Microsoft 365 AI Workplace Update July 2026
Notas del episodio
It's the start of Microsoft's new financial year and there's already a lot to unpack. In this month's update we cover the new Microsoft Frontier company, Cowork going GA (and the new consumption cost model), a wave of Copilot and model updates, plus a huge run of Teams calling, meetings and devices news from InfoComm - including the big Teams Phone Agent announcement.
Huge thanks to this month's benefactor, Neat, for their continued support of the community. Neat have just announced an MCP server for their management platform (a first for OEM tooling) and their intelligent framing beta. Details on the Neat blog — and check out Graham's video on the Neat MCP server.
🔑 Key topics
• Microsoft Frontier - new $2.5bn company, 6,000 embedded ("forward deployed") engineers to drive enterprise AI adoption
• M365 price rises now live (business/frontline/enterprise up ~8-15%, frontline up 25–33%); annual local currency adjustments coming each January
• Cowork now GA - fully consumption-based (Copilot credits); example use cases range from ~$1 to $7+ and can climb fast with heavier models. GPT-5.5 available in the EU data boundary
• Copilot - Sonnet 5 selectable, Work IQ reasoning over Power BI, new vision capabilities, Notebooks rolling out to Copilot Chat
• Models - Fable back in Claude, GPT-5.6 rumoured, Microsoft leaning more on first-party models
• Agents - Planner agent GA, Sales agent GA (in M365 Copilot license), Dynamics Service agent announced, AI content watermarking
• Copilot Super App due August - merges Copilot Chat, Cowork & GitHub Copilot; plus a look at Anthropic's Claude Tag
• Teams Phone Agent - Microsoft's AI auto/mainline attendant, tied into Copilot Studio
• Multi-line GA, Queues app GA on mobile, dedicated Recap app, Facilitator with internet access + voice mode
• Admin - new transcript access controls, auto-block bots; Live Events and Together mode retiring
• Rooms - 1.5M active rooms (1,000+ added/day), IntelliFrame People Labels (Huddly first), Express Enrollment, new AVIXA training
• Devices - Android devices coming to Pro Management portal; Cisco native Zoom Rooms, Crestron Compute GA, Jabra new service plans
📅 July events
• 21 Jul - Teams Devices AMA (with AudioCodes)
• 22 Jul - Microsoft Partner Kickoff (summary to follow)
• 23 Jul - Teams Phone Agent webinar (with Pure IP & Microsoft)
• Late July - Copilot Fireside Chat
• Ongoing - M365 Community Change Roundup
🔗 Links
• Empowering.Cloud
• Ilya InfoComm keynote (speed edit)
• Neat MCP server + Graham's video
• Teams Phone Agent demo
• Slides and Links