Microsoft Roadmap, messagecenter and blogs updates from 11-12-2025

Updated December 10, 2025: We have updated the timeline. Thank you for your patience.

[Introduction]

We’re introducing a new pay-as-you-go (PAYG) experience in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center (MAC). This update provides a centralized way to manage metered services such as Microsoft 365 Backup and Copilot under the Billing node.

[When this will happen:]

General Availability:

• Available to new Microsoft 365 Backup and all Copilot customers starting December 15, 2025 (previously early December).
• Migration path for existing Backup customers will be announced later.

[How this affects your organization:]

Who is affected: Admins in Worldwide and GCC environments managing Microsoft 365 Backup and Copilot PAYG services.

What will happen:

• A new PAYG page will appear under the Billing node in MAC.
• Admins can create and manage billing policies directly in MAC.
• Services can be linked to billing policies, with support for departmental billing. Note: departmental billing for Backup customers will become available in Q1 2026.
• Budgets can be set, and notifications triggered when thresholds are met.
• Usage and spending can be viewed at the billing policy level.
• Subscriptions and resource groups can be created in MAC without navigating to Azure.
• PAYG setup for other services remains under Org Settings > PAYG until transitioned.
• Additional PAYG-enabled services will be added to the Billing node over time. Until then, the PAYG setup for other products (besides Backup) will continue to remain under Org Settings > PAYG.

[What you can do to prepare:]

No action is required.

Admins may decide to:

• Review the new PAYG page under Billing in MAC.
• Monitor announcements for migration timelines for existing Backup customers.
• Refer to Microsoft documentation for guidance on billing policies and budget notifications.

Learn more: Microsoft 365 pay-as-you-go services documentation | Microsoft Learn (will be updated before rollout)

[Compliance considerations:]

No compliance considerations identified, review as appropriate for your organization.

Updated December 10, 2025: We have updated the timeline. Thank you for your patience. 

[Introduction]

To enhance wireless content sharing in meeting spaces, Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows devices will soon support Miracast. This complements existing options like Teams Cast and HDMI ingest and is available for devices including touch boards. This feature is exclusive to Teams Rooms Pro.

This message is associated with Roadmap ID 506748.

• Targeted release: We will begin rolling out in mid-February 2026 (previously mid-January) and expect to complete by end of February 2026 (previously end of January).
• General Availability: We will begin rolling out end of February 2026 (previously end of January) and expect to complete by end of March 2026 (previously mid-February).

Who is affected: Admins managing Teams Rooms on Windows devices with Teams Rooms Pro licenses.

What will happen:

• Miracast will be available as a wireless sharing option in Teams Rooms on Windows.
• The feature will be OFF by default and can be enabled via a tenant-wide toggle in the IT admin portal.
• Laptop devices must support Miracast to use this feature.
• No impact to end-user workflow unless enabled by admin.

• Review your Teams Rooms device compatibility with Miracast.
• Enable the feature via the IT admin portal if desired.
• Communicate the availability of Miracast to helpdesk and meeting room support staff.
• Update internal documentation to reflect the new sharing option.

No compliance considerations identified, review as appropriate for your organization.

Updated December 10, 2025: We have updated the timeline. Thank you for your patience. 

[Introduction]

We’re introducing new features to the Copilot Notebooks module in the following apps:

• M365 Copilot App for Desktop (Windows and macOS)
• M365 Copilot App for Web
• OneNote Win32 (Insiders/Beta ring)

These updates make it easier for users to onboard and find value within Copilot Notebooks by improving navigation, personalization, and AI capabilities.

This message is associated with Roadmap ID 516042.

[When this will happen:]

• Public Preview: Rollout begins mid-November 2025 and is expected to complete by mid-December.
• General Availability (Worldwide): Rollout begins early January 2026 (previously early December 2025) and is expected to complete by late mid-February 2026.

[How this affects your organization:]

Who is affected:

• Frontier Public users with an M365 Copilot license.

What will happen:

• Users will experience a streamlined interface with a persistent navigation pane and chat on the right for optimized notebook workflows.

