🤯 New Teams Presentation Features Explained
🚀 PowerPoint Live just got smarter! Anyone who regularly presents in Microsoft Teams has probably experienced this: ❌ The presentation gets updated after you've already started sharing it. ❌ Someone in the audience doesn't understand an acronym or technical term but doesn't want to interrupt. Microsoft is addressing both challenges with two new PowerPoint Live capabilities: 🔄 Refresh Present the latest version of your deck without stopping the presentation or resharing the file. ✨ Explain Help attendees quickly understand unfamiliar terms and concepts without disrupting the flow of the meeting. These may look like small enhancements, but they solve real-world frustrations that many presenters face every day. My favorite feature? Refresh. No more awkward "Give me a second, I need to reshare the presentation" moments during important meetings. 🎥 I've just published a new video where I walk through these new features and show how they work in practice. What do you think is more valuable: Refresh or Explain? #Microsoft365 #MicrosoftTeams #PowerPoint #PowerPointLive #M365 #MicrosoftCopilot #Productivity #DigitalWorkplace #Collaboration #MicrosoftMVP #TechCommunity #AI #FutureOfWork #Office365 #TeamsMeetingsTeams Premium + Bookings : Automatic recording and transcription for Bookings meetings ?
Hello, I have a Teams Premium license, recording and transcription policies are enabled on the admin side, and Video Recap works correctly when both are active simultaneously in the same meeting. My use case : my clients book time slots via Microsoft Bookings. Teams meetings are therefore created automatically by Bookings and I have no control over their scheduling. According to Microsoft Learn documentation (https://learn.microsoft.com/microsoftteams/virtual-appointment-meeting-template and https://learn.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/bookings/bookings-overview), there is no documented mechanism to automatically apply a Teams meeting template, and therefore automatic recording and transcription, to meetings generated by Bookings. My question: has anyone found a workaround for this limitation (Power Automate, Graph API, or anything else)? And does Microsoft have a documented roadmap on this topic? This gap directly prevents Teams Premium users from accessing Video Recap on their client meetings, which is one of the core use cases Teams Premium is designed for. Thank you for your help
Securing Enterprise AI Agents with Microsoft Sentinel
1. Introduction Enterprise adoption of Generative AI is accelerating rapidly through Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, Azure AI Foundry Agents, Security Copilot, and custom AI agents integrated with business applications. Unlike traditional SaaS applications, AI agents can: Access enterprise data Query internal knowledge repositories Invoke APIs and MCP tools Execute workflows Interact with business applications Make decisions on behalf of users While these capabilities improve productivity, they introduce a new attack surface that security teams must monitor and secure. Common AI threats include: Prompt Injection Cross Prompt Injection Attacks (XPIA) Jailbreak Attempts Unauthorized Tool Invocation Data Exfiltration through AI Agents Agent Identity Abuse Excessive Data Access Malicious MCP Tool Execution Traditional SOC monitoring platforms were designed for users, devices, applications and infrastructure—not autonomous AI systems. To address this challenge, Microsoft provides a comprehensive AI security monitoring framework built around: Agent 365 Observability Microsoft Agent Identities Microsoft Copilot Logs Defender XDR Defender for AI Microsoft Sentinel Together these components provide end-to-end observability of: User prompts Agent execution paths Tool invocations Safety signal detections Agent identities Security alerts 2. Reference Architecture AI Security Monitoring Architecture 3. Integration Architecture Microsoft provides multiple telemetry sources that complement one another. 3.1 Agent Runtime Telemetry Sentinel Data Connector Agent 365 Data Connector Table UnifiedAgentObservability Captures runtime behavior of AI agents including: User prompts Session IDs Conversation IDs Agent identities MCP tool invocations Connector invocations Tool arguments Tool responses Request payloads Response payloads Execution errors This dataset provides the forensic trail of everything an AI agent performed. 3.2 Agent Governance and Asset Inventory Sentinel Data Connector Microsoft Agent Identities Provides visibility into: Agent inventory Agent blueprint inventory Ownership Relationships Governance metadata Risk context This allows SOC teams to answer: Who owns this agent? What permissions does it have? Which business unit deployed it? Which related agents exist? 3.3 Copilot Audit and Usage Monitoring Sentinel Data Connector Microsoft Copilot Logs Connector Table CopilotActivity Provides: Copilot usage auditing Operational visibility User interaction tracking Useful for governance, compliance and adoption reporting. 