The Ultimate Guide to Mastering Microsoft 365
Teams users can use emojis to create or rename chat section names. By incorporating emojis into section names, users create “visual anchors” to help navigate through Teams chats and channels. Sprinkling emojis around section names doesn’t really make me navigate any smarter, but it’s a feature that Slack has, so Teams can’t be left behind in the pretty interface stakes.
An update for Chromium 141 can affect the ability of SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business to access offline content, including files and lists and lead to degraded performance. The change is designed to improve user privacy, but some Microsoft 365 apps need browsers to be able to access local files, notably for OneDrive synchronization. Prepare by upgrading the OneDrive Sync client and distributing a new policy to workstations.
What’s the best way to find SharePoint sites with the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK? Is the Get-MgAllSite cmdlet best or should you use the Get-MgSite cmdlet? Does it matter if you’re looking for one site or many sites? We explore the issue in this article by examining some reasons why you’d choose Get-MgSite and others that drive the decision for Get-MgAllSite.
New Graph APIs allow Entra administrators to restore a conditional access policy with a Graph request. This article explains how to list, restore, and permanently remove soft-deleted conditional access policies using Graph API requests run in PowerShell. Being able to restore conditional access policies removed in error closes a big gap, especially if agents might begin working on policies. Who knows what errors might happen in future.
Attackers might attempt to use social engineering to trick Teams users in compromise. Trusted indicators help users understand the status of external users with difficult visual markers. The idea is that users will see the marker and realize that they should be less trusting in their communications. Sounds good. But maybe securing external access for Teams with a comprehensive block list is even better?
Monthly update #124 for the Office 365 for IT Pros (2026 edition) eBook is now available. Current subscribers can download the updated PDF and EPUB files from Gumroad.com. An update is also available for the Automating Microsoft 365 with PowerShell eBook. Like every month, changes are made to many chapters in the book, so if you’re a subscriber, please download the files.
The Outlook events from email feature changes from January 31, 2026. Events will only be created if notifications support the properties for events defined by schema.org. Seeking consistency is a good idea, especially if it means that Outlook can process notifications sent by airlines, car hire companies, and other event providers in a way that doesn’t happen today. However, some disruption is likely.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Search can be extended by ingesting information from external sources through a Microsoft 365 Copilot Connector. In this article, we show how to configure the Enterprise websites prebuilt connector to ingest articles from the Office365ITPros.com and Practical365.com sites, and how Copilot Search presents that information in its results and summaries. It’s quick, easy, and seamless – so really pretty good!
On September 24, Microsoft announced that Anthrophic LLMs could be used with the Copilot Researcher agent and to build agents with Copilot Studio. Although it’s great to enable choice so that customers can choose the AI model they prefer, questions about data security, lack of support for compliance solutions, and adherence to standards like the EU data boundary will concern Microsoft 365 tenants.
With not a little hype, Microsoft launched the SharePoint Knowledge Agent on September 18. Getting some AI help to organize sites sounds good, but only if the assistance delivered by the artificial intelligence does something useful. In this case, the agent generated some moderately interesting results without ever reaching the level of AI magic anticipated (and reported) by some.
An assembly clash happens when a PowerShell module attempts to load a .NET assembly only to find that a different version is already loaded in the session. Unhappily, this kind of thing happens far too often with Microsoft 365 modules, which implies that there isn’t a great deal of coordination between different development groups. All you can do is to load modules in the right order.
A change to a Graph beta API meant that some data used to create the user password and authentication report was no longer available. A script update was required. The experience underlines the truth that developers should not rely on the Graph beta APIs because the APIs are prone to change at any time as Microsoft moves them along to become production-ready.
The Office 365 for IT Pros team is happy to announce the availability of the October 2025 update for the Automating Microsoft 365 with PowerShell eBook. Subscribers can download the latest PDF and EPUB files from Gumroad.com. In other news, a new eBook about Exchange Server Subscription Edition (SE) is available. It’s always nice to see new sources of knowledge open up!
