Microsoft Update June 2025
Welcome to the June edition of the Microsoft 365 update! This month, we are excited to introduce several new features and improvements across Microsoft Teams and Copilot. These updates are designed to enhance user experience, improve accessibility, and streamline workflows.
Teams
Microsoft have recently released a new feature allowing users to react with multiple emojis in Teams, meaning replies can be more expressive and fun. This is available in chats as well as in channel posts. Up to twenty emojis can now be used as a reaction to a message per person.
Users can now set their file open preferences in Teams. After navigating to the Teams settings using the ellipsis at the top of the app, select ‘Files and links’ in the left menu, and a new setting ‘Always open Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files in’ is available. Users will have the option to choose between Teams, desktop, and browser.
A new, simpler method for creating channels has been rolled out. Users can now navigate to the ‘New Message’ dropdown at the top of the Chats section in Teams, to select ‘New Channel’. From here, a pop up will display to capture all the details about the new channel, and under which Team it should be created.
Real-time text is now available on Teams calls and meetings. Real-time text is an accessibility feature that allows messages to be displayed as they are typed - letter by letter, instead of when a user selects ‘send’. This notifies participants that a user is wanting to talk to a point more quickly, allowing them to address it before moving on to a different topic. It is beneficial for making chat conversations more natural and accessible. This feature is especially useful for users who are deaf, or have speech or cognitive disabilities, as well as in situations where voice communication is not practical.
This feature can be turned on within a call by navigating to the ‘More’ button in the top bar, then ‘Language and speech’, and selecting ‘Turn on RTT for this call’. This will create a text box and chat for RTT at the bottom of the meeting, available for all participants to view and use.
Copilot
Two new agents – the Researcher and Analyst are now generally available. These agents were introduced through the Frontier program earlier this year but are now available to everyone with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. They can be found under the Copilot chat in Teams and are used for more in-depth investigations than standard Copilot.
The researcher agent is for completing multi-step research across both web and work information. It can ask you to clarify questions to ensure that the information it gives you is accurate to what you need. When producing a response, it will show it’s working, references, and reasoning at each step, so you are able to understand it’s work and check that it is correct. In the output, it can produce reports, executive summaries, and tables.
The analyst agent can help you answer complex questions about data and can look at spreadsheets with multiple tabs. The agent produces large, in-depth responses, that can take three minutes to produce. It knows when - and how - to use python to analyse data, and, as with the researcher agent, can break down the problem, showing it’s reasoning at every step. It will finish it’s reply with deep qualitative and quantitative insights.