3.4 AI Safety Telemetry Sentinel Data Connector Microsoft Defender XDR Connector Table CloudAppEvents CloudAppEvents provides AI safety signals such as: Prompt Shield detections Prompt Injection attempts Cross Prompt Injection Attacks (XPIA) Jailbreak-related verdicts Unsafe prompt classifications Think of CloudAppEvents as answering: "Was the prompt malicious?" 3.5 AI Security Alerts Sentinel Data Connectors Microsoft Defender XDR Microsoft Defender for Cloud Tables SecurityAlert SecurityIncident Used for: AI attack detections Security incidents Correlated investigation workflows 4. Understanding the Two Most Important AI Tables CloudAppEvents Focuses on AI Safety Questions answered: Was Prompt Shield triggered? Was this a jailbreak attempt? Was XPIA detected? Was the prompt suspicious? UnifiedAgentObservability Focuses on Agent Runtime Behavior Questions answered: What tool was invoked? Which connector executed? What arguments were passed? What data was returned? What actions did the agent perform? 5. Advanced Threat Hunting Scenarios The Agent365 Observability hunting guide contains several investigation scenarios that can be used directly in Microsoft Sentinel. Reference: Agent 365 Observability — AI Agent Telemetry Hunting https://github.com/SCStelz/security-investigator/blob/main/queries/cloud/agent365_observability.md 5.1 Prompt Injection Detection Detect prompts containing indicators such as: Ignore previous instructions Reveal system prompt Developer mode Disregard safety controls Investigation workflow: Review Tool Activity This allows analysts to determine whether a suspicious prompt resulted in downstream actions. 5.2 Session Reconstruction One of the most powerful capabilities of UnifiedAgentObservability is session reconstruction. Analysts can correlate: This creates complete forensic timelines. 5.3 MCP Tool Auditing Monitor all MCP activity including: query_lake Graph API tools ServiceNow connectors SharePoint connectors Custom enterprise tools Questions answered: Which tool was used? Who triggered it? What parameters were supplied? What data was returned? 5.4 Sensitive Data Access Monitoring Monitor AI agent interaction with: Employee records Customer data Financial information SharePoint repositories HR databases Useful for identifying: Data exfiltration attempts Excessive access patterns Sensitive data exposure 5.5 Query Lake Monitoring The GitHub hunting guide introduces monitoring of: query_lake RunAdvancedHuntingQuery Analysts can inspect: Actual KQL submitted Target workspaces Data sources queried Scope of access This provides visibility into AI-driven security investigations. 5.6 New Tool Detection Identify newly observed tool usage. Examples: Unauthorized MCP servers Newly registered connectors Unapproved tools Unexpected integrations This use case is particularly useful for governance programs. 5.7 Tool Failure Monitoring Monitor: Permission failures Connector failures Application errors Access-denied responses A sudden increase in failures may indicate: Reconnaissance activity Misconfiguration Privilege abuse attempts 6. Detection Engineering Opportunities Organizations can create Sentinel Analytics Rules for: 6.1 Prompt Injection Detection Developer Mode prompts Prompt Override attempts System Prompt disclosure requests 6.2 Jailbreak Attempt Detection Safety bypass attempts Role manipulation prompts Instruction override patterns 6.3 Unauthorized Tool Usage New MCP tools High-risk connectors Rare tool executions 6.4 Sensitive Data Access HR data queries Identity information retrieval Large-volume exports 6.5 Agent Identity Abuse Ownership changes Unexpected agent activity Agent-to-agent anomalies 7. Data Lake Exploration and Long-Term Analytics Because agent telemetry resides within Sentinel Data Lake, organizations can perform: Long-term AI investigations Historical AI attack analysis Agent baselining Governance reporting Trend analysis Tool inventory reporting Example dashboards include: Top Prompt Injection Attempts Most Active Agents High-Risk MCP Tools Agent Ownership Analysis AI Security Incidents Sensitive Data Access Trends 8. Summary AI agents represent the next major computing platform, but they also introduce a completely new attack surface. To effectively secure enterprise AI solutions, organizations require visibility across: User interactions Agent execution paths MCP tool usage Prompt safety signals Agent identities Security detections Microsoft Sentinel provides this unified view by integrating: Agent 365 Observability UnifiedAgentObservability Microsoft Agent Identities Microsoft Copilot Logs CloudAppEvents Defender XDR Defender for AI By combining AI runtime telemetry with AI safety signals and Defender detections, security teams can move beyond traditional monitoring and build a modern SOC capability for threat hunting, incident response, governance and forensic investigations across Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, Azure AI Foundry and future AI agent ecosystems. Reference: https://github.com/SCStelz/security-investigator/blob/main/queries/cloud/agent365_observability.md
