Focus on the Teams Phone calls that matter most with intelligent call delegation
We're excited to announce that intelligent call delegation 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.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 the new Microsoft Teams, now in preview
As we announced in this blog post, today we’re starting to roll out the preview version of the new Teams desktop app for Windows. We have been listening to your feedback which has culminated in a reimagining of Teams from the ground up to provide a faster, simpler, and more flexible experience. New Teams is built on a foundation of speed, performance, and flexibility, to help you save time, and work together more efficiently.
Introducing smarter bot protection in Microsoft Teams meetings
Organizations need confidence that the right people and tools are participating in their discussions. That's why we're introducing a new Teams admin policy designed to give organizations more visibility and control over external bots in their meetings. This new experience helps organizers identify bots, and adds safeguards before they're admitted, giving organizations greater confidence that only the intended participants and tools will be present.What's New in Microsoft Teams | May 2026 - Build Edition
It's hard to believe May is over already! You may have noticed this edition of What's new in Teams is landing a few days later than usual — that's intentional. We're publishing alongside Microsoft Build, our annual developer conference where we showcase the latest in AI, agents, and the tools that help developers. It's one of the most energizing weeks of the year, full of announcements, hands-on sessions, and a first look at where the platform is headed. A lot of what's in this release ties directly to what's being unveiled on the Build stage, and I wanted to highlight a few Teams Platform features worth calling out: Linear, Cursor, and Atlassian Rovo agents in Teams — three powerful new partner agents that turn channel conversations into shipped code, filed issues, and updated project plans without ever leaving the chat. New Teams CLI — one command to register, configure, and deploy a Teams agent, so developers can spend their time on agent logic instead of managing complex processes Collaborative features for agents – our new agent capabilities include quoted replies to keep conversations anchored, slash commands to quickly take action in the flow of work, and expressive emoji reactions that add nuance without adding noise, all helping teams stay aligned and move faster in collaboration with agents. A few other highlights I'm especially excited about beyond Platform: New AI-generated Video recap in Teams turns meeting recordings into short, narrated highlight reels—so you can quickly catch up on what matters most without watching the full session. In Teams Phone, Brand Impersonation Protection alerts you in real time when a caller may be posing as a trusted brand like your bank or IT helpdesk, so you can decline or report the call with confidence. These are just a taste of what's new. Read on to see everything we've released in May across chat, meetings, phone, rooms, frontline, and more. Product areas covered in this update: (All features are generally available unless otherwise noted.) Teams Platform Chat and Collaboration Meetings Teams Phone Workplace - Places and Teams Rooms Fundamentals and Security Frontline workers Certified for Teams Devices Teams Platform Slash commands for agents- Public Preview Triggering an agent shouldn't break your flow. With slash commands, users can invoke agent actions, retrieve information, or kick off tasks directly from the compose box using simple "/" prompts — keeping agents one keystroke away in any chat or channel. Quoted replies for agents- Public Preview Threaded conversations are easier to follow when agents stay anchored to the right message. With quoted replies, your agent can now reference the exact message a user is responding to so context isn't lost as threads grow longer or branch into side discussions. Agents can also send quoted replies of their own, keeping multi-turn exchanges clear and traceable for everyone in the chat. Message Reactions for Agents – Public Preview Ever wish your agent could just give a thumbs-up instead of cluttering a thread with another reply? Now it can. Agents in Teams can now respond with emoji reactions the same way people do, matching the rhythm of the conversation with a lightweight signal instead of an extra message. Threads stay clean, exchanges feel more natural, and you get a clear acknowledgment without the noise. New Teams CLI Building an agent today means juggling registration, credentials, manifest creation, and deployment across multiple tools, slowing developers down before they even get to the interesting work. The new Teams CLI collapses all of it into a single command, working alongside coding agents to take a Teams agent from idea to running instance in minutes. By handling setup and diagnostics behind the scenes, developers can focus on agent logic instead of managing configuration complexity. Learn more here. Linear agent in Teams Software teams lose momentum every time a channel decision has to be manually translated into a Linear issue or project update. The Linear agent in Teams closes that gap by turning conversations directly into actionable work — creating issues, capturing context, and updating project workflows from inside the thread where the decision was made. The Linear agent is available now in the Microsoft Marketplace. Cursor agent in Teams Engineering work stalls every time you have to leave a Teams discussion to fix a bug or ship a feature in a separate tool. The Cursor agent in Teams keeps you in the flow: @mention it in any channel or chat to invoke Cursor's Cloud Agents directly inside the conversation, where it returns results with full context of the discussion. The result is a faster path from idea to production, without ever leaving Teams. The Cursor agent is available now in the Microsoft Marketplace. Atlassian Rovo agent in Teams Jumping between Teams, Jira, and Confluence to turn a chat decision into actual project work slows everyone down. The Atlassian Rovo agent in Teams brings AI-powered context and action across Jira, Confluence, and Teamwork Graph organizational data into your conversations — so you can go from a question in chat to creating Jira issues, drafting Confluence pages, and updating workflows in a single interaction. Rovo evolves Atlassian's previous Jira and Confluence apps into an orchestrating "uber agent" for Atlassian AI, now available in the Microsoft Marketplace. MCP servers/connectors discovery and connection UI from agent settings- Public Preview Connecting an agent to the right external system used to mean piecing together configurations from multiple places. Now, you can