How to Schedule Teams Meetings from Shared Mailboxes
It is possible to schedule Teams meetings from shared mailboxes without incurring the need to license the shared mailboxes. However, Microsoft’s recent clampdown on unlicensed OneDrive for Business accounts creates a problem because Teams meeting recordings are stored in the OneDrive account for the organizer (shared mailbox). And if that account remains unlicensed for 365 days, it will be removed along with all the recordings. https://office365itpros.com/2026/07/16/schedule-teams-meeting-shared-mbx/
Migrating Teams Calling Bot (EchoBot) from VMSS to Windows Containers / ACI?
Hi everyone, I have built a Microsoft Teams Calling Bot using Application-Hosted Media based on the official C# EchoBot sample: https://github.com/microsoftgraph/microsoft-graph-comms-samples/tree/master/Samples/PublicSamples/EchoBot Currently, our signaling logic is fully serverless and runs efficiently on Azure Functions. However, the actual media processing (using the C# Calling SDK which relies on native Windows media binaries) is deployed on VMSS with Windows Server, just like the repository's default deployment guide suggests. Running these Windows VMs continuously is becoming extremely expensive, and we are looking for a cheaper, modern, or "on-demand" alternative to handle the media pipeline. Since raw audio processing strictly requires these native Windows-based Media binaries, I would like to ask the community: 1. Windows Containers (ACI / AKS): Has anyone successfully run this C# EchoBot/Media SDK inside Windows Containers (such as Azure Container Instances or AKS)? If so, how do you handle the public IP and port-binding requirements for the media sockets (since the platform needs direct public connectivity for UDP/TCP traffic)? 2. On-Demand Provisioning: Are there any known architectures or best practices for spinning up the media processor only when a call starts (e.g., triggering an ACI instance via the Azure Function signaling bot) and tearing it down afterwards to keep costs near zero when idle? 3. Alternative Approaches: If you have solved this high-infrastructure cost problem for a real-time raw audio bot in production, what architecture did you end up using? Any documentation, GitHub references, or architectural advice would be highly appreciated! Thanks!
Automatic initials are taking my business
Hello everyone, I'm a software developer, mostly based in Germany. I have a M365 Business Account and am using Teams as part of it. Since automatic initials, instead of generic profile pictures, became a thing, I'm constantly in a hurry to change my profile picture as soon as possible. This is because my initials are SS, which in the German culture is the abbreviation of the company responsible for the death camps during Nazi Germany. People are so upset about it that I even had customers not do business with me. They saw the SS initials in calls and thought I was using this on purpose to make a political stand, i.e. being in favour of the industrial scale mass murder of several million people. I'm not. So here is where my frustration is with Teams, which I'm paying for, and which is taking my business away with its stupid initials: I cant change the initials without changing my name I cant populate my picture to outside orgs preventing the initials from being shown This leads me to the incredibly uncomfortable situation that every time I connect to a new client, I need to discuss my distancing of the genocide 80 years ago before actually being able to commence a meeting. Not a very happy topic and as mentioned before I have lost business because of it. Is there please, any solution to this, that doesn't involve having to change my name? Kind Regards SebastianMonthly news - July 2026
Microsoft Defender Monthly news - July 2026 Edition This is our monthly "What's new" blog post, summarizing product updates and various new assets we released over the past month across our Defender products. In this edition, we are looking at all the goodness from June 2026. We are now including news related to Defender for Cloud in the Defender portal. For all other Defender for Cloud news, have a look at the dedicated Defender for Cloud Monthly News here. 🚀 New Virtual Ninja Show episode: Redefining identity security for the modern enterprise One policy engine to govern them all: Securing agentic AI with Microsoft Purview Building a modern detection pipeline with ContentOps Securing local AI agents with Microsoft Defender Microsoft Defender: Extending critical protection for emerging threats in Team Weekly Security News: We publish a short 1ish minute video every week with updates across our Microsoft Security stack. Subscribe to our YouTube channel, so you don't miss the next episode. Actionable threat insights (find all of them here) Securing AI agents: When AI tools move from reading to acting Chromium extension uses AI‑related branding to redirect browser search Photo ZIP campaign targeting hospitality