News to Know – Volume 3, Edition 8, late July 2026
Welcome back! This month brings sharper Copilot-powered insights, more polished ways to share results, and a refreshed set of global benchmarks — all aimed at helping you turn employee feedback into meaningful action with Viva Glint & Pulse. Inside you'll find what's newly available, an early look at what's coming next, and the latest thinking to help you measure what matters and sustain momentum across your employee experience strategy. New on your Viva Glint platform This section highlights new capabilities now available to help you strengthen Copilot experiences, reporting, and benchmarking in Viva Glint. Comment Reporting: Copilot-Enhanced Topic Assignment. Now generally available, Viva Glint uses Copilot to assign topics to employee comments with markedly higher accuracy than the legacy NLP pipeline. Comments are mapped to the right topics more consistently, giving you cleaner, more trustworthy topic-level views of what your people are saying. The report experience is unchanged for end users. This capability is controlled by the existing Glint Copilot VFAM toggle; if the toggle is enabled for your organization, Copilot-enhanced topic assignment will apply to new comments automatically. If the toggle is off, the legacy NLP pipeline continues to apply. Learn more here. Reporting: Enhanced Heat Map report export to PowerPoint. With this release, Managers will be able to export the default sections from the Heat Map report in Viva Glint directly to editable PowerPoint slides. This enhancement allows for easier and quicker consumption of this report outside Viva Glint, compared to the previous export method which included static screenshots. Learn more about the Heat Map report here. Benchmarks: Refreshed Global benchmark suite. As part of our annual benchmark cycle, Global benchmarks will be refreshed using Viva Glint survey data collected from July 2025 through June 2026 giving you current, reliable external comparisons in your reporting. No setup is required, and this follows the recent Industry, Region and Country benchmark suite refresh. As a reminder, to access external benchmark comparisons in reporting, customers must opt in to benchmarking. Opting in increases the overall benchmark data pool, improves data coverage, and supports a broader set of benchmark suites. Customers who have not opted in won’t be able to view or include external benchmarks in their reports. Coming soon to Viva Glint The following section offers an early look at capabilities coming to Glint — shaping the future of Copilot experiences, survey administration, data quality, and the employee data lifecycle. Copilot Admin Assistant | Generally available in September. Previously previewed, the Copilot Admin Assistant is on track for general availability with the September release. This first phase introduces an in-product Copilot experience that provides contextual, step-by-step guidance for configuration tasks using Microsoft Learn content. By bringing help directly into the product, it reduces the need to search through documentation and makes common administrative tasks easier to complete. Coaching and action-taking capabilities are planned for future releases. Survey administration: Survey authors own their survey results | Generally available in August. Survey administrators (survey authors) will gain direct access to the reports for the surveys they own, as well as the ability to administer key parts of the survey setup reducing dependence on central admins and helping teams close the loop on their own programs faster. Expanded admin controls for user-delete data handling | Generally available in August. We're continuing to expand control over the employee data lifecycle. Admins will be able to retain a user's email and employee ID after a user is removed from Glint preserving historical reporting accuracy and user-delete configurations will honor the toggle values in effect at the exact time of deletion. Together these give admins more predictable, compliant handling of user data. Case insensitivity for Glint attributes | Public preview in August. Attribute values will be treated case-insensitively across the platform, removing a common source of duplicate or split values in reporting and filters when upstream systems vary on capitalization. This should make attribute hygiene less brittle for admins and reduce confusing splits in the data. Glint ingestion details on the MODIS Ingestion Validation Page | Public preview in August. Admins on Viva Glint's modern data platform will get clearer, in-platform visibility into Glint-specific ingestion outcomes on the validation page making it easier to confirm that data landed as expected