discover, connect, and manage MCP servers and connectors all from one unified experience inside agent settings in Teams — so it's faster and more secure to plug external data and services into agent workflows. App centric management in Teams Admin Center to manage the Apps access for tenants, end-users, and groups in GCC In GCC environments, controlling who can install which Teams apps used to require broad permission policies that didn't scale well as app catalogs grew. With app-centric management, GCC admins can now set defaults for newly published apps and decide app-by-app whether everyone, specific users and groups, or no one, can install them. Existing app permission policies are migrated automatically, so current availability stays intact. Visual enhancements in adaptive cards Agent responses used to feel flat, with long walls of text and little room for users to drill into the details that matter. New visual TableSet, Accordion, and Loop components let agent builders structure responses into navigable tabs, expandable sections, and repeating content so users can scan and act on information the same way they would in a polished app. Expanded action capabilities such as Popover and richer content support through references and Citations round out the experience. Organization evaluation score for apps and agents- Public Preview IT admins used to manually review trust data for Teams agents and apps in the admin center to verify security, privacy, and compliance standards. This new feature enables admins to define their company's approval requirements once; the system then automatically assesses apps and agents, generating an evaluation score and detailed report per agent/app. This speeds up decision-making by clearly surfacing which ones meet all company standards and which need further review. M365 Agents Toolkit and Developer Portal Support for Agents in Gov Clouds Developers building for regulated customers used to face a choice: ship in commercial cloud, or rebuild from scratch for government environments. Now, the Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit and Developer Portal are expanding support for building agents in Government Community Cloud (GCC), GCC High (GCCH), and DoD — so the same solution can reach highly regulated organizations without redesign or re-architecture. M365 certification bulk management IT admins today have to enable trusted third-party apps one at a time in the Teams admin center, a slow and repetitive process when working across hundreds of apps. This feature evolves the org-wide third-party app setting from a simple ON/OFF toggle into a granular dropdown with a new "Allow only Microsoft 365 certified apps" option, letting admins turn on every Microsoft-certified app across their tenant in a single click. As apps earn or lose certification, the platform keeps availability in sync automatically — no ongoing manual upkeep. Observability features for A365 Agents in Teams- Public Preview As more A365 agents act on behalf of users in Teams, IT needs more than just visibility and control—they need to understand how those agents are operating in real time. These new observability capabilities provide deep insights into agent activity, usage, performance, and interactions across Teams and the Microsoft 365 Copilot Agent Store. By surfacing real-time metrics and governance signals, admins can monitor behavior, identify issues, and ensure agents are operating securely, compliantly, and effectively at scale. A365 agents on Teams mobile- Public Preview Bring AI agents with you wherever work happens. A365 agents are now available on Teams mobile in public preview, so you can discover, chat with, and add approved agents to conversations and meetings from your phone, the same way you would from desktop. From the Teams mobile app store, browse the "Agents for your team" category, request an agent, and start delegating tasks on the go after admin approval. Enhanced Teams Store- Public Preview Finding the right agent in Teams just got easier, and knowing what it does is now instant. The enhanced Teams Agents & Apps Store solves both problems. Smarter search surfaces helpful suggestions that appear the moment you open the search box, and results update instantly as you type. Once you find what you're looking for, redesigned tiles, clickable sample prompts, and a personalized "Your Agents & Apps" view make it easy to evaluate an agent and put it to work right away. Chat and Collaboration Create workflows with slash commands Jumping out of a chat to update your status or schedule a message breaks your concentration just when you're trying to get something done. Now, you can stay in the compose box using slash commands. Type / on an empty line to interact with apps and agents, create and manage workflows, or run Teams actions like /busy, /goto, or /schedulemessage. Whether you're inserting a GIF or managing workflows, slash commands offer a consistent and efficient way to get things done without leaving your flow. Improved code readability with line numbers Pointing teammates to "the third line from the bottom" gets old fast when you're reviewing code in a chat. Teams now displays automatic line numbers in code blocks so you can reference specific lines naturally in reviews and discussions, and enhanced keyboard navigation lets you move through code without reaching for the mouse. Badging updates help find messages that count in the chat list That little badge on your Teams app icon tells you something needs attention, but tracking down exactly which message is driving it can take longer than you'd like. Now, unmuted chats show a purple indicator when they affect the badge. In addition, mentions, followed threads, and tag mentions display a purple number showing how many unread items are part of the count. Catch up on Teams conversations on mobile Catch up on everything that needs your attention in a single, unified view. Each conversation appears on its own swipeable card with full context and all the actions you need - reply, react, save, mark read/unread, follow/unfollow - to complete your triage. Simply tap the Catch up button at the top of your chat list to get started and get swiping! Learn more about Catch up. Quick access to read items from unread-only mode Unread-only mode keeps your chat list focused on what needs attention, but sometimes you still need to find a message you read earlier. Now, hovering over any section in unread-only view reveals an eye icon that opens a list of read chats and channels for that section, without leaving your unread view. Instant search results when typing in Teams Find in chat and channel Hitting Enter, scanning results, refining your query, and trying again is a slow way to find a message. Find in chat and Find in channel now show results instantly as you type, so you can refine on the fly and get to the right message