In this month’s newsletter, I'm sharing several key announcements, including new capabilities coming to Microsoft Planner, important updates across Microsoft Teams, and the latest enhancements to Microsoft 365 Copilot, such as new Copilot Chat adoption reports within the Microsoft Copilot Dashboard in Viva Insights, now with improved access.
What’s new in Planner
One of the most anticipated Planner enhancements is finally on its way: task‑based chat 🎉. Here’s what’s changing:
- Task Chat replaces the existing comments feature in basic Planner plans, transforming static comment threads into dynamic, conversational chats tied directly to each task.
- Team members will be able to collaborate more effectively with support for rich text formatting (bold, italics) and @mentions , enabling clearer communication and more targeted notifications.
- Only users who are @mentioned in a task chat message will receive an email notification, reducing noise and improving relevance.
Alongside task‑based chat, several powerful enhancements are rolling out to elevate the way teams use Microsoft Planner:
Custom Planner templates - Create pre‑designed, reusable plan layouts to accelerate project setup and ensure consistency across teams.
Copilot project manager agent in all plans - The Copilot project manager agent will be available across all plan types for users with an M365 Copilot licence, bringing intelligent task management and planning assistance wherever you work.
Support for Microsoft Information Protection sensitivity labels, now at the content level - Previously, Planner only supported container labels for Microsoft 365 Group‑backed and Roster plans, controlling access at the plan level. This update introduces content-level sensitivity labels, enabling deeper protection and enforcing Data Loss Prevention (DLP) controls such as:
- Preventing sensitive content from being copied, exported to Excel or other formats, or forwarded to unauthorised users.
- Blocking printing of plans or tasks when the content label includes a “block print” directive, including any form of hard‑copy generation.
- Enforcing read‑only access for highly confidential plans.
- Displaying watermarks on plans and tasks when required, visible across web, desktop, and mobile clients.
- Inheriting content labels from Loop Task List components or other linked containers, ensuring the same restrictions apply to Roster plans created from a Loop file, and automatically reflecting label changes over time.
- Notifying users when label restrictions apply, preventing policy‑violating actions, and providing prompts when downgrading a label may revoke access for certain users.
Task level label – preventing copying of tasks
These new capabilities are starting to roll out now and are expected to reach global availability by the end of January 2026. As part of this update, several existing Planner features will be retired, including: comments, the whiteboard tab for premium plans, the Planner component in Loop pages, Planner connections in Viva Goals, and the iCalendar integration feed.
What’s new in Microsoft Teams
Flexible meeting layout with a resizable divider
Microsoft Teams is introducing a flexible meeting layout featuring a new resizable divider, giving users more control over how shared content and participant videos appear. This divider allows you to tailor your meeting view by adjusting the space between content and video tiles, switching their positions, and personalising the overall layout. It also supports spotlighted speakers, pinned videos, and Speaker View, ensuring a consistent and focused meeting experience.
What’s changing?
- A new resizable divider will appear in Teams meetings whenever content is being shared.
- Users can adjust the layout to prioritise shared content or participant video tiles.
- Users can switch the position of the shared content and the video gallery.
- Fully compatible with spotlighted speakers, pinned video feeds, and Speaker View.
When someone shares content, or when you’re using Speaker View, you can simply drag the divider between the left and right panels to resize them for a viewing experience that works best for you.
When you drag the divider to the left, you will see more people in the right gallery view. When you drag the divider to the right, you will see less people in the gallery, but the content or speaker will become larger:
When will this happen?
These updates are rolling out to targeted release users now and will continue through the end of January 2026. Broader general availability begins in early February 2026 and is expected to reach global availability by late March 2026.
Express voice enrolment in Microsoft Teams
Express voice enrolment makes setting up your voice profile in Microsoft Teams faster and more seamless. Today, you can enrol manually through Teams settings → Recognition. Starting in February 2026, if you haven’t yet enrolled, Teams will display an in‑product prompt guiding you through a quick voice registration.
Why voice profiles matter
Recording a short voice sample creates a secure biometric voice profile. This enables several enhanced Teams meeting experiences designed to improve clarity, accuracy, and productivity.
Voice Isolation (Noise Suppression)
- Teams uses your voice profile to distinguish your speech more effectively and filter out background noise.
- Particularly helpful in open offices, shared spaces, or on‑the‑go environments.
Speaker Attribution in Transcripts & Meeting Recaps
- Your voice profile allows Teams to identify who is speaking.
- Transcripts, summaries, and Copilot‑generated notes can accurately label contributions for clearer follow‑up.
Smarter Teams Rooms Integration
In Teams Rooms equipped with intelligent audio and video, voice profiles improve:
- Speaker identification
- Name display
- Experiences powered by IntelliFrame and Copilot
Enhanced Copilot & Insights
When voice profiles are enabled, Microsoft 365 Copilot can:
- Provide more precise meeting insights
- Offer personalised prompts
- Attribute comments correctly in summaries and recaps
When will this happen?
Voice enrolment is already available in Teams settings - Recognition. Express voice enrolment will begin rolling out in early February 2026 and is expected to be globally available by the end of February 2026.
What’s new in Copilot
November and December 2025 brought a significant wave of new Copilot capabilities for both users and Microsoft 365 administrators. Advania’s M365 PACE service provides full coverage of these changes, but here are a few highlights you may have missed.
Meeting recap – Customisable templates
Meeting recaps and AI‑powered summaries remain some of the most widely used features in Microsoft 365 Copilot. With new customisable meeting recap templates, you can now shape your AI‑generated notes to match how your teams prefer to work.
Choose from two new ready‑made templates:
- Speaker Summary – Organised by participant, helping teams trace contributions.
- Executive Summary – Presents essential takeaways in a concise, high‑level format.
For teams with specific preferences, you can create fully custom templates using a simple free‑text instruction. You can even paste an existing format, and Copilot will adapt the AI notes instantly. Custom templates can also be saved, ensuring every meeting benefits from consistent clarity and structure.
Copilot Chat adoption in the Copilot Dashboard
AI and Copilot administrators can now monitor Copilot Chat adoption directly within the Copilot Dashboard, with visibility into total users, usage trends, group‑level adoption, engagement intensity, retention, and detailed app‑level breakdowns. These insights help admins optimise Copilot licensing and drive effective enablement by analysing usage across organisational attributes and identifying adoption patterns across different groups. This capability is currently available to customers using the Copilot Dashboard with 50 or more Microsoft 365 Copilot licences.
From January 2026, Microsoft will remove the requirement for a minimum of 50 licences, enabling more organisations, including those with smaller deployments, to track Copilot adoption trends. Going forward, organisations will only need at least one Microsoft 365 Copilot licence assigned to access these insights.
Available analytics include usage over time, group adoption metrics, retention indicators, and app‑level usage trends. Admins can filter by organisational attributes to quickly surface patterns and understand how Copilot is being used across the business.
And finally…
Microsoft Teams meeting recap – AI summary – ‘view in recording’ link
One of our favourite updates this month: the Meeting notes section in the standard AI‑generated summary now includes a direct hyperlink that jumps to the exact moment in the meeting recording where that topic was discussed — ‘view in recording’.
This small but powerful enhancement makes it even easier to revisit key discussions, validate context, and follow up on decisions. It’s a standout addition to the already popular Microsoft 365 Copilot meeting recap experience, delivering faster clarity and better meeting continuity across teams.
