What's New in Microsoft EDU - Back to School 2026 webinar
Get ready for back to school (Northern Hemisphere) with the latest product updates from Microsoft Education. In this webinar, we’ll showcase new AI-powered tools, teaching resources, and product updates designed to help educators save time, personalize learning, and support every student. You’ll see what’s new across Microsoft 365 Copilot, Teams for Education, OneNote, and more, including: ✅ Teach module in Microsoft 365 Copilot ✅ Copilot Notebooks ✅ Study and Learn agent ✅ Learning Zone ✅ Teams for EDU updates ✅ The latest OneNote EDU updates And more! Join us for practical demonstrations, helpful tips, and new ideas you can put to work as you prepare for a successful school year. And don't worry if you can't make it live, we will be recorded and posting this on the Microsoft Education YouTube channel afterwards. 📅 When: Wednesday, August 26th @ 8am Pacific Time 🔗 Register here: https://df.events.teams.microsoft.com/event/df.8c4f06fc-399f-4603-8023-f5fd92601bd1@72f988bf-86f1-41af-91ab-2d7cd011db47?source=copyLinkOneEventsShareDialog Mike Tholfsen Group Product Manager Microsoft EducationICYMI: Partner Blog | From AI curiosity to Copilot adoption in 30 days
Thirty days. Twenty-five users. One clear path to AI. For small and medium-sized businesses, AI is no longer a someday conversation, it's a right-now decision. SMB customers aren't asking whether AI matters anymore; they're asking how to put it to work in ways that are practical, fast, and secure. The hard part isn't interest. It's the starting line. Customers are looking to identify relevant use cases, experience AI in their everyday work, and evaluate its value before making a broader commitment. This creates a significant opportunity for Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partners to lead customers from initial interest to sustained adoption. The SMB segment represents a Microsoft-estimated $625 billion* market opportunity in FY27, yet most organizations remain early in their AI transformation journey. Continue reading hereWhat’s new in Microsoft Sentinel: July 2026
Welcome back to What's new in Microsoft Sentinel. In July, Sentinel adds custom detections support in Sentinel repositories, so you can manage detections as code alongside your analytics rules, playbooks, parsers, and workbooks, authoring in GitHub and deploying through the CI/CD pipelines you already use. In Sentinel data lake, table insights brings table-level observability into the Microsoft Defender portal, helping you track ingestion volume, spot week-over-week changes, and catch connectors that have gone silent, all without running a single KQL query. Connector coverage also expands with GitHub Audit logs, Agari, and Airlock Digital, bringing more of the signals that matter to you into one place. Read on for the details, and if you're joining us at Black Hat USA 2026, don't miss the keynote from Agentic Security CVP David Weston and other Microsoft Security activities at this event. Explore our resources at the end to go deeper. Sentinel innovations: Sentinel SIEM Sentinel data lake Sentinel SIEM Custom detections support in Sentinel repositories [Public Preview] Custom detections can be managed as code through Sentinel repositories, alongside analytics rules, playbooks, parsers, and workbooks, completing the detections-as-code workflow across the full Sentinel portfolio. Teams can author detections in GitHub, review through pull requests, and deploy via existing CI/CD pipelines or the Microsoft Security Bicep extension. Learn how to manage custom content with repository connections. Behind the Build with Gigamon: Enriching Sentinel with network-derived telemetry Learn how Gigamon's integration with Sentinel brings network-derived telemetry into your security investigations, correlated with the identity, endpoint, and cloud signals already in your workspace. By adding this runtime context, you can trace suspicious activity across environments and investigate threats that span traditionally siloed domains, with faster and more accurate investigations, higher-quality signal, and clearer visibility into encrypted and hybrid cloud traffic that logs alone often miss. Read the blog to explore the integration and what it means for your security operations. Sentinel data lake Table insights [Public Preview] Table insights is a built-in monitoring view on the tables page in the Microsoft Defender portal that gives you table-level observability for your Sentinel workspace without running KQL queries or opening a separate workbook. Table insights surfaces the signals you rely on most: 📊 Ingestion volume by tier – compare analytics versus data lake 📉 Day-over-week ingestion fluctuations – spot drops or spikes against the same day last week 🔝 Top 5 tables by daily ingestion volume – identify your biggest cost drivers at a glance 🕐 Last data received – catch connectors that stopped sending data 💰 Estimated daily ingestion cost – per-table cost to inform tier and retention decisions ⚠️ Volume anomaly – signed percentage change versus baseline to flag unusual behavior early Figure 1: View all table insights and investigate your table behavior with Sentinel in the Defender portal. Together, these signals help you spot collection failures early, so you can act before they turn into bigger problems. Learn more. Connectors [Public Preview] GitHub Audit logs (via Azure Storage Blob) The GitHub Audit logs connector ingests GitHub Enterprise audit logs into Sentinel from Azure Blob Storage with near real-time latency, so you can view this data in workbooks, create custom alerts, and strengthen your investigations. This requires Audit log streaming to be set up on GitHub for an Enterprise. Learn how to stream audit logs. Agari The Agari Data connector allows ingesting logs from Agari APIs into Sentinel. This connector integrates with Agari Brand Protection (BP) and Phishing Defense (APD). It supports Data Collection Rules-based ingestion time transformations for efficient query execution. Airlock Digital Ingests Airlock Digital application control and execution events to strengthen endpoint threat detection and response. Additional resources Blogs and documentation: Configure table settings in Sentinel Manage data tiers and retention in Sentinel Sentinel CI/CD repositories sample Upcoming events: Featured event: Aug 1–6, Black Hat USA 2026 (Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas) Keynote with Agentic Security CVP David Weston The end of rare: Defending when offense is