faster. Advanced filters in Teams Find in chat and channel When the right message is buried under hundreds of others, scrolling isn't a search strategy. New filters in Find in chat and Find in channel let you narrow results by sender, date, attachments, or mentions directly from the right rail — accessible via Ctrl+F (Windows), Cmd+F (Mac), or the Find icon in any chat or channel header. Teams honors the Windows Do not disturb setting Setting Windows to Do not disturb but still getting pinged by Teams defeats the whole point of focus time. Teams integrates with the Do not disturb setting in Windows to help reduce interruptions during focused work. Teams notifications are paused when the Windows Do not disturb setting is turned on, and resume after it is turned off. Meetings Video recap Catching up on meetings just got a whole lot faster. Video recap turns your recorded Teams meetings into short, narrated highlight reels, pairing an AI-generated voiceover with real clips of the key moments, decisions, and shared visuals from the conversation. Whether you missed a meeting or just want to revisit the most important parts, video recap helps you quickly grasp the flow, tone, and outcomes without scrubbing through the full recording. Available to Microsoft 365 Copilot–licensed users on Teams for Windows, Mac, and the web, for recorded English-language meetings between 10 and 90 minutes. Ability to delete recap Cleaning up after a sensitive meeting used to mean deleting recording, transcript, AI summary, and notes from separate places, or asking an admin for help. Organizers can now delete all of it in one place from the recap page's More (…) menu. Shared files stay put in their original locations. It's a quick, confident way to support your retention practices — no admin setup required. Teams Phone Brand Impersonation Protection in Microsoft Teams Calling Stay one step ahead of scammers. Teams now detects and warns you when a caller may be impersonating a trusted brand—like your IT helpdesk, bank, or Microsoft Support—before you engage. When a potential threat is detected, you'll see an in-call alert with clear identity signals (such as "Scam suspected"), empowering you to decline, leave, or report the call instantly. No extra tools needed—protection is built right into your calling experience. It's proactive security that keeps your credentials, data, and organization safe without disrupting your workflow. Report a Suspicious Call in Teams Suspicious calls used to be easy to hang up on but hard to actually do anything about. Users can now report calls that appear unusual or suspicious directly in the Calls app history. After selecting, “Report call”, in the call’s additional options, users can add a reason to the report and have the option to block the caller. When a call is reported, the signal helps strengthen Microsoft’s detection systems to reduce future unwanted or malicious activity. By making it easy to report in the moment, users can contribute to ongoing threat protection while helping improve overall call security across the organization. Queues app for Teams Mobile Customer-facing employees can't always sit at a desk all day, but stepping away used to mean dropping out of the queue and missing calls. The Queues app — with advanced queue management and collaborative calling — is now supported on Teams mobile, so information workers like bank tellers or IT help desk representatives can stay opted in, review recent calls, and return missed customer calls from their phone. The result: faster response, fewer missed opportunities, and a more consistent customer experience away from the desk. Consult and merge a PSTN caller through DTMF Need to consult a subject matter expert in a private conversation before merging them into a meeting, but they're behind an auto attendant phone menu? Now you can. Meeting organizers can consult and merge PSTN callers into active Teams meetings, even when reaching them requires navigating Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF) menus, so the right person joins the conversation without delays or call drops. Workplace - Places and Teams Rooms Enhanced media quality for Direct Guest Join in Teams Rooms on Windows You’ll notice media quality improvements including support for up to 16 participant videos (4×4 grid) available in May and simulcast streaming (June) when using Direct Guest Join. These updates make cross-platform meetings more immersive and reliable when joining Teams meetings from Zoom, Google Meet, or Cisco devices. Learn more. Miracast support for Teams Rooms on Windows devices including touch boards Cables and connectors slow down meetings, especially in flex spaces where guests and visitors need to share quickly. Teams Rooms on Windows all-in-one touch boards, now support Miracast for cable-free wireless screen mirroring alongside Teams Cast and HDMI ingest. Walk in, mirror your screen, present. Available with Teams Rooms Pro. Learn more. Multi-camera view support for GCC-H and DoD in Teams Rooms on Windows Remote participants in large rooms often miss what's happening because they're stuck looking at a single, fixed camera angle. GCC-H and DoD cloud customers can now use multi-camera views in Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows, allowing remote participants to switch between multiple in-room camera feeds for improved visibility and engagement in larger spaces. Find camera requirements here. Available with Teams Rooms Pro. Learn more. Multi-stream IntelliFrame support for GCC-H and DoD in Teams Rooms on Windows In hybrid meetings, remote attendees often see in-room participants in a single distant frame— making it hard to read faces and engage. Multi-stream IntelliFrame, now available for GCC-H and DoD customers in Teams Rooms on Windows, sends a separate video feed of each in-room participant for far more inclusive hybrid conversations. Requires a compatible intelligent camera. Available with Teams Rooms Pro. Learn more. Book future meetings directly from Teams panels You can now make an upcoming meeting reservation from a Teams panel by browsing the calendar on the device and choosing any open time slot through midnight the next day. Add a guest during booking streamlining ad-hoc scheduling and coordination. Available with Teams Rooms Pro and Shared Device licenses. Learn more. Enhanced issue detection in Teams Rooms on Windows and auto-remediation with Teams Rooms Pro Management To minimize delays due to equipment issues, Teams Rooms on Windows proactively monitors room audio, video, and display signals to detect issues in meeting spaces. Teams Rooms Pro Management automatically remediates common issues that can be resolved through software, configuration changes, or device resets during nightly maintenance. This ensures users have reliable, ready-to-use meeting rooms, while IT admins benefit from reduced manual