Notes
What came up
while roasting.
Most notes exist in German and English. A few are German only — those are in the German archive.
SharePoint Lists: the new experience arrives in December
Microsoft is refreshing the SharePoint Lists experience. What changes, what Microsoft says stays intact and which customizations you should check first.
Passkeys by default: Microsoft's SMS MFA ends on 1 February 2027
Microsoft ends SMS and voice for MFA and SSPR in Entra. What applies from February 2027, who is affected and how to move users without a smartphone.
Hybrid intelligence: what local AI means for your Copilot tenant
Copilot is set to run locally on Copilot+ PCs. What that means for Microsoft 365 Copilot, what Microsoft leaves open and which questions to ask now.
Copilot moves into the flow of work
Fewer windows, more shortcuts: Copilot now sits on the button, in the prompt and right in the chat. For end users, the most noticeable change in October.
PowerPoint becomes a skill machine
Brand skills, organization skills, Record a Skill and strict mode: Copilot in PowerPoint finally learns corporate design.
Priority Cleanup: when Copilot hygiene meets legal hold
Priority Cleanup deletes despite retention and eDiscovery holds, now even permanently. Who may use it, who must approve and what to check first?
SharePoint cleans up its agents: your roadmap until March 2027
The Page Agent leaves this month, .agent files in March 2027. Two posts, two deadlines and a roadmap, so spring does not catch you off guard.
Admin homework for October: domain, data location, sender
Three changes nobody notices until something stops working: new Copilot domain, EU data location and a new sender. One of them has a deadline in December.
SharePoint becomes Copilot's stage
Copilot in SharePoint is GA, HTML pages are coming, the Page Agent is leaving. And agentic features now cost Copilot Credits.
Copilot now charges per task: FinOps for AI
Microsoft adds a second pricing level to Copilot, active by default for Copilot Business since 19 October. Plan a spending policy now, or you plan the costs late.
Bicep patterns for maintainable Azure platforms
Your first Bicep template runs after an hour. Whether you still understand it a year from now depends on its structure.
Copilot Tuning paused: what applies now and why waiting is the plan
Microsoft pauses Copilot Tuning and rebuilds it skill-based in Copilot Studio. What keeps running, what was discarded and why you delay the production start.
Plugins, skills, Agent2Agent: agent governance becomes mandatory
Agents become modular, may write and talk to each other. High time for admins to take the reins. One deadline runs out on 25 October.
Azure Functions Flex Consumption: VNet, Bicep and the end of Consumption
Flex Consumption brings VNet integration into the serverless model, and the Linux Consumption plan is being retired. What changes and how to set it up with Bicep.
Microsoft Foundry: building agents until they are production-ready
With Microsoft Foundry you build an AI agent in one afternoon. It only becomes secure and maintainable with roles, Entra ID access, guardrails and monitoring.
Copilot and oversharing: clean up SharePoint before you roll out
Copilot creates no new risk, it makes oversharing visible. How to clean up broad shares in SharePoint before you assign the first Copilot license.
Copilot Managed Runtime: Governance for Vibe-Coded Apps
Since 25 September anyone who can open Copilot Studio builds apps without code. What the Copilot Managed Runtime changes, where governance stays open, what to do.
Application landing zones become workload landing zones – five CAF scenarios vanish
Microsoft is renaming the application landing zone to workload landing zone. More urgent: five CAF scenarios disappear, AVD and SAP on 30 October 2026.
Deleting data nobody wants to delete
Retention periods rarely fail because of Purview. They fail because no named person makes the decision — and here is how to change that.
Retention policy is not deleting — four common causes
Simulation mode, legal hold, label beats policy, delayed application. With the PowerShell calls to check all four, one after another, in order.
Microsoft 365 Community – heat free
There is this one moment when you look at a number and go quiet for a second. For me, that was this summer. I counted the contributions to the Hitzefrei campaign…
SocialHub with Azure
I built my own social hub. One single page where everything comes together: LinkedIn, Instagram, the blog, the podcast, the newsletter, my speaking dates.
