[{"content":" Key Highlights ➡️ Introduced updates to Microsoft Teams private channels, including support for scheduling channel meetings and upcoming Planner integration.\n➡️ Reviewed enhancements for Teams webinars and town halls, including attendee view management, branding capabilities, and reusable event templates.\n➡️ Discussed improved guest invitation emails in Teams to provide clearer context for external collaborators.\n➡️ Demonstrated new Teams search and filtering capabilities for locating files, messages, and content within channels.\n➡️ Covered ongoing improvements to external bot protection and meeting security controls.\n➡️ Highlighted updates to PowerPoint Live, including the ability to refresh presentations with slide edits during a live session without restarting the share.\n➡️ Reviewed improvements to Microsoft Word co-authoring, allowing more granular real-time collaboration within documents.\n➡️ Introduced deep citations in Microsoft 365 Copilot and provided an in-depth demonstration of Copilot Notebooks, including reference management, collaboration features, study guides, pages, and notebook-specific instructions.\nSummary This month\u0026rsquo;s community call began with community updates, including the launch of a revised website intended to centralize recordings, resources, and participation information. Presenters then reviewed a range of recent Microsoft 365 updates across Teams, PowerPoint Live, Word, and Copilot. Topics included private channel improvements, webinar and town hall enhancements, guest collaboration updates, expanded search capabilities, security controls for external bots, and new presentation features in PowerPoint Live.\nThe featured discussion focused on Microsoft 365 Copilot Notebooks. The presenters demonstrated how notebooks can organize related files, create focused AI experiences grounded in selected content, generate study materials, support collaboration, and consolidate project knowledge. Additional capabilities discussed included notebook instructions, Copilot Pages, conversation integration, and mind maps.\nResources What\u0026rsquo;s New in Microsoft Teams | June 2026 - InfoComm Edition What\u0026rsquo;s New in Microsoft 365 Copilot | June 2026 Get started with Microsoft 365 Copilot Notebooks Get answers and insights about your Microsoft 365 Copilot Notebook Copilot Notebooks and Study guide now available to Copilot Chat users Copilot Notebooks: Enhancements to support creation, collaboration and learning What\u0026rsquo;s New in Notebooks | May 2026 What\u0026rsquo;s New in Notebooks | June 2026 ","date":"2026-07-08T22:16:20.272Z","image":"https://img.youtube.com/vi/Suq0qruyh_A/maxresdefault.jpg","permalink":"/p/2026-07-microsoft-copilot-notebooks/","title":"Microsoft Copilot Notebooks"},{"content":" The June 2026 Cloudy County community call focused on a series of updates and changes across Microsoft 365 and Cloudy County initiatives. The session emphasized recent Microsoft Teams enhancements, particularly improvements to private channels, including the ability to schedule meetings, increased channel limits, and future integration with tools like Planner. Additional updates covered ongoing refinements to Copilot capabilities, such as improved understanding of embedded content, the introduction of learning-focused agents, and new features in OneDrive like enhanced shortcut management and organizational options. Updates to Teams event experiences were also discussed, including expanded capabilities for webinars and town halls with branding and attendee management features, some of which are tied to Teams Premium licensing.\nA major portion of the call highlighted the introduction and evolution of Copilot Notebooks, described as AI-powered workspaces that allow users to aggregate and interact with content from multiple sources, including files, meetings, and OneNote notebooks. These notebooks enable contextual querying, collaboration, and customizable behavior through instructions, with potential expansion to broader user access in the future. The session concluded with an announcement of a newly launched CloudyCounty.com website, created to provide a centralized, public-facing resource for the community, including session recaps and a planned prompt library for sharing AI use cases and practical examples contributed by users.