The rollout of the Copilot Chat integration with the Microsoft 365 apps has started, with the intention of making it easier to use AI in peoples’ work. Nice as the integration is, the news that an Open in Word action button is coming (soon) to allow content generated by Copilot to be edited in Word is even better. And we round out the week with a note about a change to the domain used by Teams.
Guest account management should be a part of every Microsoft 365 tenant administrator’s checklist, unless the tenant has no guests. That’s possible but given the way that workloads like Teams and SharePoint Online create new guest accounts, the average tenant is likely to have quite a few guests. The question is how to manage guests – with Microsoft’s tools or using tenant-designed PowerShell scripts?
The Entra ID Keep Me Signed In (KMSI) feature creates persistent authentication cookies to allow users to avoid sign-ins during browser sessions. Is this a good or bad thing and should Microsoft 365 tenants enable or disable KMSI. I think KMSI is fine in certain conditions and explain my logic in this article. Feel free to disagree!
Microsoft 365 Copilot now has some SharePoint skills to deploy in the SharePoint admin center. The problem is that the skills aren’t very good and don’t do much to help hard-pressed SharePoint Online administrators cope with the vast explosion of sites that exist in many tenants today. The problem is data. If Copilot doesn’t have the information to reason over, it can’t answer questions or give advice.
Microsoft plans to deploy an update to change how transcription behaves for Teams meetings where Copilot is enabled. New meetings will not generate a transcript unless the meeting organizer explicitly enables transcription or the Microsoft 365 tenant deploys custom meeting policies that enable transcription with Copilot. The AI features work even without a transcript. But no transcript means no searchable artifact, and that’s what some want.
This article describes the prerequisites and how to run cmdlets from the Teams PowerShell module in Azure Automation runbooks. We also consider when you’d want to consider using Teams PowerShell cmdlets instead of Graph API requests or cmdlets from the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK. The bottom line is that it’s possible, but maybe not a frequently-used option.
A new SharePoint Site content and policy comparison report is available to tenants with Microsoft 365 Copilot or SharePoint advanced management licenses. The idea is that you choose some reference sites to compare other sites against to detect deviations from the reference site. It seems like a good idea if you’re trying to impose standards to control Copilot. Unhappily, attempts at running the report turned up zero results.
Microsoft 365 users see the profile card and might wonder where the information displayed on the card comes from. Entra ID is the obvious source, but the people platform that Microsoft is developing is another and could include information imported through a Copilot connector to build out a complete picture of users and contacts within a Microsoft 365 tenant. It’s early days yet, but beta code is available.
A new policy setting is available to force Microsoft 365 enterprise (Office subscription) applications to save to cloud locations and ignore the local disk. The idea is to increase cloud usage and improve compliance by storing all Office files in OneDrive for Business or SharePoint Online. Like a network PC, creating a dependency on a network connection only makes sense when a network connection is dependable, which might not always be the case.
Microsoft announced a new Copilot license check diagnostic for the Exchange Connectivity Analyzer. Sounds good, but the test is very simple, and its results don’t tell you anything more than a few lines of PowerShell can deliver. To prove the point, we wrote a quick script to show how to perform a Copilot license check with the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK.
MC1134747 describes a new permissions requirement for Entra apps that run Teams PowerShell cmdlets. Fixing apps to meet the new requirement is easily done with PowerShell. First, find the apps that use Teams PowerShell (we show two ways), and then assign the two required permissions to the apps. All done with a few lines of Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK code.
The Org Settings section of the Microsoft 365 admin center has a new People Settings section where you can choose properties for the Microsoft 365 profile card instead of using PowerShell. The kicker is that the old method of using Exchange custom properties to customize what appears on the profile card is being replaced with standard Entra ID properties. A migration is needed, and it’s easily done with PowerShell.
Copilot memory is a term that refers to different things, including Copilot communication memory, a method to use the Graph to personalize responses for users. The idea is to use all the sources of information available through the Graph as Copilot responds to user prompts in Microsoft 365 apps instead of limiting sources to whatever the app works with. It’s a good idea, providing the Graph sources are accurate.