troubleshooting and increased uptime. Available for Teams Rooms Pro-licensed rooms. Learn more. Room health signals and notifications in Teams Rooms on Windows When critical issues impact room functionality, meetings can be delayed or derailed. Room health signals now trigger display of a banner notification on both the front-of-room display and console in Teams Rooms on Windows. Room health signals help get issues resolved quickly and ensure productive meetings. Available with Teams Rooms Pro. Learn more. Expanded access to the AI Assistant for all roles in the Teams Rooms Pro Management portal Admins now have broader access to the AI Assistant in the Teams Rooms Pro Management portal, no longer limited to global admin roles. Using role-based access controls (RBAC), admins see only rooms and devices they manage, improving visibility and support while adhering to security policies. Learn more. Fundamentals and Security Agent metadata visibility in Teams Admin Center Approving an AI agent for the organization used to mean piecing together what it could actually do from multiple places. IT admins can now view detailed agent metadata — capabilities, knowledge sources, and allowed actions — directly in the Teams Admin Center before approving or enabling agents. With this visibility centralized in one place, admins can understand what kind of agent they are approving and broaden rollout once they're certain agents meet their security and compliance standards. User-Reported Teams Message Security Signals in the Teams Admin Center Users flag suspicious messages every day, but those signals used to be hard for IT to act on at scale. Admins can now monitor user-reported security signals directly in the Teams Admin Center through the Security Message Violation report, surfacing flagged messages and false-positive reports in one centralized view, so security controls can be tuned to real-world threat exposure without leaving the admin center. Account switching for native Mac controls via dock and menu bar Juggling work, guest, and tenant accounts in Teams on Mac used to mean opening the full app every time you needed to switch. Now, account and tenant switching controls live directly in the macOS dock and menu bar — exactly where Mac users expect them — so toggling between organizations or accounts takes one click. Frontline workers Explore our learn docs for more information on all of our Teams for frontline solutions. Guided setup for Frontline Rolling Teams out to thousands of frontline workers used to mean stitching together onboarding, team structure, and pinned-app policies across multiple tools. Guided setup in the Teams Admin Center now walks admins through all of it in one place — making it easier to expand pilots, keep app layouts uniform, and track adoption with built-in insights. Learn more in the official documentation here or sign up here to explore additional deployment capabilities in private preview. Automatically fill open shifts with Smart Scheduling Smart scheduling in Shifts takes the manual effort out of building frontline schedules. Managers can automatically assign open shifts based on employee availability, scheduled time off, constraints such as maximum weekly or daily hours, and historical data about what shifts people usually work. Simply create open shifts for the required number of positions, select "Assign open shifts," and let Teams find the best match for each slot. Any shifts that can't be filled automatically are flagged for manual review, so managers stay in control while saving significant time. The result: faster, fairer schedules with less effort for managers and frontline workers alike. Deliver operational updates with the Communicator app Critical updates for frontline workers — safety alerts, training reminders, outage notifications — often get lost in long channel threads or scattered across other apps. The Communicator app in Microsoft Teams enables operations teams to deliver structured, actionable updates directly within the channels frontline workers already use. Whether sharing safety alerts, training reminders, or outage notifications, teams can publish consistent, easy-to-act-on messages, track delivery and engagement, and communicate seamlessly without requiring additional apps or workflow changes. Sign up for the limited public preview: aka.ms/CommunicatorApp Run hands-free site walkthroughs with voice in Frontline Agent Typing inspection notes on a phone while walking a site is slow, error-prone, and can be a safety risk. Frontline Agent enables voice-driven site walkthroughs, allowing workers to complete inspections, capture issues, and document compliance tasks using natural speech. Inputs are automatically transcribed into structured digital records, reducing manual data entry, speeding up reporting, and ensuring critical insights from the field are consistently captured. Sign up for the limited public preview: aka.ms/SiteWalkthrough Certified for Teams Devices Barco ClickShare Hub Core with Logitech Meetup 2 The ClickShare Hub Core and Logitech MeetUp 2 bundle is a solution certified for Microsoft Teams Rooms designed for small meeting rooms. ClickShare Hub Core enables one-click, wireless conferencing and 4K content sharing with one next-gen ClickShare Button (featuring Wi-Fi 6E and USB-C DisplayPort™). Built on the Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform (MDEP), it’s designed to deliver a secure meeting experience. The widely recognized Logitech MeetUp 2 video bar delivers USB-connected high-quality audio and video with AI-enhanced performance. For meeting participants, this bundle ensures intuitive and engaging meetings. For IT managers, it pairs ease of installation and eco-friendliness with enterprise-grade security, compliance, and standardized integration. Learn more Jabra Scheduler Jabra Scheduler is a smart, professional room scheduling panel that makes finding and booking meeting rooms fast. With an integrated lightbar and intuitive touchscreen, it’s certified for Microsoft Teams. Easy to deploy, simple to scale, and built to unlock more productive meetings across your workplace. Learn more Neat Pad Pro Neat Pad Pro elevates how meetings come together. As a meeting room controller or scheduling display, it gives teams effortless command and IT a simple, scalable way to manage rooms. With a 10-inch touchscreen, built-in microphones, and intelligent processing, it enhances audio, sharpens control, and improves accessibility—so meetings run more smoothly and sound clearer. Learn more Jabra Speak2 40 Built for hybrid workers who take meetings from anywhere, the Jabra Speak2 40 delivers true full-duplex audio with a 50mm speaker, wideband sound, and four advanced beamforming microphones — connecting via either USB-C or USB-A on the same cable. Learn more. Owl Labs Meeting Owl 5 Pro The Meeting Owl 5 Pro is redefining the center-of-table experience by making hybrid meetings simpler and smarter than ever. Our next-gen camera, speaker, and microphone device powers enterprise-grade hybrid meetings with an easy-to-use BYOD solution. It combines 360-degree 4K video with award-winning automatic speaker-switching software to enable effective hybrid collaboration in any space. Features native HDMI and Ethernet ports for a seamless single-cable BYOD experience built with security and reliability in mind. Compatible with all video conferencing platforms, including Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and many others. Learn more.Engage customers with Teams Phone Agent and custom voice agents built in Copilot Studio
