Microsoft Teams Meeting Controls: July 2026 M365 Champions Community call
Hello Champions! Here’s a recap and top Q+A from our July M365 Champions monthly call of 2026. We kicked off the call annoucing a new Champion Stories program to showcase real-world Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption success stories from the Champions community. Organizations that have successfully introduced or scaled Copilot are invited to share their journey, lessons learned, and best practices. Selected stories will be professionally filmed and published to help other Champions learn from peer experiences. Submit your story at aka.ms/ChampionStory. This month's main topic featured the redesigned Microsoft Teams meeting controls with Michelle Maislen, Principal Product Manager and Ryan Miller, UX Researcher from the Microsoft Teams product group. She explained that the redesign was driven by customer feedback around cluttered meeting controls, accidental clicks, and difficulty finding key features. The new experience introduces a cleaner, more organized toolbar with mic, camera, and share controls prioritized, separates the Share and Leave buttons to prevent accidental exits, moves advanced features into a structured “More” menu, and allows users to customize their meeting controls through drag-and-drop pinning. She acknowledged that changes such as moving Raise Hand under Reactions may be polarizing, but emphasized that users can personalize the toolbar to fit their workflow. Michelle also detailed the phased rollout plan, with users receiving opportunities to opt in before automatic migration, and shared that the redesign will extend across meetings, webinars, and town halls. Throughout the discussion and Q&A, she reinforced that the goal is to create a simpler, more intuitive, and highly customizable Teams meeting experience while preserving access to all existing meeting functionality. Click here to learn more about the Teams Meeting Controls redesign. Q+A from this month's session: 1. When will the new Teams Meeting Controls reach General Availability (GA)? Answer: Microsoft expects the redesigned meeting controls to roll out worldwide in September 2026, following preview validation and user feedback. 2. How does the 20-day rollout experience work? Answer: Users will receive several opportunities to opt in to the new experience. After approximately 20 days, they will be automatically migrated. 3. Can users switch back to the old meeting controls? Answer: Yes. A temporary toggle allows users to switch back to the old experience, although Microsoft plans to remove this option in the future. 4. Why was Raise Hand moved under Reactions? Answer: Research showed users frequently clicked the wrong button when Raise Hand and Reactions were adjacent. Moving Raise Hand under Reactions reduces accidental clicks. 5. Can users move Raise Hand back to the main toolbar? Answer: Yes. Users can drag and pin Raise Hand to the main toolbar if they prefer it there. 6. Can users customize the meeting toolbar? Answer: Yes. Most controls can be pinned, unpinned, and rearranged using drag-and-drop customization. 7. Which controls cannot be moved? Answer: Microphone, Camera, Share, and Leave remain fixed to ensure a consistent core meeting experience. 8. Will toolbar customizations persist between meetings? Answer: Yes. Customizations persist across meetings on the same device. 9. Will toolbar settings sync across multiple devices? Answer: Not initially. Microsoft indicated multi-device synchronization is planned for a future update. 10. Can users pin specific reactions (such as Thumbs Up) to the toolbar? Answer: Not in the initial release. The team acknowledged the request and is considering expanded reaction customization. 11. Will Microsoft add more meeting reactions? Answer: Yes. The Teams team confirmed they're exploring expanded reaction sets and potentially custom organizational reactions. 12. Does the redesign apply to Webinars and Town Halls? Answer: Yes. The redesigned controls will be available across Teams meetings, webinars, and town halls. 13. Is the redesign available in both Teams Desktop and Teams Web? Answer: Yes. The redesigned controls are supported in the Desktop and Web clients. 14. Will Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environments be supported? Answer: Yes. Microsoft confirmed support for VDI deployments. 15. Why redesign the meeting controls at all? Answer: The redesign addresses common pain points including: Toolbar clutter Difficulty locating controls Accidental clicks Confusion between Reactions and Raise Hand Accidentally clicking Leave instead of Share 16. Where did features like Notes, Rooms, Apps, Facilitator, and Captions go? Answer: These capabilities were not removed. They have been reorganized under the new More menu to create a cleaner primary toolbar. 17. What adoption and readiness resources are available? Answer: Microsoft published: An IT Pro Change Management Guide An End User Visual Guide Adoption content on adoption.microsoft.com These resources are designed to help organizations prepare users for the transition. 18. Is Microsoft addressing AI-related meeting security concerns? Answer: Yes. The Teams team is actively working on better visibility and notifications for: AI note-taking bots External recording tools Third-party meeting assistants 19. Can meeting actions and decisions automatically flow into other Agents or workflows? Answer: The question was raised by attendees, and Microsoft acknowledged the scenario as valuable feedback. No roadmap or confirmed functionality was announced. 20. Will Education (EDU), GCC, and other government environments receive the redesign? Answer: GCC is expected to receive the update roughly in line with worldwide rollout. GCCH and DoD environments are expected to follow later. EDU deployment details were still being validated during the session. Join us on September 22nd for our next community call. Haven't joined the program yet? It's free! Join here: https://aka.ms/M365Champion. Bring your questions to our discussion forum: https://aka.ms/DriveAdoption.