cheap Wednesday, Aug 5 | 9:15 AM – 10 AM Main stage with Microsoft Security CVP Aarti Borkar and Microsoft Security Research VP Tanmay Ganacharya Poisoned at the source: Inside Microsoft Threat Intelligence's hunt for supply chain attacks Wednesday, Aug 5 | 2:30 PM – 3 PM Main stage with Customer Success GM Wes Malaby Mind the gap: Turning threat intelligence into decisive action with expert-led defense Wednesday, Aug 5 | 11:25 AM – 11:45 AM Mandalay Bay K with Principal Product Manager Naadia Sayed Agentic security: What's next Wednesday, Aug 5 | 11:15 AM – 12 PM Microsoft Security Black Hat USA 2026 VIP mixer hosted by Microsoft Security CVP Aarti Borkar Swingers at Mandalay Bay Resort – Register here Wednesday, Aug 5 | 6 PM – 9 PM Microsoft booth #2144 with live sessions, AMAs, and hands-on demos of our latest security innovations Learn more in our Black Hat 2026 blog Upcoming webinars: Aug 6: Security Immersion Event: Into the Breach Aug 13–14: Microsoft Virtual Training Day: Predict and Defend Against Cybersecurity Threats Aug 19: Microsoft Security Immersion Event: Shadow Hunter Aug 20: Microsoft Security Immersion Event: Agent Hackathon Aug 25: Tech Brief: Modernize security operations with a unified platform Stay connected Check back each month for the latest innovations, updates, and events to ensure you’re getting the most out of Microsoft Sentinel. We’ll see you in the next edition!Join Us Live: Understanding Copilot Cowork and Managing Copilot Credits
The way we work with AI is evolving rapidly, and so is the way organizations manage and scale those experiences. If you're exploring Copilot Cowork, navigating Copilot Credits, or looking for guidance on consumption-based AI experiences, you won't want to miss our upcoming live event. 🎙️ Live AMA: Understanding Copilot Cowork and Managing Copilot Credits Tuesday, July 21, 2026 9:00–10:00 AM Pacific Time Join us for a live webinar and Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) featuring experts from the Microsoft 365 Copilot team as they dive into the latest capabilities of Copilot Cowork and share practical guidance for managing Copilot Credits across your organization. During this session, we'll explore: Who should be using Copilot Cowork How to allocate and manage Copilot Credits effectively Best practices for adoption and governance Strategies for scaling Copilot Cowork while maintaining visibility and control over costs This is your opportunity to hear directly from the experts, learn from real-world scenarios, and get answers to your most pressing questions. Whether you're an IT administrator, adoption lead, business decision-maker, or Microsoft 365 enthusiast, you'll leave with actionable insights to help your organization maximize the value of AI-powered collaboration. Bring Your Questions The session will include a live Q&A where attendees can submit questions and receive answers directly from Microsoft subject matter experts. The team is specifically focused on helping customers better understand Copilot Cowork, credit management, and the evolving landscape of AI consumption and governance. 👉 Register and join the conversation: aka.ms/CopilotCoworkAMA We look forward to seeing you on July 21!
Create reusable plans faster with custom templates in Planner
Turn any basic plan in Microsoft Planner into a reusable, shareable template to speed up planning and ensure consistency across plans. Custom templates capture key plan elements such as tasks, goals, buckets, labels, notes, attachments, and checklists to help teams plan faster and stay consistent. To publish a template, create and customize a basic plan to fit your needs. When you're ready, select Share and choose Publish as Template. Enter a template name and description, pick the Microsoft 365 group to share it with, choose which parts of the plan to include, and select Publish. fields selected. Once published, the template can be reused to create new basic plans. To create a plan from a template, click Create a plan, then go to either Shared or Created by me and select a template to use. How teams use custom templates Standardized onboarding processes An HR team onboarding new hires each month can use a custom template to create plans with the right tasks, buckets, and checklists already in place, helping ensure each onboarding follows the same process. Fast project setup with templates A marketing team launches frequent campaigns and uses a custom template to spin up new plans instantly. With pre-filled tasks, attachments, and checklists built in, they save time and stay aligned on key details. Addressing your feedback Tell us what you think about custom templates by selecting the Feedback icon (person with a chat bubble) in the top right corner of the app, then select 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 Learn how to use custom templates in Planner. Learn how to export and manage Planner custom template data. Visit planner.cloud.microsoft to access Planner directly from your browser. Sign up to receive future communication about Planner. 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.Hands-on webinar: Teach Module in M365 Copilot and Copilot Notebooks (available for all educators)
Join us on Wednesday, July 8th @ 8am Pacific Time for an in-depth professional development webinar on the new AI-powered "Teach" module in M365 Copilot that is fully rolled out and available to everyone. We will also be covering Copilot Notebooks and the Study Guide which is now also available to all M365 Educators and Students. This will be a 60-minute hands-on webinar where the Product Management team will walk through the new updates in detail and you can follow-along at home with your own M365 Education account. To reiterate, the Teach Module and Copilot Notebooks are available globally to all educators using Microsoft 365. And don’t worry – we’ll be recording these and posting on our Microsoft Education YouTube channel so you’ll always to able to watch later or share with others. Register here: https://msit.events.teams.microsoft.com/event/msit.ed7f065d-57a5-437c-ba23-12b0ef06a259@72f988bf-86f1-41af-91ab-2d7cd011db47 Agenda: How to use the new AI-powered "Teach" module in M365. ✅ Lesson plans and the new Keep Going feature ✅ Learning Zone integration ✅ Modifying Existing content ✅ Learning Activities ✅ Coplot Notebooks plus Study Guide We look forward to having you attend the event! Also, be sure to check out and sign up for our Microsoft Elevate Educator community. Mike Tholfsen Group Product Manager Microsoft Education team