It’s often difficult for businesses to serve every customer right away during surges in call volumes. Callers sit on hold while staff race to work through the backlog. Meanwhile, agentic voice AI is opening entirely new ways to serve customers, such as getting answers to questions or even enabling them to pay a bill over the phone, including after hours and on weekends. We are excited to announce Teams Phone Agent, along with the ability to bring custom voice agents your organization builds in Microsoft Copilot Studio to Microsoft Teams Phone. For customer-facing organizations using Teams Phone, like healthcare clinics or bank branches, these agents take repetitive calls off the plate of employees so they can focus on the conversations that truly need a human touch. All this enables faster issue resolution for customers. How Teams Phone Agent works Teams Phone Agent greets callers and resolves common requests with these skills. Questions and Answers: Using configured knowledge bases that support file uploads and URLs, Teams Phone Agent answers callers' questions in natural conversation, so customers get answers quickly instead of being placed on hold or hunting through a website. Appointment scheduling: Teams Phone Agent enables callers to book new appointments, reschedule or cancel existing ones, and find upcoming appointment details so customers can lock in a time without playing phone tag. Conversational Routing with intelligent transfers: Teams Phone Agent supports the same tried and tested routing from traditional auto attendants, such as user or extension lookup and transfer to a user, call queue, and more through conversation. When additional assistance is needed, Teams Phone Agent passes the caller along with the full context of the conversation to the right individual or department. Customers can skip cumbersome phone menus and don’t have to repeat themselves. Multilingual: Teams Phone Agent supports multilingual conversations across 60+ supported languages, allowing callers to interact naturally in their preferred language and helping organizations deliver global voice experiences at scale. Automate what’s unique to your business with Copilot Studio voice agents When you need to automate processes unique to your business, like letting patients fill a prescription over the phone, custom voice agents that your organization builds in Copilot Studio step in. Teams Phone Agent can seamlessly hand off a call to custom voice agents whenever those specialized skills are needed. Alternatively, you can set things up so customers can dial a Copilot Studio custom voice agent directly through a Teams Phone line. Voice agents with Teams Phone in action Here are a few illustrative use cases for how Teams Phone Agent and Copilot Studio voice agents can help organizations engage their customers: Answer routine questions without making callers wait. A healthcare clinic can use Teams Phone Agent to answer common questions about hours, locations, accepted insurance, and appointment preparation, helping patients get answers quickly while staff focus on care coordination. Book and reschedule appointments over the phone. A home services company can use Teams Phone Agent to help customers schedule, confirm, or change appointments for plumbing or electrical repairs in natural conversation, helping reduce back-and-forth calls and freeing employees from repetitive scheduling work. Route customers to the right expert with context. A bank branch can use Teams Phone Agent to understand what type of support a caller needs, such as assistance with completing a mortgage loan application. Teams Phone Agent can then transfer the call to the right team with the conversation context included. Complete business-specific tasks with a Copilot Studio voice agent. A pharmacy can use a Copilot Studio custom voice agent to help customers request a prescription refill by phone and check order status, giving customers a simpler way to manage routine needs without waiting for staff assistance. Support customers after hours. A utility provider can use a Copilot Studio custom voice agent connected to Teams Phone to let customers report an outage or get billing help outside normal business hours. Launch Demo An expanding ecosystem of voice agents for Teams Phone We want customers to have choice across first-party and third-party voice agents. That is why we are working with select solution developers to integrate their voice agents with Teams Phone. AudioCodes is announcing general availability of its voice agent for Teams Phone today, with additional solutions expected in the future. Get started Teams Phone Agent and the ability to integrate custom voice agents built in Copilot Studio with Teams Phone are now accessible through the Frontier program. Join Frontier so that your organization can get early access to Microsoft’s latest AI innovations. Teams Phone admins can set up Teams Phone Agent through Teams admin center. Learn more. Copilot Studio makers can navigate to Microsoft Copilot Studio to set up a voice agent and then assign it to Teams Phone Agent or a Resource Account to be called directly. Learn more. Licensing during the Frontier preview Teams Phone Agent is available via the Frontier program. Service limitations may apply. Custom Copilot Studio voice agent experiences—whether reached through a Teams Phone Agent hand-off or by direct dial—are accessible via the Frontier program and are billed consumptively at a rate based on the orchestration type your organization selects when building the agent in Copilot Studio. Learn more. Billing for Copilot Studio voice agent experiences in Teams Phone will roll out by early July, and usage will not be charged prior to this rollout. Service limitations may apply. When the billing experience is rolled out, all Frontier preview users will be required to set up billing to continue using Copilot Studio voice agents for Teams Phone. Tenants must also meet standard Teams Phone prerequisites, including a properly configured Teams Phone resource account. Learn more. All licensing, pricing, and service limits are subject to change. Additional information will be communicated at general availability.