Screenshot: A view of the new UX, Overview Page, and Suggestions.



• Suggested Notebooks and references will provide personalized recommendations based on projects, graph context, and recent files.
• An automatically generated overview page will summarize the Notebook and key insights, refreshable as new references are added.
• Advanced AI features will expand reference types to include SharePoint folders and OneNote notebooks.
• Features will be ON by default for Frontier Public users starting November 19, 2025.

[What you can do to prepare:]

• No admin action is required for rollout.
• Communicate these changes to helpdesk staff to prepare for user questions.
• Update internal documentation if you detail Copilot Notebook functionality.

Learn more: Get started with Microsoft 365 Copilot Notebooks (will be updated soon)

[Compliance considerations:]

No compliance considerations identified; review as appropriate for your organization.

Updated December 10, 2025: We have updated the timeline. Thank you for your patience. 

We’re introducing user-level (federated) connectors in Microsoft 365 Copilot, enabling users to securely connect external apps such as Notion, Canva, or Hubspot directly within Copilot experiences like Researcher. Unlike traditional indexed connectors, federated connectors use the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to access data in real time. This allows users to fetch and read information from connected sources using their own credentials, while maintaining admin-level visibility, control, and governance in the Microsoft 365 admin center.

This feature will be available on the web platform.

A Microsoft 365 Copilot license is required to use this feature.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 501585.

Public Preview: Rollout will begin by January 12, 2026 (previously November 15, 2025).

• Who is affected: All tenants using Microsoft 365 Copilot with access to the Microsoft 365 admin center.
• What will happen:
  • End users will be able to connect to Microsoft-published federated connectors (such as Canva, Notion, Intercom) directly within Copilot experiences to search or fetch live data.
  • Admins will have visibility and control from the Copilot > Connectors section, where they can
    • View all default user-level connectors enabled by Microsoft.
    • Disable any connectors that are not relevant or compliant for their organization.
    • Use staged rollout to enable these connectors for a limited group of users
  • Admin can also create and manage custom user-level connectors for internal or specialized data sources using an MCP endpoint.

Screenshot 1 – Admin experience:

Screenshot 2 – User experience:

• Review the list of default connectors that will appear in your tenant under Copilot > Connectors > Your Connections.
• Ensure all available connectors align with your organization’s data and compliance policies. Disable any that do not meet requirements directly from the admin center.
• For custom connectors, configure your MCP endpoints with the required tools (search and fetch) and proper authentication (OAuth2).
• Communicate this change to helpdesk staff and update internal documentation as needed.

Updated December 10, 2025: We have updated the timeline. Thank you for your patience. 

[Introduction]

We are introducing three new ways to simplify how Admins manage People Skills:

1. Admin control: Turn off People Skills user experiences



2. Feature access management: Configure People Skills settings in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center



3. Ability to import custom skills library: Upload from your local device

This message is associated with Roadmap ID 529865.

[When this will happen:]

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out mid-December 2025 and expect to complete by mid-January 2026 (previously mid-December 2025).

[How this will affect your organization:]

Who is affected: Admins managing People Skills in Microsoft 365.

What will happen:

Admin control to turn off People Skills user experiences: 

As an Admin, you can use the Turn off People Skills user experiences control to manage how People Skills appears across your organization. This control lets you:

• Disable People Skills user experiences for your entire organization, user group subsets, or individual users.
• Pilot People Skills to a small group of users in your organization before rolling it out broadly.

When People Skills is turned off for a user, all People Skills user experiences will be removed for that user. Refer to Where does People Skills data appear? for a list of applications that use People Skills data and will be impacted by this Admin Control.

Why use this new admin control?

• Privacy and compliance: Organizations in regulated industries or Workers Council regions may need to prevent skills data from appearing on user profiles for certain users or groups. Such organizations may use this new Admin Control to turn off People Skills for a specific geographic region (e.g., Germany) who may have Workers Council requirements to limit exposure of People Skills data for impacted users.
• Pilot control: Deploy People Skills to a limited audience scope before full rollout.
• Deployment flexibility: Limit skills exposure during testing or phased deployment.