industry delivers Node.js implant for persistent access Microsoft Defender Two Workbooks capabilities in the unified Microsoft Defender portal moved to GA: Advanced Hunting connector - build custom dashboards directly on top of Advanced Hunting (XDR) dat. Query XDR tables and visualize them in Workbooks for richer investigations and reports. Workspace filter / multi-workspace experience - scope and filter workbooks by workspace, with workspace selection integrated into the workbook itself rather than relying on the global selector. MTO Tenant Groups let MSSPs and large enterprises organize their multitenant view in Microsoft Defender by grouping tenants logically (e.g., by region, business unit, or customer cohort). Learn more here. Custom Detections support in Microsoft Sentinel Repositories. Custom Detections can now be managed as code in Microsoft Sentinel Repositories, the same way customers already manage analytic rules, playbooks, parsers and workbooks. Detection engineers connect a GitHub or Azure DevOps repo to their workspace; Custom Detections placed in the repo are reconciled on every commit. A standalone Bicep path via the Microsoft Security Bicep extension lets teams deploy from any CI/CD pipeline (ADO Pipelines, GitHub Actions, custom runners). (General Availability) The following advanced hunting schema tables are now generally available: The CloudAuditEvents table contains information about cloud audit events for various cloud platforms protected by the organization's Defender for Cloud. The CloudDnsEvents table contains information about DNS activity events from cloud infrastructure environments. The CloudProcessEvents table contains information about process events in multicloud hosted environments. (Public Preview) The AgentsInfo table in advanced hunting is now available in preview. The AIAgentsInfo table is transitioning to this new table, which provides a unified schema that supports agent inventory and governance for all agent types, including Copilot Studio, Microsoft Foundry, Microsoft 365 Copilot, third-party, and endpoint-discovered agents. Microsoft Agent 365 customers should use the AgentsInfo table today. The AIAgentsInfo table remains accessible until July 1, 2026. Update your queries to use AgentsInfo before this date. For more information, see Advanced hunting schema - Naming changes. For all other Sentinel News, have a look at the "What's new in Microsoft Sentinel blog post - June edition" Identity Security (Public Preview) The Identity Security dashboard now includes a new Human identities card that shows your human identities by source (Entra ID, SaaS, and on-premises), giving you a single view of where your human identities live. For more information, see Identity Security dashboard. (Public Preview) On the Coverage and maturity page, the Review and improve coverage side panel for SaaS Identities now includes an Observed column and a Show Only Observed Applications toggle. By default, the panel shows only SaaS applications detected in your environment. Turn off the toggle to see other supported SaaS applications you can onboard to expand your identity coverage. For more information, see Coverage and maturity. New alerts were added to the Defender for Identity security alerts related to Microsoft Entra ID, Active Directory as well as other identity providers. For a full list of those new alerts, check out our documentation. Recent ShinyHunters attacks on Salesforce show how OAuth tokens and connected apps are being weaponized to bypass MFA at scale. The upgraded Salesforce connector for Defender for Cloud Apps helps detect these attacks faster, with richer connected-app context and investigation-ready signals. Customers already using the connector are advised to enable the additional events in the Salesforce console for tighter protection, and eligible customers not yet using it are advised to connect Salesforce. Learn more. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint / Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management (Public Preview) Local AI agent discovery: as part of the Defender AI agents experience, Microsoft Defender now automatically discovers supported local AI agents running on onboarded Windows & macOS devices. Discovered agents appear as assets in the AI agent inventory, exposure map, and advanced hunting, giving security teams visibility into local AI agent usage across the organization. For more information, see Discover local AI agents. (Preview) Local AI agent runtime protection on Windows endpoints is now available in public preview. Microsoft Defender inspects the agent loop (user prompts, tool calls, and tool responses) and can block risky activity before it executes, helping stop prompt injection and unsafe agent actions at the device level. Blocked and audited events appear as alerts in Microsoft Defender to support incident correlation and investigation workflows. The new version of the Defender deployment tool for Windows streamlines onboarding