The Next Chapter of Microsoft Teams in Virtualized Environments
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) has long been a critical deployment model for Microsoft Teams, especially for organizations that rely on centralized desktops for security, compliance, and scale. Over the past six years, Microsoft has invested heavily in improving the Teams experience in VDI—listening to customer feedback, addressing operational pain points, and rethinking how collaboration workloads should run in virtualized environments. That journey has now reached an important milestone: the legacy WebRTC based VDI optimization is being retired, and the new VDI optimization — built on top of a new media engine— is becoming the standard going forward. In this post, I want to explain why Microsoft is making this change, what customers gain with the new architecture, what’s coming next, and how IT teams can track adoption and progress. Why Microsoft Is Deprecating WebRTC-based optimization The WebRTC-based optimization (“Citrix HDX Media optimized” or “AVD Media optimized”) was designed in an earlier era of Teams, relying on WebRTC stacks bundled with the Remote Desktop client / Citrix Workspace app to offload audio/video/screensharing processing from the virtual desktop to the endpoint. While this approach enabled media optimization for the most common scenarios, it also introduced architectural limitations that became more pronounced as Teams evolved. Based on years of customer feedback, support cases, and operational learnings, several challenges consistently surfaced: Feature gaps between native Teams and VDI Longer call setup times Limited diagnostics and observability, making troubleshooting difficult for IT Operational complexity, including version-dependency on external components (like VDI Clients or VDI Hosts) and frequent infrastructure alignment issues. As Microsoft modernized the Teams client itself, it became clear that continuing to invest in the WebRTC based model would slow innovation and prevent VDI from reaching parity with physical desktops. This led to a full re-architecture of Teams in VDI, resulting in the new optimization in Q4 2024 (colloquially referred to as VDI 2.0). With the new optimization now broadly adopted, Microsoft is transitioning WebRTC into a legacy state, with defined End of Support and End of Availability milestones for Windows-based VDI environments that run on Azure Virtual Desktops, Windows 365 and Citrix (and only for these). What exactly is going to happen This change applies only to Windows-based endpoints connecting to Citrix and Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) / Windows 365 environments and does not affect macOS, Linux, mobile, HTML5, or ChromeOS. It does not apply to Omnissa. Separate announcements will be made for those as soon as they hit General Availability. As announced in the Message Center Post 1239928, there will be two subsequent milestones in the deprecation, following the same pattern you saw in the transition from Classic to New Teams: End of Support October 1 st , 2026: WebRTC-based optimization will continue to work, but it is no longer officially supported by Microsoft and Citrix when connecting from Windows endpoints. Two months before this milestone, users will see dismissible banners upon application launch time alerting about the upcoming change. End of Availability April 1 st , 2027: WebRTC stops working; the new optimization is enforced. If Teams fails to optimize, it will fall back to server-side rendering (i.e. all multimedia is processed on the virtual machine, degrading the user experience). Two months before this milestone, users see a modal dialogue window alerting about the upcoming change. If the reason for not being optimized with the new stack is that the plugin is not installed, users are instructed to download the plugin from Microsoft’s website. Optimization Policies related to the legacy optimization (such as in Citrix Studio ) no longer take effect. The Benefits of the new optimization In a nutshell, the new architecture is using the same media engine as the native Teams desktop client. This alignment fundamentally changes what’s possible in virtualized environments. Customers that have migrated frequently report: A plethora of new features (Gallery View 3x3 and 7x7, Hardware Acceleration, 1080p, QoS, Custom and organizational backgrounds, Noise Suppression, HID, Advanced telephony features such as QoS, Media Bypass, and Location Based Routing) (These depend on the user’s endpoint platform and Teams license) Can significantly reduce call setup times (“a game changer”) Better Monitoring and Supportability (Teams Admin Center and Call Quality Dashboard-CQD-, and richer telemetry and diagnostics aligned with native Teams) Because the new architecture decouples from the VDI infrastructure and kept evergreen, Teams avoids mismatches between client versions and media stacks, and can reliability at scale. Additionally, this enables IT teams to proactively identify issues, analyze trends, and reduce mean time to resolution—capabilities that were limited or unavailable before. QuickStart Checklist and Common Pitfalls This quick‑start helps IT admins move from the legacy WebRTC-based optimization to the SlimCore-based optimization while reducing risk and improving visibility. Quickstart Tools/Actions What to look for 1 - Baseline Your Environment Use Teams Admin Center, Call Quality Dashboard and PowerBI Optimized vs Unoptimized users with both WebRTC and SlimCore (a.k.a VDI 2.0). ‘Inactive’ users (i.e. optimization disabled) 2 - Validate Prerequisites Read the VDI Article CWA/Windows App versions, MSIX GPOs on the endpoint, Networking requirements on the branch office 3 - Enable new Optimization -Check VDI Policy -Enable Citrix custom Virtual channels -Deploy Plugins Powershell Policy, Citrix Studio VC