Microsoft Teams events: A new unified experience makes it easier to discover, create, and manage events
Today’s organizational challenges and growing complexity can make it difficult to create meaningful connections with audiences, whether engaging employees or reaching a dispersed customer base. Having the right tools to navigate the demands of large-scale communication for digital and hybrid events is critical to achieving business objectives. We are excited to introduce the new Teams events experience designed to simplify how events are discovered, created, and managed. Now in public preview, Teams events represents the next step in delivering professional, high-quality events, featuring flexible customization options to empower event organizers and better engage the audiences that matter most. Unified event creation flow At the heart of this Teams events update is greater choice and control for organizers. The Meet app becomes the dedicated home for events in Teams, featuring a new event creation flow that gives organizers more flexibility and control when setting up their events. Organizers can customize experiences such as audience interaction (attendee camera feeds, raise hands, polls, etc.), registration control, and event scale. The new event creation experience no longer constrains individual features to a particular event type, replaced by a dynamic scheduling flow that gives organizers increased flexibility to tailor the event experience to specific audiences and goals. Centralized event discovery and tracking Busy schedules make it impractical, and sometimes impossible, for people to be aware of important events an organization hosts. The new Discover tab in the Meet app helps organizers promote events and drive interest by making them easier for audiences to find and access. The Discover tab is where organizers and attendees can find and track events, without relying solely on calendar invitations. Users can view events they’re registered for, find and register for new events, and catch up on recordings of past events. The Discover tab gives organizers, registrants, and attendees a single place to stay connected to their events. Simplified event management Managing events in Teams is easier than ever with the new Manage tab. No more searching through calendars or hidden menus to update presenter bios, adjust sharing functions, or track registrations. Teams events brings everything into one place for streamlined management. Event pages are created automatically when an event is saved, and serve as the central location for settings, customization, and branding. After an event concludes, Teams events makes it easy to send attendees follow-up emails and recording notifications. Event organizers also have a single place to access registration data and recap tools designed for insights and continued engagement. New capabilities give event organizers more control and flexibility In addition to the new unified experience, Teams events is adding capabilities to streamline setup and drive attendance: New delegate and shared mailbox support enables authorized users to schedule and manage events on behalf of the principal organizer. This helps teams collaborate more naturally when coordinating large or recurring events. Dedicated event details pages make it easy for organizers to view all elements related to the event, including built-in Q&A, and the ability to save customizations as templates for future use. Support for custom domains for event emails improves deliverability and helps invitations and reminders avoid spam filters, while offering additional event branding. Enhanced co-organizer editing and management controls make it easier to share responsibilities throughout the event lifecycle, ensuring a consistent management experience even as teams grow and roles evolve. Expanded access to events with new licensing Starting April 1 st , 2026, Teams events capabilities such as town hall and webinar, including advanced features, are available to all users licensed for Teams Enterprise and no longer require Teams Premium. This expanded access to Teams events enables more people in your organization to create high-quality, professional events. Along with these licensing changes, we also announced Attendee Capacity Pack licenses would be available to scale digital and hybrid events up to 100,000. For more information, please read our recent licensing announcement. Teams live events retirement Teams events will continue to be the experience where we invest in bringing new features and capabilities to support high-quality, professional digital and hybrid events at scale. With this launch, we will be retiring Teams live events fully on June 30, 2026. Users with events already scheduled through February 28, 2027, will be able to carry out these instances as planned through that date to avoid disruption. For more information, please refer to our recent retirement announcement. Create events that connect It’s never been more important to make meaningful connections with the audiences that matter to your organization, and your ability to deliver highly engaging events can play a critical role. The new Teams events experience streamlines your events, from discovering what’s happening across your organization, to creating tailored formats, to managing professional engagements at scale, all in one place. This new chapter brings greater simplicity, flexibility, and power to every event organizer, manager, presenter, and attendee. With expanded access through licensing updates, Teams events provide the foundation to deliver memorable, high-quality experiences, and enables even more people across your organization to confidently bring their events to life.
Introducing New Frontline Innovations at Microsoft 365 Community Conference
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.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.
Direct Routing PSTN calls to Teams Auto Attendant does not forward to Shared Voicemail
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!
Issue with Teams 'Add a User to Group Chat' API call?
I am getting a very strange error when trying to add a new user to an existing group chat using a GraphQL call. I have looked through the documentation, asked AI, and even contacted Microsoft support and no one can seem to explain why this API call is failing. Below is the API call that I am making. I can find no reason that I should be receiving the error message '#microsoft.graph.aadUserConversationMember' To get the basic questions out of the way.... Yes, the account making the API call DOES have permission to add users to the channel (and can do so using the frontend as normal.) Yes, the thread in question is a group chat, so adding members to that chat should be a valid command. Yes, ALL members in the group chat currently have the type '#microsoft.graph.aadUserConversationMember', so it is definitely a valid type for users in this channel. Yes, I have tried both the beta and stable channel; each gives the same error message. Yes, the invited user is internal to our organization, and is a valid target for the invite (invites work through frontend as well.) No, I cannot use the 'add member to channel' endpoint, because the chat is a group chat, not a channel. I can only assume, at this point, that the error message is a red herring and there's something else wrong with my API call?Why am I receiving this error message when trying to add a member to a pre-existing group chat? Thanks in advance for any assistance. POST to URL: https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/chats/[[THREAD_ID]]@thread.v2/members BODY: { "@odXXX.type": "#microsoft.graph.aadUserConversationMember", "roles": [], "email address removed for privacy reasons": "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/users/[[USER_ID]]" } ERROR MESSAGE: {"error":{"code":"BadRequest","message":"The provided '#microsoft.graph.aadUserConversationMember' for 'odXXX.type' is not valid for this operation.","innerError":{"date":"2026-01-29T18:10:32","request-id":"<PII:moderator removed>","client-request-id":"<PII:moderator removed>"}}}
Web Notifications API from Personal Tab app doesn't work
I have a client-side web application that we're trying to get to run as a Teams personal tab app. I have the app working as a teams app, as long as we "open in new window" so that the app doesn't get put to sleep as it needs a permanently up session with something else. Our app uses Web Notifications API (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Notification) to create desktop notificiations, but this does not seem to work when running as a Teams tab app popped out into a new window. No notifications are displayed. Permissions have been requested correctly and given and Windows is set to allow notifications, but these web notifications never make it out of teams to the desktop. There are no errors in the browser console to say the web notifications are not supported in Teams. Is this not supported as a teams app? The inbuilt activity feed is useless for our purpose (for a few reasons), so please don't suggest I use graph to make use of that instead.Focus on the Teams Phone calls that matter most with Copilot call delegation
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.
Teams Transcription (Licensing / Button greyed out for some users)
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