and to troubleshoot when it didn't. Manager hierarchy calculation improvement | Public preview in August. We're improving how Glint calculates the manager hierarchy for large, complex organizations, targeting more accurate rollups and fewer edge-case anomalies. This lays a stronger foundation for organizational reporting and hierarchical views in enterprise-scale environments. Copilot-supported commenting for survey takers | Private preview, targeting September. Viva Glint survey participants will be able to use a streamlined Copilot experience to rewrite all or part of their open-text responses. By helping respondents refine and de-identify their feedback, this capability can encourage greater participation and more candid, detailed comments. Based on private preview learnings, the experience will be gated by a dedicated VFAM toggle and supported by updated privacy documentation. General availability is targeted for September. See our public roadmap for more feature updates. Events and learning opportunities Stay up to date with updates and resources designed to help you get more value from Viva Glint & Pulse. Previous EECC Customer Engagement Sessions: June 25th – Viva Glint Notification Delivery Visibility In late June, customers joined the Employee Experience Customer Connection (EECC) program to explore early concepts for a new Notification Delivery Visibility capability in Viva Glint. The session focused on helping administrators better understand what happens after survey invitations and reminders are sent, addressing a long-standing customer challenge around notification troubleshooting and delivery confirmation. Today, Glint administrators can schedule and manage communications, but they have limited visibility into whether notifications were successfully delivered. Many organisations rely on Exchange Message Trace and IT teams for troubleshooting, creating delays and additional effort when investigating delivery issues. The proposed capability aims to provide administrators with self-service visibility directly within Glint. During the session, the team shared a phased vision for the experience: Phase 1: Awareness would provide visibility into delivered, pending, and failed notifications, estimated delivery progress, and downloadable lists of failed recipients. Phase 2: Diagnosis and Action would help administrators understand why notifications failed, identify affected users, and potentially take corrective action. Phase 3: Long-Term Vision would extend visibility to individual delivery status and broader communication health trends across programmes and surveys. Customer feedback strongly validated both the problem and the proposed direction. Participants consistently confirmed that the lack of post-send visibility is a significant pain point today, with some organisations relying on multiple IT teams to manually reconcile notification delivery during survey launches. Customers viewed the proposed capabilities as immediately valuable and expressed enthusiasm for greater transparency within the product. Several key themes emerged from customer discussions: Individual delivery status was the most-requested enhancement. Customers want the ability to determine whether a specific employee received a survey invitation, helping administrators quickly answer the common "Did I receive it?" question during launch periods. Role-based self-service received strong support. Customers were interested in combining delivery insights with live response rate reporting to give managers, leaders, and people partners greater visibility without exposing confidential survey results. Near real-time visibility is important. Participants expressed a preference for frequent data refreshes and clear guidance on issues administrators can resolve themselves versus those requiring escalation to Exchange or Microsoft 365 administrators. Frontline worker scenarios require special consideration. Customers highlighted the need to ensure QR code-based participation and users without traditional email addresses are handled appropriately and do not distort delivery metrics. The session also provided valuable validation for the overall roadmap. Customers supported the phased approach and helped confirm priorities for future investment, including permissions management, delivery diagnostics, delivery status lookups, and actionable troubleshooting guidance.DLP Prevents Microsoft 365 Copilot from Processing External Email
A new (preview) DLP capability allows Microsoft 365 tenants to block Microsoft 365 Copilot from processing the content of external email. When set, any message coming from a domain that’s not in a tenant’s accepted domain list is blocked for Copilot for grounding, referencing, or summarization. It’s an effective way of blocking threat like prompt injections transmitted in email too, but some people might not like blocking all their external email. https://office365itpros.com/2026/07/29/dlp-external-email-copilot/