Allow List (allow MSTEAMS, MSTEAM1, MSTEAM2) 4 - Verify at User Level VDI Status Indicator It should say “Teams is [AVD]/[Citrix] SlimCore Media optimized” 5 - Monitor adoption Teams Admin Center (TAC) and Call Quality Dashboard (CQD) Use Teams Admin Center → Meetings → Best Practice Configurations Identify users still unoptimized Export impacted users Track improvements in CQD: Call setup success rate Media quality Reliability trends 6 - Prepare for VDI 1.0 Retirement Internal Comms Communicate timelines to Helpdesk and end users 7 - Operational Readiness Check Internal training, monitoring ready -Helpdesk trained on: VDI Status Indicator Teams Admin Center + CQD -No remaining dependencies on WebRTC-specific policies -Monitoring reflects new architecture Pitfall What Admins Observe Root Cause Impact Recommended Fix 1. New Teams installed, but users are still on WebRTC Teams shows ‘Not optimized’ or “Citrix HDX Media optimized” • Virtual channels not allowed (Citrix) • Teams plugin not deployed on endpoint Users never activate SlimCore and remain on legacy WebRTC • Verify Citrix virtual channel allow list • Confirm plugin presence and correct version on endpoints Upgrade CWA to 2508 (this version can auto-install plugins) 2. SlimCore never downloads (MSIX blocked) Silent fallback with no clear error. Endpoint GPOs or security tools (AppLocker?) blocking MSIX installs SlimCore cannot stage/provision and never activates Explicitly allow SlimCore MSIX staging and registration in endpoint policies 3. No monitoring after pilot rollout Some users work fine, others regress Rollout assumed complete after pilot Hidden pockets of unoptimized users persist Regularly review Best Practice Configurations dashboard and CQD 4. Helpdesk still troubleshoots like VDI 1.0 Long investigations and escalations Legacy runbooks and outdated mental models Higher MTTR and unnecessary escalations Retrain support on: • VDI Status Indicator • Teams Admin Center diagnostics • CQD-first troubleshooting Best Practice Configurations Dashboard In early 2026, Microsoft introduced a Best Practice Configurations dashboard in the Teams Admin Center that specifically highlights VDI optimization compliance, allowing admins to: Identify users and locations running unoptimized or legacy configurations Export impacted user lists for targeted remediation Track progress as tenants move fully to the new optimization This tool provides a clear, actionable path to measure migration progress and ensure a consistent Teams experience across virtualized environments. So… What’s Coming Next Microsoft continues to expand support across platforms and ecosystems on top of the new architecture. Upcoming and recently announced roadmap items include: Omnissa Horizon support for Windows endpoints using SlimCore-based optimization, rolling out in late February/early March (Public Tech Preview) Amazon WorkSpaces support, released this month, enabling optimized Teams experiences in AWS Continued expansion across endpoint types, including macOS, as platform capabilities mature. This is currently in Tech Preview! These investments reinforce Microsoft’s commitment to making VDI a first-class citizen, regardless of hosting provider or infrastructure choice. Looking Ahead The transition from the legacy WebRTC to the new optimization is more than a deprecation—it’s a platform shift. By aligning Teams in VDI with the native client architecture, Microsoft is enabling faster innovation, better reliability, and a more consistent collaboration experience for users who depend on virtual desktops every day. If your organization has not yet completed the upgrade, now is the time to assess your environment, validate optimization status, and plan for the retirement of the legacy WebRTC based solution. For additional guidance, please check our public documentation and read our previous blog posts (here, here and here).Workplace presence, made effortless: Workplace check-in via Wi-Fi for Microsoft Places and Teams
We’re introducing workplace check-in via Wi-Fi for Microsoft Places and Teams, designed to help employees coordinate in-person work by keeping their workplace location up to date when they’re in the office. This capability builds on existing Microsoft 365 presence signals like calendar availability and Teams presence by making workplace location easier to keep current. For employees who choose to enable it, workplace check-in via Wi-Fi can update their workplace location based on connection to configured company networks, reducing the need to manually change status. This experience is similar to the existing workplace check-in via peripherals, where a user can keep their workplace location updated by plugging into a configured peripheral like a display or a desk dock. Organizations enable and configure this feature in their tenant, and individual users control whether and how it is used. When an employee is in the office and connects their laptop to a configured corporate network, workplace check-in can update their work location for the day, only when enabled by the organization and the individual user. This reduces the need to manually update location while keeping employees in control. Workplace check-in via Wi-Fi is a new way to help people understand one another’s availability. “Free” or “busy” on a calendar lets you find a time. Presence in Teams shows when someone is active. Workplace presence in Places, Teams, and calendar helps team members identify who is currently in the office, so you can grab lunch or coffee, book a desk near your team, or move a meeting to in person. Workplace check-in helps keep the employee’s workplan up to date and includes the ability to check the employee into an existing desk reservation. When schedules shift or someone decides to come into the office, employees who choose to use it can have their work location updated