Feature access management interface for People Skills settings: 

You can configure People Skills directly in the Microsoft Admin Center using Feature access management—no need to rely on PowerShell commands anymore. This will make configuration of People Skills settings much easier. People Skills Admin settings you can manage directly in the M365 Admin Center interface include:

• People Skills user experiences control: Turns all People Skills user experiences on or off for selected users.
• People Skills AI inferencing control: Determines whether AI can generate Skills for users and add them to their profiles on their behalf.
• People Skills profile visibility control: Controls whether a user’s skills (AI-generated, Confirmed, or Imported) are shared with others on the Microsoft 365 Profile card.
• Show AI Skills control: Controls whether AI-Generated Skills appear on a user’s profile.
• Show Imported Skills control: Allows or restricts imported skills (organization-added skills) from appearing on user’s profile.

Ability to import custom Skills library from your local device: 

• We will offer the option of importing a custom Skills Library directly from your local device. This allows you to have greater flexibility in how you upload and manage your custom Skills Library.

[What you need to do to prepare:]

• This message is for awareness, and no action is required.
• If you plan to limit or disable People Skills, review the new admin controls in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center after rollout.
• For details on applications impacted when People Skills is turned off, refer to Microsoft documentation.

Learn more: Manage privacy and sharing controls in People Skills

[Compliance considerations:]

No compliance considerations identified; review as appropriate for your organization.

Introduction

When this will happen:

• Public Preview: Rollout begins mid-November 2025 and completes by late January 2026.
• General Availability (Worldwide): Rollout begins mid-November 2025 and completes by late January 2026.
• General Availability (GCC): Rollout begins early January 2026 and completes by late January 2026.
• General Availability (DoD): Rollout begins early February 2026 and completes by late February 2026.
• General Availability (GCCH): Rollout begins early March 2026 and completes by late March 2026.

How this affects your organization:

What will happen:

• A new Baseline Security Mode dashboard will be available in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
• Admins can view the tenant’s current security posture compared to Microsoft’s recommended minimum security bar.
• Admins can run impact analysis reports to assess changes before applying them.
• Recommendations will be grouped by risk level, with statuses such as “At risk” or “Meets standards.”
• No immediate user impact unless admins apply changes.

What you can do to prepare:

1. Navigate to Microsoft 365 admin center > Settings > Org Settings > Security & privacy > Baseline Security Mode.
2. Review recommendations marked as “At risk.”
3. Initiate an impact report to understand potential changes.
4. Apply recommendations to bring your tenant to “Meets standards.”

Communicate upcoming changes to your helpdesk or security teams.

Learn more: Baseline security mode settings | Microsoft Learn

Compliance considerations:

We’re introducing the ability for organizations to customize Microsoft 365 profile cards by adding up to 10 custom properties sourced from external systems such as HR platforms. This enhancement helps enrich user profiles with relevant organizational details, improving discoverability and context for collaboration.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 529851.

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out in mid-January 2026 and expect to complete by late January 2026.

Who is affected: Microsoft 365 tenant admins managing user profile cards

What will happen:

• You can add up to 10 custom properties to profile cards using Microsoft Graph People connectors.
• Properties can be sourced from external systems (such as HR platforms).
• This feature is OFF by default and requires admin configuration to enable.
• Admins can configure visibility, display name, and icon for each property in Microsoft 365 admin center under: Settings > Org settings > People settings > Profile > Person info on profile cards 

  

• Once enabled, properties appear in the Contact Information section of profile cards in Outlook Web:



• Changes may take up to 24 hours to propagate across profile cards.
• Future updates will include direct ingestion from SAP SuccessFactors and Workday connectors.

• Review external systems for properties you want displayed on profile cards.
• Ingest these properties using a Microsoft Graph People connector.
• Configure visibility and enable properties in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
• Communicate this change to helpdesk staff and update internal documentation if needed.

Learn more: Microsoft 365 Copilot connectors for people data | Microsoft Learn

Compliance considerations

No compliance considerations identified. Review as appropriate for your organization.