\n","date":"2026-06-10T12:00:00-05:00","image":"https://img.youtube.com/vi/0i5iYu9Z-SU/maxresdefault.jpg","permalink":"/p/2026-06-whats-new-catchup-cloudycounty-com/","title":"What's New and CloudyCounty.com"},{"content":" This month\u0026rsquo;s Cloudy County Community Call focused on Copilot in Outlook — how to use it day to day for inbox triage, drafting, and follow-up, with an emphasis on practical workflows for the Cloudy County community using Microsoft technologies already available in their tenant.\nThe session opened with introductions and context for the Cloudy County community, emphasizing a focus on practical use of Microsoft technologies already available to users. Key updates included several notable product changes across Teams, OneDrive, Excel, Power Platform, and Copilot. Highlights included the upcoming retirement of Together Mode in Teams, new support for importing breakout room assignments via CSV, and a significant increase in the OneDrive sync limit to one million items. Additional updates covered improved tracking for Power Platform changes, new Copilot features in Excel for planning and editing, and expanded visibility into feature rollouts across platforms.\nThe deep dive portion of the call focused on advancements in Copilot, particularly within Outlook and across multiple AI models. The discussion outlined the availability of newer language models and image-generation capabilities, as well as guidance on selecting models based on use cases. The demonstration showcased how Copilot in Outlook enables both explicit and implicit grounding, allowing users to query and act on emails, meetings, files, and other organizational data without manually locating each source. Examples illustrated how Copilot can summarize meetings, identify follow-ups, draft or refine emails, and support daily planning by analyzing calendars and communications. The session emphasized the importance of effective prompting and highlighted how these capabilities can function as a digital assistant within existing workflows.\n","date":"2026-05-14T12:00:00-05:00","image":"https://img.youtube.com/vi/qoUE-dmgVzY/maxresdefault.jpg","permalink":"/p/2026-05-copilot-in-outlook/","title":"Copilot in Outlook"},{"content":" This month\u0026rsquo;s Cloudy County Community Call covered a range of Microsoft 365 updates focused on security, productivity, and AI tooling. Joe and Dewayne walked through what\u0026rsquo;s coming, what\u0026rsquo;s changing, and what the new Copilot agents in the Office apps can actually do.\nTeams — security and limits\nAn upcoming Teams feature is designed to detect and restrict external AI bots in meetings — addressing growing concerns around transcript access, attendee scraping, and unauthorized data sharing. Targeted release is expected next month with broader availability by mid-summer. Private channel member limits are increasing from 30 to 1,000. Meeting scheduling support is coming to private channels. Several Teams Premium features — town hall chat, reactions, and production tools — are migrating into Teams Enterprise, alongside an expanded interactive attendee cap of 3,000. SharePoint \u0026amp; OneDrive\nA redesigned SharePoint home page offers quick access to recent files, news, and favorites. A new \u0026ldquo;hero link\u0026rdquo; sharing model reduces redundant links and improves external sharing visibility. Tighter OneDrive integration across the Microsoft 365 surface. Copilot — licensing and capabilities\nCopilot Basic now lets users query and summarize their full Outlook mailbox and calendar — a capability previously limited to premium licenses. It still cannot send or move email on behalf of users. Effective April 15, Copilot icons in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote are restricted to users with an M365 Copilot (Premium) license. All other users access functionality through Copilot Chat Basic. Demo: Word, Excel, \u0026amp; PowerPoint agents\nDewayne demonstrated the new Word, Excel, and PowerPoint agents available in the Copilot app, which support:\nDocument creation from a prompt File attachment as grounding Audience-targeted rewrites Presentation generation, with outputs saved to a dedicated OneDrive folder Joe also covered using markdown files as lightweight instruction sets for building custom Copilot Chat agents.