without needing to manually adjust their status each time. A few important details about how this works: Employees remain in control. Workplace check-in via Wi‑Fi does not replace a user’s choice to share their workplace location, and individuals can configure their setting at any time. It does not retain or track information about employee movement or location over time. Workplace location is a current, in-the-moment signal and is not stored as historical data. It applies only to workplace contexts. The signal is generated when a device connects to configured corporate office networks through the Teams client and does not extend beyond those environments. Otherwise, if not connected to a configured network in a workplace location, your location will be shown as “Remote”. Built on a layered model of consent and control Workplace check-in is designed with both organizational controls and individual choice in mind. Organizations first decide whether to enable the capability for their tenant, and then configure whether the end-user experience is opt-in or opt-out. They also configure which office locations the feature is available in by adding device information from each of the Wi-Fi access points in the chosen locations. Individuals remain in control of whether the feature works on their device. If required location settings are turned off, workplace check-in via Wi-Fi will not automatically activate regardless of organizational configuration. Employees can also update their settings and manually set or override their work location at any time. Sharing workplace presence and using workplace check-in are separate decisions, so employees can choose whether their workplace presence is visible to others when working from the office. Get started Wi-Fi check-in for Microsoft Places will roll out to organizations with Microsoft Places later this year. To prepare your tenant: Confirm Microsoft Places is set up in your environment, specifically adding building information in the Places directory. Enable the Teams work location detection policy and configure your approved corporate BSSID within the Places directory Communicate the change to your employees: what it does, what it doesn’t do, and how they can can control their own settings. To learn more about Microsoft Places and the broader workplace presence experience, visit our adoption site.Introducing External Camera Support for iPads in Microsoft Teams
The use of iPads in the workplace has surged, with many professionals and executives favoring iPads for their portability and strong battery life. However, when it comes to video conferencing, users prefer external cameras for superior resolution, dynamic range, and the ability to adjust angles and lighting to suit different environments. Whether you're hosting a meeting in a well-lit conference room or leading a presentation from your home office, an external camera can significantly enhance the quality and professionalism of your video feed. How Microsoft Teams Supports External Cameras We’ve made connecting an external camera to your iPad a seamless experience. With support for iOS 17, Teams users can now easily leverage the capabilities of USB-C-connected cameras for higher-quality video conferencing. Plug and Play Simplicity The setup is straightforward: Connect your camera: Plug your external camera into your iPad’s USB-C port. Join your meeting: You can connect your camera either before or during a Teams meeting. Disconnect camera: To switch back to the default iPad camera, disconnect the camera from your iPad Note: As of now, there are no native or Microsoft Teams controls to switch between your iPad’s built-in camera and an external camera. Teams will default to the connected external camera when one is plugged in. Most USB-C-compatible cameras are supported, giving users a wide range of options to find the device that works best for their needs. Tips for Optimizing Your Experience Ensure your camera is compatible: Check that your camera supports USB-C connectivity and is up to date with firmware. Positioning is key: Use tripods or mounts for optimal framing and stability. Lighting makes a difference: Position yourself in well-lit areas or use ring lights for a polished look. Unlock Other iPad-Specific Features iPads are renowned for their advanced camera capabilities, and Teams is fully optimized to take advantage of these features. With Center Stage on iPads, the camera keeps you centered and in focus even as you move, creating a more dynamic meeting experience. The integration of external cameras further enhances this flexibility, allowing users to switch seamlessly between built-in and external options depending on their needs. Show Up as Your Most Authentic Self At Teams, we believe that showing up authentically is key to fostering meaningful collaboration. Whether you're brainstorming with colleagues, presenting to a client, or catching up with a remote team, using the devices and tools you love helps you feel more confident and present. By unlocking external camera support on iPads, we’re helping you put your best face forward—literally. Try out this new feature today and discover how a simple upgrade can transform your meetings and enhance your overall experience. Because when you look good, you feel good—and great things happen.Making Microsoft Teams more responsive, reliable, and ready for work
In our November 2025 update, we shared gains across video rendering, memory efficiency, and platform-level optimizations that improved the experience across devices and operating systems. Since then, we've continued to raise the bar. This blog highlights the latest performance improvements delivered during the first half of 2026, from faster chat switching and people search, to enhancements that make Teams feel more responsive, resilient, and reliable across desktop, web, and mobile.
