Emily Kirby George, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Teams Engineering, discusses the latest developments and future direction for Microsoft Teams Phone.

• Multi-line calling: a multi-year effort now shipped, allowing multiple phone numbers on a single account across geographies

• Consult and merge in meetings: dial out to an external party, navigate an IVR, and merge them back into the call - a big win for financial services and similar industries

• Call transfer improvements: presence visibility for transfer destinations, blind handoff, and streamlined control bar buttons for faster workflows

• Teams Phone Agent: an intelligent AI frontline to answer and route customer calls for your organisation

• Intelligent call delegation: a personal AI delegate that screens calls, communicates on your behalf, and helps you stay focused

• Automatic recording for call queues: now on the public roadmap, decoupling recordings from individual agents and centralising them in SharePoint

• Making Copilot intelligence seamless: efforts to simplify turning on transcription, recaps, and other AI features in everyday phone workflows

• Teams Phone Community: a quarterly initiative from the Microsoft calling team — join to connect with product managers and shape future topics

Thanks to AudioCodes, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud.

Javed Khan, CEO at Neat, discusses his return to the industry and his vision for simple, open, intelligent collaboration experiences.

• How advances in edge computing and smaller AI models are enabling a new wave of innovation in conference room experiences

• The benefits of running AI locally on devices, including reduced latency, enhanced privacy, and real-time transcription and translation

• Neat's vision for simplifying room setup and device management through Neat Pulse and their new MCP server integration

• Supporting multiple platforms as the "Switzerland" of the devices industry, including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google

• The partnership with Microsoft on MDEP and what it means for manageability, security, and standardisation across devices

Thanks to Neat, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud

MVP Tom Arbuthnot shares all the latest Microsoft Teams and Copilot news and announcements in less than 15 minutes for August 2026

Link to the deck: Microsoft 365 Enterprise Update - August 2026.pptx

Fresh on Empowering.Cloud

AudioCodes: Multi-Camera Teams Rooms on Android - with Alex Tan

Teams Insider Podcast

Microsoft Places Updates Explained - with Martin Boam, Microsoft. Desk booking, room booking and where AI fits.

Dynamics 365 Contact Center Explained - with Alpana Bajaj, Product Lead, Microsoft. A great walk through where D365 Contact Center sits.

Why Microsoft Is Quietly Winning with Enterprise AI - with Rishi Kumar, Logitech. A really interesting take on Microsoft's enterprise AI position.

Thanks to Landis for their support of Empowering.Cloud