Microsoft Teams Insider

Mike Love, CTO at LabourNet, is joined by Janet Souter-Dantu, Co-founder at ScopServ Integrated Services (Pty) Ltd, and Vanesia Raborethe, Head of Sales at ScopServ Integrated Services (Pty) Ltd, to discuss LabourNet's move to a Microsoft Teams-based contact centre with Landis.

LabourNet, established in 1996, is a large labour law consulting firm with a national footprint in South Africa.

• Why LabourNet standardised on Microsoft Teams as a single communications platform to support time-critical, high-importance client interactions

• How Landis Contact Centre queues, presence-based routing, and reporting improved visibility and support availability-based call distribution across a geographically dispersed workforce

• Lessons learned on adoption, process change, and why senior leaders tested the customer experience daily to drive improvements

• What's next, including better use of contact centre data and a cautious, data-first approach to AI augmentation for agents

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

Jeff Teper, President of Microsoft 365 Collaborative Apps and Platforms, discusses 25 years of SharePoint — from its humble origins as an intranet product to a cloud platform supporting over a billion users and exabytes of data.

• Origin story: How two separate Microsoft projects merged to create SharePoint, filling a massive need for intranets, document management, and collaboration in one customisable platform

• The cloud transition: From Bill Gates announcing SharePoint Online in 2008 through years of architectural challenges to an elastic cloud service handling billions of requests per second

• From MySite to OneDrive: The feature IT initially rejected that eventually became OneDrive, now serving over a billion accounts on the SharePoint platform

• AI and large language capabilities: How LLMs and reasoning models are enabling zero-shot metadata tagging, AI-assisted site design, and agent capabilities across SharePoint

• What's new: A refreshed design language, reimagined information architecture with five core pillars (Intranet, Build, Publish, Discover, and OneDrive), and AI woven throughout the experience

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

Adam Jacobs, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft, works in IC3—the real-time communications platform team behind Microsoft Teams. With four years at Microsoft and a decade at Polycom before that, Adam shares insights from the backend of one of the world's largest communications platforms.

• How IC3 supports Microsoft Teams at massive scale, including cost considerations for new features and AI capabilities

• The current state of Cloud Video Interop and why it remains important for some enterprise customers

• Moving transcription to new platforms to support AI and M365 Copilot strategy

• Real-time processing challenges for AI features, including face and voice recognition technologies

• Adam's journey from IT director to Polycom to Microsoft, and the value of understanding both customer and partner perspectives

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

Andrew Wigmore, Teams Product Owner at defence contractor BAE Systems, shares insights from his 40-year career and the company's journey to Microsoft Teams and the cloud.

• Migrating 45,000 phone numbers from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams in a single morning

• Managing 65,000 E5 users and doing over a third of a billion minutes of Teams audio annually

• The cultural shift from on-premises infrastructure to evergreen cloud services at a defence company

• Rolling out Microsoft Teams Rooms across 180 meeting spaces, including executive home offices

• Operator Connect telephony across 11 countries, including challenging regions

• Cloud adoption, security, and export control requirements in defence

Thanks to Ribbon, 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 February 2026.

Many thanks to Neat for their continued support.

PowerPoint Deck
Enhanced M365 Copilot Memory​
Copilot Chat (free) in Outlook with all emails and Calendar​
Ilya Bukshteyn's ISE keynote​
Microsoft Teams Licensing Changes April 2026​
Places Roadmap Updates​
Express voice enrolment​
Meet App Becomes Events App​
Teams Live Events and API are retiring​
Multiple phone numbers on Teams Phone Devices​
Transitioning Teams Android Device Management​
Events
Useful Links:
Briefings:
Real AI Use Cases in the Contact Centre with Luware Nimbus - Costs, Risks and Benefits - Marcel Gaufroid, Head of Sales – EU, at Luware​
Microsoft Places in 2026: APIs, Desk Booking, and Copilot Context - Brennan McReynolds, Product Strategy Lead for Microsoft Places​
Pure IP's Platform Strategy that Simplifies Enterprise Communications - Adnon Dow, Chief Strategy Officer at Pure IP​
AI Voice Agents - Sean Keegan, Developer Evangelist for Azure Communication Services at Microsoft​
Teams Insider Podcasts
The role AV Distribution play in Microsoft Teams Rooms with Jenny Hicks, Technical Director at Midwich UK​
Logitech's New Rally AI Cameras and Multi-Camera Microsoft Teams Rooms with Henry Levak, VP of Product for Logitech for Business​
Microsoft Places in 2026: APIs, Desk Booking, and Copilot Context Brennan McReynolds, Product Strategy Lead for Microsoft Places​
Microsoft Teams Rooms and Phone Journey at Toyota Financial Services JT Elliott, Unified Communications and Collaboration Manager, at Toyota Financial Services​​