\n","date":"2026-04-16T12:00:00-05:00","image":"https://img.youtube.com/vi/Ou36ikEf2_0/maxresdefault.jpg","permalink":"/p/2026-04-word-excel-powerpoint-copilot-agents/","title":"Word, Excel, \u0026 PowerPoint Copilot Agents"},{"content":" In this Cloudy County Community Call we cover the latest Microsoft 365 enhancements and demonstrate practical ways to collect information across your organization.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s New highlights\nCopilot Chat enhancements for finding people and content. Improvements to Teams meeting links and scheduling. Addition of Claude / Anthropic models alongside the existing OpenAI options. Agent mode rolling out more broadly in Excel. New Copilot Teach experience for educators. Demo: information-collection tools\nThe main demo walks through three information-collection tools and when to use each:\nMicrosoft Forms for structured surveys and quizzes. Microsoft Lists for tracking items with rich column types. SharePoint document libraries with metadata for file-based collection. We compare when to use each, show how to surface responses in Teams, and demonstrate Copilot helping draft questions and analyze results.\nRecorded for the Cloudy County Community Call — watch on YouTube.\n","date":"2026-02-19T12:00:00-05:00","image":"https://img.youtube.com/vi/c9lR9lejD6U/maxresdefault.jpg","permalink":"/p/2026-02-information-collection/","title":"Information Collection: Forms, Lists, \u0026 Libraries"},{"content":" Kick off 2026 with a tour of what\u0026rsquo;s new and what\u0026rsquo;s coming soon across Microsoft 365.\nWe cover:\nRetirement of classic SharePoint alerts and the path forward with Power Automate. The rename of the Files tab to Shared in Teams. Collaborative meeting notes powered by Loop components. Team-membership security and governance considerations. Rollout of GPT-5.2 and additional Anthropic models in Copilot. Agent mode reaching Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Outlook\u0026rsquo;s expanded summarization features for long threads. Plenty of practical tips throughout for admins and end users planning their year.\nRecorded for the Cloudy County Community Call — watch on YouTube.\n","date":"2026-01-22T12:00:00-05:00","image":"https://img.youtube.com/vi/4GMte1gKr8c/maxresdefault.jpg","permalink":"/p/2026-01-m365-whats-new-and-near/","title":"M365 What's New and Near"},{"content":" Wrap up the year with a look at scheduling your 2026 meeting series, OneNote\u0026rsquo;s tighter integration with Teams meetings, and Copilot\u0026rsquo;s deeper reasoning capabilities.\nHighlights\nNew Excel data-connection options. The return of private channels in Teams. PowerPoint design refresh improvements. Featured demo — Copilot Create\nA deep dive into the Copilot Create module — generating images, documents, and short videos from natural-language prompts, with tips on prompt structure and brand-safe outputs.\nA special thank-you to Angel for consistently delivering the What\u0026rsquo;s New segment throughout the year.\nRecorded for the Cloudy County Community Call — watch on YouTube.\n","date":"2025-12-18T12:00:00-05:00","image":"https://img.youtube.com/vi/ni0AJdYSGck/maxresdefault.jpg","permalink":"/p/2025-12-copilot-create-module/","title":"Microsoft Copilot Create Module"},{"content":" This month\u0026rsquo;s call covers Word Online\u0026rsquo;s improved tables, Excel\u0026rsquo;s formula by example feature for filling columns from patterns, Snipping Tool upgrades including text extraction, and Outlook/Teams scheduling refinements.\nWe also walk through:\nCopilot chat-to-page conversions. Chat version history. The new Copilot library for reusable prompts. A Copilot Teach demo for generating lesson plans (great for educators). Featured walkthrough — Outlook Newsletters\nDesigning branded internal communications, scheduling delivery, and tracking engagement.\nRecorded for the Cloudy County Community Call — watch on YouTube.\n","date":"2025-11-20T12:00:00-05:00","image":"https://img.youtube.com/vi/pGwPTwCF-to/maxresdefault.jpg","permalink":"/p/2025-11-newsletters-in-outlook/","title":"Newsletters in Outlook"},{"content":" We open with the end-of-support deadlines you need on your radar — older Office versions and Windows 10 — and what that means for upgrade planning.