Alev Tamer, Sr. Partner Solution Architect at Microsoft, and Chris Wheeler, Senior Copilot Solution Engineer at Microsoft, discuss the latest Microsoft Copilot announcements fresh from Microsoft Build.

• Multi-model strategy: how Microsoft brings together models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft AI to offer genuine choice

• Critique and Council: using multiple models to validate and challenge each other's outputs for improved accuracy

• The DRACO (Deep Research Accuracy, Completeness, and Objectivity) benchmark and how Research with Critic achieves the highest score for deep research completeness and accuracy

• Copilot Cowork vs Scout: cloud-based fire-and-forget task execution versus local desktop agent capabilities

• Work IQ as the personalisation layer that makes Copilot genuinely relevant to your role and daily work

• Real-world use cases including automated demo pack generation, fitness apps built on Azure, NHS website creation and AI-assisted performance reviews

• Skills and plugins: creating reusable instruction sets for repetitive tasks and new integrations including Dynamics 365 and Fabric IQ

• Data residency and security: navigating Anthropic data processing, EU data boundaries and flex routing for European organisations

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

Howard Crow, Director of Product at Microsoft, joins the podcast to discuss the evolution of Microsoft Planner, its deep integration with Microsoft Teams, and the growing role of AI agents in work management.

• Howard shares his nearly 30-year journey at Microsoft, from the founding days of SharePoint to leading the Planner and Project teams

• The genesis of Microsoft Planner and how it democratised project management beyond specialist tools like Microsoft Project

• Microsoft's unification strategy, bringing To Do, Planner, and Project for the Web together under a single Planner brand

• How Planner integrates deeply with Microsoft Teams across meetings, channels, and chats

• The Planner Agent and Microsoft's multi-agent runtime service, the first production multi-agent harness shipped at Microsoft

• How MCP (Model Context Protocol) is becoming the "USB for APIs" and unlocking new integrations for Planner

• The future of work: managing teams of humans and AI agents together, and why a visual planning surface matters for knowledge workers

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

Madhu Sudan, Partner Director of Engineering at Microsoft, discusses Microsoft Teams Facilitator, a first-of-its-kind group AI agent built to actively collaborate with entire teams during meetings.

• How Facilitator differs from Copilot: group-level support vs one-to-one assistance

• Real-time note-taking, action item assignment, and meeting moderation built into Microsoft Teams

• Proactive capabilities including knowledge gap detection, quorum checking, and late-joiner recaps

• The permissioning model that keeps group conversations secure and prevents data leakage

• Plans for meeting series memory and bringing cross-meeting context to future sessions

• Extensibility with other Microsoft Teams agents and Microsoft 365 data

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

James Parkes, Senior Product Manager for Microsoft Teams Call Quality Management, Siunie Sutjahjo, Principal Product Manager for Microsoft Teams Meeting, and Victor Guzman, Senior Technical Program Manager, all at Microsoft, discuss the latest advances in Microsoft Teams call quality tools and reporting.

• How CQD has evolved from on-prem monitoring to cloud-scale Power BI reporting with over 45 report pages in the latest v5.3 release

• The new intelligent classifiers: around 40 models that move beyond legacy network averages, using real user feedback as ground truth to pinpoint issues at the device, compute and network level

• How remote and local models identify whether a quality issue originates from a user's machine, their network or a dominant participant affecting others in the call

• A walkthrough of the Power BI QER reports, including the search report, user health details and media health as starting points for troubleshooting

• Silent test call: a full bi-directional media stream test for proactively evaluating network readiness, available for Microsoft Teams Premium users

• Admin-initiated remote log collection: how IT admins can now pull client logs directly from the Teams Admin Centre without relying on end users

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

Brian McGough, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft, gives a behind-the-scenes look at how change communications work across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem and what's coming next.

• How Message Center has grown from 50 posts a month to over 225, and the operational complexity behind keeping hundreds of live posts up to date

• The targeting system behind Message Center, from licensing-based filtering to tenant-specific notifications across multiple clouds including GCC, GCC High, and DoD

• Microsoft's modernised approach to change management, introducing frontier, standard, and deferred release options that give admins more control over when changes reach their users

• The new MCP servers for Message Center and Roadmap data, and how they unlock conversational, tenant-grounded insights

• Why customer feedback on Message Center posts genuinely drives change, including stopping feature rollouts and reversing retirements

Thanks to Landis, 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 May 2026.

Many thanks to Logitech for their continued support.

• Microsoft 365 E7 and Agent 365 GA

• New Models in Copilot • Cowork gets Skills, Plugins and Mobile

• AI Skills in SharePoint • Modernising M365 Change Management – New MCPs

• Teams Phone Multi-line GA

• Teams Devices News & New Devices

• Upcoming Events

Useful Links:

Briefings

Understanding Express Install for Microsoft Teams Rooms

Microsoft 365 Roadmap and Azure Updates (Roadmap) MCP Explained

FIRST LOOK: Neat Board 32 & Neat Pad Pro - Devices for Every Meeting Room

NEW Neat Board 32 & Neat Pad Pro: Full Product Walkthrough & Key Features

Teams Insider Podcasts

What is Microsoft 365 Frontier, Work IQ, Cowork and Agent 365 with a Copilot Global Black Belt

Microsoft 365 Copilot Cowork Explained with Bas Brekelmans, Software Engineer at Microsoft

Creating a First Class Microsoft Teams Rooms Experience at Their New London HQ with Damian Lewis at BSI

Microsoft Teams for Frontline Workers: Market Opportunity and Enterprise Mobility with Spectralink

Graham Hosking, Senior AI Solutions Engineer at Microsoft, discusses Copilot Skills, Cowork, and the rapidly evolving world of agentic AI across the Microsoft stack.

• How businesses are navigating AI adoption and why there is no silver bullet for enterprise AI

• What Copilot Cowork is and how it takes Microsoft 365 Copilot to the next level with multi-threaded task automation

• Skills as reusable blocks of instructions that simplify complex business processes like RFPs without needing multiple agents

• The spectrum from declarative agents to Copilot Studio to pro-code solutions on Azure Foundry

• MCP servers and plugins extending Cowork's reach to third-party systems like Salesforce

• Computer use arriving via Windows 365 plugins, unlocking automation for legacy systems without APIs

• Sovereign data considerations and Anthropic model availability across Europe

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