Conditional Access with a sense of proportion, not full throttle
Every additional policy increases security and lowers acceptance. Where the line is, how to justify it and what belongs in the break-glass account.
Your files belong to one person
There is one sentence I have to say in almost every customer project: „This file does not live in the team. It lives in the OneDrive of exactly one person.
Microsoft Foundry vs. Azure OpenAI Service — Clearing Up the Confusion
Last week, customer call. Architect from a mid-sized company asks: „We’ve been using Azure OpenAI for two years.
Managing company templates in Microsoft 365
Anyone who has tackled template management in an organisation over the past few years knows the classic route: a third-party tool like Template Chooser, Templafy…
Copilot Flex Routing: How Microsoft sends your EU data to America
It was one of those Monday afternoon situations. I opened the Message Center to collect material for the next M365 News episode — and then I stumbled across…
Azure Costs: The Black Box That Gets More Expensive Every Month
You sit with people who live inside Azure — architects, MVPs, engineers. And at some point the conversation turns to costs.
Document Intelligence in Foundry: Where Did It Go?
If you went looking for Document Intelligence and found Microsoft Foundry instead, you are not lost. Where the service moved, what changed and how to find it again.
11,000 Models – So Which One Do I Actually Pick?
It was towards the end of my last session at Microsoft. The slides were done, the coffee cold – and then the questions came. Not one, not two.
SharePoint Is Not Knowledge Management. It's the Stage.
Treating SharePoint as your knowledge management is where many intranets go wrong. Why it is the stage, not the knowledge, and what that means for how you use it.
Zero Inbox in Outlook: Rules, Mindset and GTD
A clear inbox is a habit, not a lucky day. How rules, a simple mindset and a bit of GTD keep Outlook under control without you living in your mailbox.
Viva Learning with Your Own Content Beats YouTube
Short internal clips in Viva Learning often beat a polished YouTube playlist: they fit your tools, your terms and your context. How to put your own content in.
Azure Portal vs. CLI vs. Bicep: Who's in Charge?
Portal, CLI and Bicep all change the same Azure resources, but not the same way. When to click, when to script and when to describe your infrastructure as code.
Azure Management Groups: Order in Your Cloud Chaos
Management groups sit above subscriptions and let you apply policy and access once, for everything below. How the hierarchy works and how to design it well.
Getting Started with Microsoft Azure: Your Introduction to the Cloud World
A jargon-free first look at Microsoft Azure: what the platform is, how it connects to Microsoft 365, and what SaaS, IaaS and AaaS mean — explained with espresso.
Change Management in the Age of AI: Training for Copilot
Rolling out Microsoft Copilot is less a licence question than a change project. How to prepare people, build habits and turn curiosity into real adoption.
Viva Amplify: Mandatory Content Review Before Publishing
Viva Amplify can force a review step before a campaign goes out. What the approval flow looks like, who should own it and where it saves you from mistakes.
Viva Engage: Deactivate Private Messages
Private messages in Viva Engage can undercut an open community and compliance. Why you might switch them off and the exact path an admin takes to do it.
Copilot in Viva Goals: What if You Don't Want It?
Copilot arrived in Viva Goals whether teams asked for it or not. What it does there, why some organizations hesitate and how to turn it off if you need to.
Viva Connections: Up to 10 Dashboards in Teams
A 2024 update let Viva Connections host up to ten connections and dashboards in Teams. What changed, who benefits and how to keep it from getting cluttered.
Viva Connections: the Announcement Feature
Announcements in Viva Connections put important news right into Teams. What the feature is good for, when it helps and where it just adds more noise.
The Out-of-Office Assistant in Outlook Online
Outlook's automatic replies can do more than you think, including declining and cancelling meetings while you are away. Here is how to set it up properly.
Boost Your Productivity with Microsoft To Do
Microsoft 365 is full of places where tasks pile up. How Microsoft To Do helps you collect, sort and actually work through them instead of carrying them around.
My “five” learnings with Power Apps
Who would have thought! Many colleagues and people in my network did not expect that my knowledge of the Power Platform was still in its early days.
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