[Introduction]

Catalog Management in SharePoint is a new capability designed to target governance and streamline administrative actions. This feature will give customers a centralized, intelligent view of their content landscape helping them understand how information is distributed and governed across the organization. By intelligently organizing SharePoint sites into clusters based on site metadata and admin-defined attributes, this feature enables scalable, context-aware management. It supports precision targeting for lifecycle policies, access reviews, permissions auditing, and storage optimization—reducing overhead and accelerating readiness for AI-driven automation, including Copilot.

[When this will happen:]

• Public Preview (Worldwide): Begins mid-November 2025, expected to complete by late December 2025.
• General Availability (Worldwide): Begins mid-December 2025, expected to complete by late February 2026.

[How this affects your organization:]

• Who is affected: SharePoint administrators and Microsoft 365 tenant admins using SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM).
• What will happen:
  • A new Catalog Management capability will be available in the SharePoint admin center under Reports > Catalog Management.
  • Sites will be automatically grouped into intelligent clusters based on metadata and admin-defined attributes.

  

  • Admins can rename groups.

  

  • Admins can apply policies, reports, billing rules, and Copilot access at scale using these clusters.
  • Admins can also download detailed reports to track how sites are grouped.

  

  • No changes to end-user experience unless actions are taken by admins.
  • Feature will be available by default for tenants with SharePoint Advanced Management.

[What you can do to prepare:]

• No action is required at this time.

Learn more:

• What is SharePoint Advanced Management?
• Catalog management in SharePoint Advanced Management

[Compliance considerations:]

No compliance considerations identified, review as appropriate for your organization.

[Introduction]

To support organizations that collaborate with external partners for employee engagement initiatives, Microsoft is introducing a streamlined and secure way to onboard external resources to Viva Glint. This update simplifies partner access management, making it easier to grant partners administrative access to Viva Glint.

This message is associated with Roadmap ID 523216.

[When this will happen:]

• General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out in early December 2025 and expect to complete by early December 2025.

Who is affected:

• Admins managing Viva Glint instances
• Organizations working with external partners for employee engagement surveys

What will happen:

• Admins can onboard external partners using a simplified process.
• Partners can be granted access to create and analyze employee engagement surveys.
• This feature is available to all tenants and requires admin action to enable partner access.

[What you can do to prepare:]

To add a partner to a Viva Glint instance, follow these steps:

1. Create a Guest User in Entra ID using the partner’s preferred email address.



2. Add the partner as a Support User within the Viva Glint site using the same email address.



3. The partner will receive an email with sign-in instructions to access the Viva Glint instance.

Additional actions:

• Review Microsoft’s list of approved Viva Glint Partners.
• Communicate this process to relevant team members or helpdesk staff.
• Update internal documentation to reflect the new onboarding process.

Learn more: Manage Support users in Viva Glint

[Compliance considerations:]

No compliance considerations identified, review as appropriate for your organization.

[Introduction:]

Managing email just got easier. Microsoft 365 Copilot now supports natural language commands to help users pin or unpin important messages, flag or unflag items, mark tasks complete, archive clutter, and mark emails as read or unread. This enhancement is designed to streamline inbox management and help users stay focused on what matters most.

A Microsoft 365 Copilot license is required to access this feature.

[When this will happen:]

• Public Preview (Worldwide): Rollout begins mid-December 2025 and is expected to complete by early January 2026.
• General Availability (Worldwide): Rollout begins mid-December 2025 and is expected to complete by late January 2026.

[How this affects your organization:]

Who is affected: Users with Microsoft 365 and Copilot licenses who use Outlook for email management.

What will happen:

• Users can use natural language to
  • Pin or unpin emails.
  • Flag or unflag messages.
  • Mark tasks as complete.
  • Archive emails.
  • Mark emails as read or unread.
• These features will be available by default for licensed users.
• No changes to existing admin policies are required.

[What you can do to prepare:]

• Ensure users have the appropriate Microsoft 365 and Copilot licenses.
• Communicate this update to helpdesk and support teams.
• Update internal documentation if you detail email management features.
• No additional configuration is required for rollout.

[Compliance considerations:]

No compliance considerations identified, review as appropriate for your organization.