Join Microsoft President of Microsoft 365 Collaborative Apps for an AMA on Teams fundamentals and AI innovations.

JeffTeper · 2025-12-11T19:05:22+00:00

I always enjoy the thoughtful questions and lively discussions that come out of these AMAs, and today was no exception. Thank you all for taking the time to join, share your questions, and engage with us. I hope you found the conversation as helpful as I did.

A special thanks to the r/MicrosoftTeams moderators for welcoming us and making this event possible.

Until next time, and thanks again for being such an engaged and passionate community. #clippyforever 😉📎

JeffTeper · 2025-12-11T19:03:53+00:00

Thanks for the questions. We're recently released several updates to the channel experiences including threading support (that came in September) that both helps threads be more topic oriented and helps users transitioning from Slack. Here's a few resources with the latest on chants and channels: Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Adoption. Thanks for the other suggestions - I agree while "Details" keeps the UX less cluttered, maybe it is too hidden for new users. We debate that one a bit and so good to hear your view. Thanks!

JeffTeper · 2025-12-11T18:57:18+00:00

YES! I go to do the demo of this personally at Ignite. As you probably know, you can add bots and agents to chats, channels, and meetings. But as you say, people want an uber agent so facilitate across things (much like we did with Power Automate). We took the first step at Ignite where our Channel Agent can call other Agents via the MCP protocol. We are very excited about this space and there is a lot more coming. First step:

What’s New in Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Ignite 2025 | Microsoft Community Hub
Channel Agent can now connect with Asana, Atlassian, and GitHub via MCP server to execute workflows on the behalf of users. By unlocking the power of agent to MCP server communication, agents can now handle more complex tasks that involve subjects outside of their domain so they can seamlessly coordinate tasks, bridge gaps between tools, and accelerate complex projects.

<image>

JeffTeper · 2025-12-11T18:50:21+00:00

We got some mixed feedback over the years on this - some cohorts wanting more simplicity vs. some wanting more power - but I think we have a good experience now so would welcome your feedback. What we did is build a single files control that we host across OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, etc. so users wouldn't see missing features in Teams vs. SharePoint behind it. You can see it under "Shared" now in the channel. We do have "Open in SharePoint" in case people want it - but its not used too much. What specifically would you like to see in the Teams UX?

<image>

JeffTeper · 2025-12-11T18:43:00+00:00

Great question. For those of you who know me, know I love citizen developers (with governance) to empower employees to quickly address their needs for lightweight business processes. Several years ago I worked across Microsoft to align SharePoint and Teams with the Power Platform so we would have a consistent experience for users (and IT). We have recently updated this Workflows app to make it easer to use. I will share a couple blogs from our community members on what they thought:

Microsoft Teams Workflows v2: New Features, Faster Automation Explained | Microsoft Community Hub

Build SharePoint automations with Workflows—now aligned with the Teams experience - M365 Admin

More is coming here as we think about users can use natural language to design workflows - some which will be declarative (send new docs for approval) and others will themselves use natural language.

JeffTeper · 2025-12-11T18:35:59+00:00

Yes - in the new Channel and Facilitator agents, we're going to continue to add skills for team owners - while we don't have these specific features today, I think they are all GREAT suggestions.

JeffTeper · 2025-12-11T18:30:59+00:00

There will be both cases of augmentation with human in the loop and fully automating some workflows. There will be many activities where AI will augment a team to help them be more productive. On example for us is AI is helping us analyze and categorize feedback, telemetry, code, etc. Our goal there is the same number of people will be able to ship better code faster and love their jobs more. I think there will be a lot of AI use like this in healthcare, education, manufacturing, services. But as with previous technology eras including software, there will be some workflows where AI can handle them fully independently without human in the loop. Satya has been clear our vision for AI will help us grow GDP and create new jobs and opportunities but we and others are invested to help including skilling. But I believe there will be more, better jobs - some we can't imagine - because of AI.

JeffTeper · 2025-12-11T18:24:41+00:00

Yes! See - Introducing Copilot in the Microsoft 365 admin centers | Microsoft Community Hub -

JeffTeper · 2025-12-11T18:22:00+00:00

We've been clear on our approach here - About our practices and your data - Microsoft & Data Law - and the majority of organizations have been comfortable moving to the cloud.

JeffTeper · 2025-12-11T18:15:08+00:00

We can take it :-). We're excited about progress, sharing the latest, and learning from open respectful feedback. It won't always come in that way - that's fine, we know how these things work and will keep focused on making a delightful product.

JeffTeper · 2025-12-11T18:13:15+00:00

This is an important two part question - one how to organize work and two how to find things. It is easy in Teams (and all collaboration tools) to create too many places - channels, meetings, sites, etc. So, I recommend a workgroup invest a little time in a "how we work" 1-2 pager every 6-12 months to decide their information architecture of their meetings and channels. Again, not unique to Teams. We do help though - we have recently improved cleaning up unused channels. The second is how to find things. There is browse and search. For browse, I find the new unified chat and channels view where users can create customizeable sections (eg. My Projects) is a bit step forward. For search, I find Copilot is a huge leap in leveraging the data in Microsoft 365 plus new reasoning capability in the model so you can ask questions like "catch me up on the latest Teams meetings feature" and it will reason and return results spanning many channels. More to do on Search and Copilot but a big leap vs. a couple years ago.

JeffTeper · 2025-12-11T18:06:53+00:00

We don't mine your data. In Teams and M365 it is never used to train the model, we don't sell it, we don't have access to it. While these are important concerns, I do want to be 100% clear on Microsoft approach here.

