Microsoft Teams Insider

Ally Ward and Kevin Spence discuss the practical realities of moving 2,500 of 8,000 users from Microsoft E5 to E7, covering migration strategy, agent governance, consumption costs, Entra Suite, and lessons learned from a global legal practice.

• Why E7 is far more than a simple licence swap and the operational complexity behind it

• The hotel room analogy: how unassigned E7 licences impact your E5 capacity

• The double-hop migration process and why the order of operations matters to avoid service desk chaos

• Agent 365's promise versus reality: regional reporting gaps, licensing for agent consumers, and governance challenges

• Entra Suite as a sleeper benefit bundled into E7 and the partial-coverage problem

• The Cowork consumption credit conundrum: 175,000 credits burned in under a month by 20 users, how do you measure value?

• Why agent governance is not an IT problem and needs business-wide engagement

This episode is sponsored by Luware Recording - a cloud compliance recording and analytics solution that helps organisations securely capture, archive, and analyse communications across multiple platforms to meet regulatory requirements.

Adnon Dow, Chief Product Officer at Pure IP, discusses how Pure IP is evolving from a traditional voice carrier into an intelligent SIP edge platform powered by AI.

• How AI is reshaping voice infrastructure across three layers: network management, data intelligence, and service enablement

• The shift from over-the-top services to embedding intelligence natively at the network edge, enriching calls at the point of entry

• Why Pure IP's platform-agnostic approach works across Microsoft Teams, Webex, Zoom, and Contact Center environments

• How a best-of-breed partner strategy delivers recording, fraud detection, and analytics without building everything from scratch

• The rising threat of AI-driven robocalls and deep fakes, and how trusted call scoring and LRN networks help combat fraud

• Where voice agents and agentic AI workflows are heading, and why network fundamentals remain critical to making them reliable

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

Emily Kirby, 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

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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