Microsoft 365 Copilot September 2026 Update: Teams Phone Agent, SharePoint GA and Admin Controls

Read the rollout labels before you open a help desk ticket. Some features shipped in September. Some are scheduled for October. Some are limited to Frontier, Microsoft's early-access program. The headings in Microsoft's post list the main areas: new design and functionality for Copilot Chat; plugins, connectors, and Work IQ enhancements to the Copilot App; Teams Phone agent for Copilot in Teams Phone; citations and image modifications for Copilot in Word; skills and connectors for Copilot in PowerPoint; general availability for Copilot in SharePoint; general availability for Copilot in OneDrive, plus a separate section on IT admin capabilities.

The bigger picture: Copilot's new strategy​

This recap comes days after a larger restructuring. Cryptonomist, citing CNBC, reported that Microsoft unveiled a major Copilot overhaul on Friday, September 25, 2026, merging chatbot features with new Code and Autopilot tabs into one app. The same report said the pricing model keeps a flat, per-user fee for basic Chat while charging usage-based rates for the more advanced Cowork, Code and Autopilot tools. It also gave a reason for the shake-up: fewer than 7% of Microsoft's over 450 million commercial Office 365 seats currently carry a Copilot license.

Seen in that light, the September features are less a pile of small improvements and more the plumbing for Microsoft's plan to make Copilot the main interface for work. Neowin summed up the positioning by saying Microsoft now presents the Copilot app as the single AI interface for many productivity tasks.

Section summary: These are incremental features that support a big strategic bet. The bet is that consolidation will finally fix Copilot's adoption problem.

Copilot Chat: new design, prompt shortcuts and better PDF search​

Here is what Microsoft says changed for users:

• Teams and Outlook redesign (rolled out in September): Copilot in Teams and Outlook now looks more like the main Copilot app. The change covers both the full-screen experience and the side pane. Microsoft says the goal is simpler navigation, a streamlined chat and help organizing work.
• Edge new tab page (October): An upgraded Copilot new tab page in Edge puts search, chat and web browsing in one search box, alongside suggested actions and curated work content. It hasn't shipped yet. Microsoft has it down for October.
• Agents and skills in prompts (September): Type / to call an agent inline, or @ to add a skill, and drop either straight into your prompt. If you've been switching between agent panes, this saves clicks.
• Scanned PDF matching (September): Copilot Chat is better at matching search results inside scanned PDFs, so it can find content in files it used to miss. Organizations with years of scanned contracts and invoices will probably notice this one most.
• Android editing (September): Copilot-powered editing is now in Word, PowerPoint and Excel on Android. Microsoft says it reached iOS earlier in the year. The recap doesn't list minimum Android versions.

The redesign is mostly a matter of taste. The / and @ shortcuts are the real productivity gain, because they let you choose a tool precisely instead of hoping Copilot routes your request correctly.

Plugins, connectors and the unified plugin registry​

Neowin described the new connectors as aimed at industrial data. Microsoft's actual list is much broader. It includes:

For administrators, the bigger news is the unified plugin registry, which Microsoft says rolled out in September. It holds Microsoft, partner and custom-built plugins that work across the Copilot app and the Microsoft 365 apps. A plugin can bundle skills, connectors and other capabilities. Admins discover and approve a plugin once, manage it centrally in the Microsoft 365 admin center and Agent 365, and it becomes available across Copilot experiences.

That cuts both ways. Approving something once is efficient. It also means one approval reaches every Copilot surface, so treat it as a real review, not a quick click.

SharePoint Framework apps in chat (Frontier): Microsoft says apps built with SharePoint Framework can now include interactive UI directly in Copilot chat as UX components. This enables users to view information, interact with controls, and take action without leaving the conversation. This feature is rolling out to Frontier in September. If your developers already maintain SPFx web parts, this gives them a way to bring that work into Copilot Chat.

Work IQ and SharePoint (Frontier): SharePoint content and action tools in Work IQ are also rolling out to Frontier. The aim is for Copilot to use SharePoint's content intelligence and act on that content. Microsoft's post doesn't include setup steps or define exactly which actions are covered.

Record: in-person conversations become action items​

The Record feature in the Copilot mobile app rolled out in September. It captures in-person conversations and voice notes, then produces an AI-generated transcript and summary in Copilot Chat. You can ask follow-up questions, pull out action items and keep working with the content. Microsoft only describes it as part of the mobile app and doesn't give platform details.

The obvious caution applies. Recording people in person raises consent questions, and the rules vary by jurisdiction. Organizations should update their acceptable-use policies before staff start recording hallway conversations.