and enhances security by: Bundling the onboarding package directly into the tool's executable. Generating a key during deployment package creation that is required for running the tool. Enabling users to configure an expiry date for the package to reduce the risk of unauthorized use. In addition: You have the option of downloading the package as either an .exe or a .zip file, whichever best suits your organization's needs. A new Deployment packages page in the Defender portal facilitates management of downloaded packages by providing centralized visibility into all the packages and their current status. Now generally available: Selective Response Actions enables organizations to tailor high-impact security operations on devices during onboarding. It provides precise control over how response actions are applied on Tier-0 systems and other high-value assets, helping maintain operational stability while delivering strong protection. The new exposure score model in Defender Vulnerability Management is now generally available. This model improves risk prioritization and recommendation impact accuracy by incorporating exploit prediction data (EPSS) and asset context factors such as internet-facing status and criticality. More details here. Microsoft Secure Score now includes the Reduce unnecessary inbound internet exposure on internet-facing devices recommendation, which helps identify devices that are accessible from the public internet and may represent unnecessary attack surface. This recommendation provides centralized visibility into internet-facing devices across the environment. Many predefined SaaS application classification rules were added to the critical assets list. Have a look at our documentation for the full list. These classifications require onboarding to Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps.
Can same-tenant meeting bots be routed through lobby approval like external bots?
Hello! As far as I understand, external third-party meeting bots are now detected by Teams and routed to the lobby via RequireApprovalWhenDetected; the organizer must admit them. Same-tenant bots bypass this entirely. Is there currently a way to apply lobby approval to same-tenant bots so it does not appear as a participant until explicitly let into the room? If not, is this on the roadmap? Could for example be a per-app flag on the Entra app registration or a Graph API parameter on the join call. All the best, Harald
Mirror My Video Apparently Means Mirror Everything?
Most users expect Mirror My Video to mirror only their camera video, while leaving the virtual background exactly as they uploaded it. However, when Mirror My Video is enabled, Microsoft Teams also mirrors uploaded background image. So someone on MS Teams Team really thought: "The user will anticipate this and manually reverse their background images, then upload the backwards image so Teams can reverse it again!" We wait in earnest to find out if the next Teams patch will drop all pretenses and just mirror the entire display, including on screen text, menus, and the Windows Start bar.1:1 meeting notes keep getting lost. I need a better system
So we have about 40 managers who are supposed to do weekly 1:1s with their reports. Most of them take notes in random OneNote notebooks and Ive even seen some use Teams chat as some pseudo-notebook. Is there anything that lets people take notes inside the actual Teams meeting and keeps those notes attached to that meeting in Teams?Microsoft Teams API Capabilities
Good morning, We are contacting you to find out whether it is possible to achieve the following functionalities through the Microsoft Teams API: Start a scheduled meeting automatically Through a voice command, a meeting scheduled in a room's calendar is automatically started, and all the necessary equipment and services are activated without any user intervention. Automatically answer an incoming call in a meeting room When a call is placed to a specific account, the room automatically answers the call without requiring any user action. Add participants to an ongoing call or meeting Allows new attendees to be added to an active meeting or call in progress. Thank you in advance for your assistance. Kind regards,Accelerate your Frontier journey: Summit sessions now available on demand
The Frontier Transformation Engineer Summit may be over, but you can keep the momentum going. Revisit the highlights or catch up on sessions you missed. Each session is designed to build the skills you need to advance your Frontier Engineering journey and earn your Frontier Transformation Engineer badge—a clear signal to customers that you can design and deliver agents across Microsoft Copilot Studio, Microsoft Foundry, and the rest of the Frontier stack. Here’s how you can keep building your AI capability: View the summit sessions on demand. Work toward earning the Frontier Transformation Engineer badge. Join us at MCAPS Start for Partners on July 22 to stay ahead of what’s next.