Microsoft has depreciated the Microsoft Graph CLI and Graph Toolkit. It’s nice to see some rationalization, but the real need is for better quality and coverage across all the Microsoft 365 administrative actions. Even after fourteen years of development, too many undocumented and private APIs exist today, which is an unacceptable situation. You should vote for a feedback portal item to ask Microsoft to do better.
Monthly update #123 is available for the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook. Subscribers can download updated EPUB and PDF files for the main book and the Automating Microsoft 365 with PowerShell book from their Gumroad.com account. As with every month, the update touches most chapters as we continue to make sense of the changes that occur across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Subscribe today!
A custom runtime environment is a way of defining a specific job execution environment for Azure Automation runbooks, including Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK runbooks. In this article, we create a new environment for PowerShell V7.4, load in some SDK modules, switch a runbook from a system-generated environment, and run some code.
The Office 365 for IT Pros eBook team is proud to announce the availability of update 15 for the Automating Microsoft 365 with PowerShell eBook. The book includes extensive coverage of how to work with Microsoft 365 workloads through standard modules, Graph APIs, and the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK, including hundreds of practical examples over 350-plus pages. No fluff, just real-world code.
In late August, Microsoft plans to release the Copilot summarize email thread feature in Outlook clients without the need for a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. This news might seem surprising, but it’s simply a matter of business. If Microsoft doesn’t make basic AI features available in Outlook, ISVs (including OpenAI) will fill the gaps with add-ons. And that might make it harder to sell Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses.
Microsoft will impose a throttling limit for external recipients for tenants that use MOERA domain addresses to send outbound email. The limit is designed to stop tenants using mailboxes with primary SMTP addresses from MOERA domains from sending email, a technique that’s often used by spammers. This shouldn’t cause a problem for legitimate organizations who already have vanity domains, but it might stop some spam.
After a report to the MSRC about some missing file data from Copilot audit records, Microsoft fixed the problem and audit records now contain details about the SharePoint Online files reviewed by Copilot to construct answers to user prompts. Having solid audit and compliance data is a good thing, unless you’re a lawyer charged with defending an eDiscovery action who might be asked to produce the files.
Three new Graph API resources provide easy access to Entra ID authentication method summary data. The information is helpful to understand the type of sign-ins that happen, and the authentication methods used by user connections. The article includes a script based on the MFA sign-in summary to highlight non-MFA connections and the apps users connect to.
This article discusses how to use PowerShell to find obsolete mobile device partnerships in Exchange Online (or Exchange Server) and remove the obsolete devices. Users won’t be able to remove obsolete mobile devices after the settings to manage mobile devices are removed from OWA and the New Outlook, so cleaning up the mess is the responsibility of administrators (like it usually always is).
Outlook Mobile clients have started to highlight messages received from unverified senders. But what does “unverified” mean and what can be done to fix the problem? The issue lies at the sender’s end, so the administrators of the sending system must verify their email configuration to make sure that Exchange Online can validate inbound messages from their domain. The same visual markers are available in Outlook classic, OWA, and the new Outlook.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (MDO) requires shared mailboxes to be licensed but doesn’t extend the same requirement to Microsoft 365 Groups. Given that Microsoft 365 Groups have group mailboxes and can function very much like shared mailboxes, the difference in licensing is remarkable. Why does this happen? It could be due to internal Microsoft politics, omissions, or just a preference for Groups. Who knows?
Microsoft plans to remove the ability of users to perform mobile device management (for their devices) from the OWA and new Outlook for Windows clients. It’s unclear how much use these options receive, but following the update, users will only be able to disable or wipe a device remotely using features provided by O/S vendors. Administrators can still act to block or wipe lost or stolen devices.
Finally, Microsoft solved the technical issues that blocked SharePoint Online support for sensitivity labels with user-defined permissions (UDP). The feature is now generally available and it’s very welcome because support opens access for Office files and PDFs with UDP labels for search and Purview solutions like DLP and eDiscovery. Files with UDP labels applied prior to GA are not processed until they are edited, but that’s reasonable.