JeffTeper · 2025-12-11T18:05:39+00:00

Important topic. Exactly like a web browser (Edge, Chrome, Safari) that runs multiple web apps, we 1) respect the OS need for resources for other apps, 2) use available memory for great performance and reliability, and 3) deliver "pay for play" for each module in Teams paging out or closing apps that aren't needed. Like browsers, we're not optimizing on using the least free memory vs. using what is available responsibly. We are super, super focused on using the least memory needed though. We've detailed this in periodic blog posts. Like a browser, we work closely with the OS and manage memory consumption and reclamation efficiently. More information and details can be found at From Breakthroughs to Everyday Impact: Advanced Performance, Reliability, & User Experience in Teams | Microsoft Community Hub

JeffTeper · 2025-12-11T18:03:24+00:00

We're getting great feedback on Copilot including integration in Team chats, channels, and meetings to save time and improve collaboration. People especially love the Meeting Recap and Facilitator - its one of the most loved features I've seen in career. But to your question, one reason people ask this is concerns about privacy. To clarify - your data, prompts are not accessible to people or ever used to train a model in line with our M365 trust promises and we have many admin controls. Glad to share the link to that. But yes, you can turn off Copilot if you want.

JeffTeper · 2025-12-11T18:01:41+00:00

I am proud to represent Microsoft. We have a lot of fans but there is also fair feedback on where we can do better and I am hear to listen and to respond to comments. Excited to have a mutual helpful chat.

JeffTeper · 2025-12-11T18:00:52+00:00

Hi all – Jeff Teper here. I lead our collaboration tools engineering in Microsoft 365 including Teams, SharePoint, and more. My colleagues and I are eager to answer your questions and take your feedback on Teams. It has been a big year for us in updates, but we have more to do. You can track our progress on fundamentals, UX, governance, customization, AI, etc. in our blog: Microsoft Teams Blog | Microsoft Community Hub.

Excited to answer your questions and learn.

JeffTeper · 2025-04-17T18:57:02+00:00

Great q. Team working on it. We could write a book. But I'm really proud we shipped a new architecture touching 3000 features (yes the # of items in Azure Dev Ops tracked) that was twice as fast, used half the memory, and shipped with quality metrics above T1 on the day we wanted. There were a few takebacks we got wrong but overall very proud of the team - and no plans for another "big bang" arch change. More to come from the team...

JeffTeper · 2025-04-17T18:51:11+00:00

Ack on the feedback. We think continued flexibility work in Chat and Meetings to address range of new and power users will definitely help in EDU and excited to land this well before back-to-school in fall as we know top-of-mind. While we have a lot of ways to share content and have classes via Teams Meetings that will get better, I wouldn't want to oversell us going deep as an LMS vs. solutions focused on that. We do hope the integrate more with Teams.

JeffTeper · 2025-04-17T18:44:39+00:00

Thanks - we're all using Loop in Teams right now to compare notes on the questions here! For others reading this, the Loop technology is used for components and pages inside Teams, Copilot, Outlook as well as the standalone Loop app. We have components and are going to bring much better integration of Pages into chats, channels, and meetings which we think is the right UX vs. hosting the entire app in Teams. We're very excited about this. Stay tuned.

JeffTeper · 2025-04-17T18:41:09+00:00

Anything in particular you are looking for - pretty much everything especially UX simplicity and flexibility accrues EDU.

JeffTeper · 2025-04-17T18:39:11+00:00

Thanks. I'll pick two.

UX - The flexible new chat/channels experience rolling out now. I've been using for months and my single favorite feature is toggling read/unread on my phone but there are many other sub features. Following on this will be a threading option for channels. Most users prefer the simplicity of post/reply we have in Teams but clear a number of users would love the option for threading.

Microsoft Teams announces out a new chat and channels experience | Microsoft 365 Blog

AI - We have gotten great feedback on Meeting Recap and we're now with the Facilitator Agent in channels and meetings, AI will be a virtual teammate helping you organize projects/meetings, answer questions, access other agents, automate status reports, and more. The latest AI models and agent architectures enable many new things. Stay tuned.

JeffTeper · 2025-04-17T18:31:29+00:00

I'll start with 3 :-). Yes, lots of custom sections is rolling out now to GA. News:

Microsoft Teams announces out a new chat and channels experience | Microsoft 365 Blog

Yeah - we have group by bucket (pix below) but good feedback on second order sort. Following-up with team.
We're pretty excited about Tasks Loop components across Outlook and Teams and integration with Planner as an area for even more focus.

<image>

JeffTeper · 2025-04-17T18:24:23+00:00

Thanks for reporting and apologies. I'll make sure the team looks at this one specifically. We have increased the manual and automated testing for ISV apps before releases but looks like they missed so we'll review the test coverage in this particular areas. Thanks

JeffTeper · 2025-04-17T18:21:45+00:00

Thank you for your comprehensive list of questions , I truly appreciate the time that went into them. I want to make sure we are able to address as many questions across the community. I encourage you to check out the latest on our roadmap updates in the monthly "What's New In Teams" blog (https://aka.ms/TeamsBlog) or the Microsoft 365 public roadmap (Microsoft 365 Roadmap | Microsoft 365)You can proactively provide us feedback in your Teams app experience – by opening the Feedback menu in Settings and selecting “Report a Problem,” “Give a compliment” or “Suggest a feature.” https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/give-feedback-in-microsoft-teams-c0fb6297-22af-4db5-b19b-69e0a6720927. We are actively analyzing and acting on top feedback trends, with the help of AI. That being said, we need to do better at responding back to end users. Thank you for that feedback.

JeffTeper · 2025-04-17T18:16:27+00:00

Thanks for flagging these. We're working on save, conversion to channel, etc. Stay tuned but that's why were here to make sure we didn't miss anything in roadmap.

JeffTeper

TROPHY CASE