\nTeams updates\niPad multitasking. Lobby chat for waiting attendees. Sensitive content alerts. Across the apps\nCelebrating Excel\u0026rsquo;s 40th anniversary and the GA of Python in Excel. Copilot personalization. SharePoint Lists automation refresh. Broad rollout of free Copilot Chat. PowerPoint gains expanded image generation. We close with a reminder on enterprise data-protection boundaries when using Copilot Chat across the M365 apps.\nRecorded for the Cloudy County Community Call — watch on YouTube.\n","date":"2025-10-16T12:00:00-05:00","image":"https://img.youtube.com/vi/si5Tx1VPOWY/maxresdefault.jpg","permalink":"/p/2025-10-copilot-chat-in-m365-apps/","title":"Copilot Chat in M365 Apps"},{"content":" This call breaks down the rollout of Copilot inside the M365 apps and the difference between the paid M365 Copilot license and the standard/free Copilot Chat experience.\nApp updates\nTeams: refined presenter controls. SharePoint: pages add custom headers and footers. OneNote and Teams: improved search relevance. Featured walkthrough — the Viva suite\nViva Reflect for wellbeing check-ins. Viva Insights for productivity and focus time. Viva Copilot Academy for upskilling employees on AI usage with role-based learning paths. Recorded for the Cloudy County Community Call — watch on YouTube.\n","date":"2025-09-18T12:00:00-05:00","image":"https://img.youtube.com/vi/iCSER1M1pgY/maxresdefault.jpg","permalink":"/p/2025-09-viva-tools/","title":"Viva Tools"},{"content":" This month features Excel function updates, the migration plan for OneNote desktop users, and the new SharePoint Dashboard web part for at-a-glance KPIs. Teams adds emoji-driven workflows for lightweight automation.\nCopilot highlights\nImage creation now leverages GPT-4o for higher-fidelity outputs. The new Memory feature personalizes responses based on prior interactions. GPT-5 integration begins rolling out across the Copilot surface. We close with a look at simplified Teams collaboration patterns for hybrid teams.\nRecorded for the Cloudy County Community Call — watch on YouTube.\n","date":"2025-08-21T12:00:00-05:00","image":"https://img.youtube.com/vi/cLb3uYOXmvI/maxresdefault.jpg","permalink":"/p/2025-08-teams-and-copilot-updates/","title":"Teams and Copilot Updates"},{"content":" This community call covers powerful updates across webinars, town halls, and collaboration tools designed to support education and enterprise users.\nNote: the full description for this video was not fully recoverable when this site was generated. Watch the recording for the complete agenda, demos, and Q\u0026amp;A.\nRecorded for the Cloudy County Community Call — watch on YouTube.\n","date":"2025-07-17T12:00:00-05:00","image":"https://img.youtube.com/vi/m8nd991XYrQ/maxresdefault.jpg","permalink":"/p/2025-07-teams-meetings-updates/","title":"Teams Meetings Updates"},{"content":" A hands-on training session focused on getting better results from Copilot through stronger prompting. We tour the refreshed Copilot interface and clarify the difference between the consumer and enterprise experiences.\nThe 4-part prompt framework\nGoal — what you want Copilot to do. Context — the background it needs to do it well. Source — the data, file, or grounding it should use. Expectation — the format, length, and tone of the answer. We explore the Prompt Gallery for inspiration, demonstrate generating a meeting summary from a transcript, and run a live activity where attendees refine a weak prompt step by step into a high-quality result.\nRecorded for the Cloudy County Community Call — watch on YouTube.\n","date":"2025-06-19T12:00:00-05:00","image":"https://img.youtube.com/vi/jGoTsu8caf8/maxresdefault.jpg","permalink":"/p/2025-06-copilot-prompting/","title":"Copilot Prompting"},{"content":" This call covers Teams Premium increases to live event capacity, new attendee view controls, name-pronunciation recording, and pop-out captions for accessibility.\nCopilot updates\nCopilot now generates Mermaid diagrams directly in chat. Chat organization improves with Loop-powered grouping. Headline — Copilot Wave 2 Spring release\nThe Researcher and Analyst reasoning agents for deep, multi-step tasks. A demo of pulling OneDrive, Teams, and SharePoint files directly into Copilot Chat as grounded sources. Recorded for the Cloudy County Community Call — watch on YouTube.\n","date":"2025-05-15T12:00:00-05:00","image":"https://img.youtube.com/vi/nVVKZ6vXXj8/maxresdefault.jpg","permalink":"/p/2025-05-copilot-wave-2-spring-release/","title":"Copilot Wave 2 Spring Release"}]