Teams Phone Agent: an AI receptionist​

Microsoft calls Teams Phone Agent an AI calling receptionist for organizations and departments that use Teams Phone. Its examples include bank branches and IT help desks. The agent can:

• Answer common questions
• Book or reschedule appointments
• Route callers to the right department or person
• Pass along an AI-generated conversation summary with the routed call, so callers don't have to repeat themselves

Microsoft says it supports more than 60 languages and rolled out in September. The recap doesn't cover licensing, configuration prerequisites or call-flow limits, so voice administrators will need Microsoft's Teams Phone documentation before replacing an existing auto attendant.

Word and PowerPoint: citations, skills and connectors​

Word (both rolled out in September):

• Copilot answers can now include citations to relevant web and work content, so you can check where a claim came from.
• Copilot can help arrange and modify images and shapes in a document, including tidying up the layout of visual elements.

PowerPoint:

• Skills (September): Reusable skills guide Copilot through multi-step presentation workflows. The prebuilt "Explain this presentation" skill reviews narrative, audience fit and flow. "Sharpen slide titles" rewrites titles so they better summarize each slide.
• Admin-published skills (September): Administrators can push approved skills to specific users, groups or the whole organization.
• Connectors (September): You can pull information from connected apps and sources into a deck.
• Brand Kit skills (October): Brand managers will be able to add reusable skills to Brand Kit.
• Long-running tasks (October): Copilot will keep working after you close PowerPoint, switch devices or go offline, and send a notification when the task is done or needs your input.

Section summary: Citations in Word are the most important trust feature here. Admin-published skills in PowerPoint are the strongest governance feature.

SharePoint and OneDrive reach general availability​

Microsoft says Copilot in SharePoint reached general availability in September. Its capabilities include creating and organizing content, asking questions grounded in SharePoint, adding AI-generated metadata to libraries, building reusable skills, generating and editing images, AI-generated site analytics reports and near-real-time metadata autofill. Microsoft's own SharePoint blog says Copilot in SharePoint is available for users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. That blog's September roundup also says reusable skills can follow you across SharePoint and OneDrive, Copilot can measure and improve those skills with evaluations.

Copilot in OneDrive also reached general availability. Microsoft says it was rebuilt on the same foundation as Copilot in SharePoint and follows the same licensing approach. The main recap doesn't spell out the license terms, but the SharePoint licensing note above is a reasonable guide.

One distinction is easy to miss. Microsoft says Copilot Search is becoming the default search experience across SharePoint and OneDrive, but that change is rolling out to Frontier only. It is not generally available.

Admin tools: authoritative sites and Pulse surveys​

Authoritative SharePoint sources (September): In the Microsoft 365 admin center, admins can mark up to 100 SharePoint sites as authoritative sources for Copilot Search. According to Microsoft, this tells Copilot those sites hold verified, official content, which should make Search and Chat results more relevant and trustworthy. Admins can view, add and remove sources, and bulk import or export the list.

A practical rollout plan:

1. List your official sources: HR policy, IT knowledge base, company news and compliance sites.
2. Clean them up first. Promoting a stale site gives outdated content a higher ranking.
3. Assign an owner to each site so the content stays current.
4. Keep the export file under change control, so you know who promoted what and when.

Targeted Pulse surveys (September): Leaders can send Pulse surveys to dynamic lists built from Copilot adoption data and filter them with existing criteria, so nobody has to maintain survey lists by hand. Microsoft says results are reported in aggregate at the population level, not per person. Neowin described this as guaranteeing privacy. Aggregation does protect individual answers, but surveys of small populations always need some care to avoid re-identification.

What to do if you don't see a feature yet​

Microsoft's Copilot release notes on Microsoft Learn say features are introduced using a safe deployment model, gradually rolling out to a subset of users within a tenant before expanding across the organization. Microsoft also says rollout timing in the September recap can change. Before escalating, check:

• Label: Is the feature marked September, October or Frontier?
• License: Copilot in SharePoint, for example, requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.
• Tenant: Has the gradual rollout reached your users yet?

Bottom line​

Microsoft's September recap is broad and useful, but it's not a list of things you can turn on today. The parts with the most immediate value are the plugin registry, authoritative sites, admin-published PowerPoint skills and citations in Word. They all help with the two problems that have slowed Copilot adoption: whether people can trust its answers, and whether IT can govern it. The Frontier-only and October items show where Microsoft is heading, so plan around them but don't count on them yet.