Microsoft 365 Champion community call | October 2025 | AM
Join our next community call on October 28, 2025, to learn more about how to collaborate within Microsoft Teams channels using Loop Pages. Host: Tiffany Lee Guest: Alice Zhang, Diana Hsu, Constance Gervais, Greg Howard, Alen Delic Moderator: Jessie Hwang 📢 NOTE: our community call format has changed to using Teams webinars to enable more dynamic discussions! Join link is still the same but you must register to be able to join the call when it starts: https://aka.ms/M365ChampionCallAM ⏰ 🗨️ Each call includes an open Q&A discussion section, where you'll have a chance to ask your questions about Microsoft 365. 👋 Join the Microsoft 365 Champion program today! Champions combine technical acumen with people skills to drive meaningful change. Our community calls are open to everyone but only Champions have access to the presentation resources (access link in the initial welcome email and in the monthly newsletters). Join now: https://aka.ms/M365Champions.Microsoft 365 Champions community call | April 2025 | AM
Join our next community call on April 22, 2025, to learn more about Microsoft Teams accessibility features and the Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Case Builder! Host: Tiffany Lee Guests: Chris Sano, Brett Humphrey, and Gabe Ho Moderator: Jessie Hwang 📢 NOTE: our community call format has changed to using Teams webinars to enable more dynamic discussions! Join link is still the same but you must register to be able to join the call when it starts: https://aka.ms/M365ChampionCallAM ⏰ 🗨️ Each call includes an open Q&A discussion section, where you'll have a chance to ask your questions about Microsoft 365. Our new call format will make this easier! 👋 Join the Microsoft 365 Champion program today! Champions combine technical acumen with people skills to drive meaningful change. Our community calls are open to everyone but only Champions have access to the presentation resources (access link in the initial welcome email and in the monthly newsletters). Join now: https://aka.ms/M365Champions. Note: If you are unable to watch the recording on YouTube, try watching it here.Microsoft 365 Champions community call | April 2025 | PM
Join our next community call on April 22, 2025, to learn more about Microsoft Teams accessibility features and the Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Case Builder! Host: Tiffany Lee Guests: Chris Sano, Brett Humphrey, and Gabe Ho Moderator: Jessie Hwang 📢 NOTE: our community call format has changed to using Teams webinars to enable more dynamic discussions! Join link is still the same but you must register to be able to join the call when it starts: https://aka.ms/M365ChampionCallPM ⏰ 🗨️ Each call includes an open Q&A discussion section, where you'll have a chance to ask your questions about Microsoft 365. Our new call format will make this easier! 👋 Join the Microsoft 365 Champion program today! Champions combine technical acumen with people skills to drive meaningful change. Our community calls are open to everyone but only Champions have access to the presentation resources (access link in the initial welcome email and in the monthly newsletters). Join now: https://aka.ms/M365Champions. Note: If you are unable to watch the recording on YouTube, try watching it here.Microsoft 365 Champions community call | January 2025 | PM
Join us to see the reimagined chat and channels experience in Microsoft Teams to help you collaborate more efficiently and effectively! Learn more about this streamlined experience and how you can organize conversations your way. Host: Tiffany Lee Guest: Diana Hsu Moderator: Jessie Hwang 📢 Each call includes a live Q&A, where you'll have a chance to ask your questions about Microsoft 365. Ask your questions via Comments on this page: https://aka.ms/M365ChampionCallPM ⏰ 👋 Join the Microsoft 365 Champion program today! Champions combine technical acumen with people skills to drive meaningful change. Join now: https://aka.ms/M365Champions. Note: If you are unable to watch the recording on YouTube, try watching it here.How do you keep people up-to-date with new features?
Is anyone feeling the pressure to keep yourself and your people informed about the latest updates that get pushed through? Microsoft regularly makes changes to their products and there are some pretty significant things on the horizon that could cause a bit of noise (good and bad 😅) from end-users. Do you have newsletters/lunch and learns/champion networks that you can tap into?Preview - Day in the Life Quick Sheets for Adoption & Training
The preview files for the Day in the Life materials are now ready for our community. Download the attached ZIP file to get the following Day in the Life quick sheets. Marketing Sales Human Resources Finance IT Manager IT Service Engineer Compliance Manager Construction Project Manager Retail Manager Retail Associate These files are in a non-editable PDF format and are provided in US English at this time. We are investigating ways to localize the content. Additional changes may be made between this preview release and our final release documents so please use them with that in mind! Download the zip file attached to this post to use them in your own organization. Provide us feedback here as well as suggestions for more quick sheets by persona or scenario.Returning to the Workplace: 3 Focus Areas to Smooth the Transition #HumansFirst
Whether you are an Adoption Specialist, people manager or individual team member this blog will help you identify areas to invest in to smooth the return to the workplace. Putting the wellbeing of employees first helps to lead through change with empathy, clarity and best practice use of the technology at our disposal. Read on to understand the three areas to consider and plan for.
