significant global commercial price increases, the imminent retirement of legacy infrastructure (specifically InfoPath and older SharePoint Server variants), and a massive push toward advanced AI autonomy via Copilot updates and “closed-loop” memory features. Organizations must quickly adapt to new licensing structures while actively auditing their connector footprints and legacy apps to prevent operational disruption.
Microsoft 365 & Office 365 News
- Global Commercial Price Increases Effective July 1, 2026: Base prices across major suites—including Microsoft 365 E3/E5 and Office 365 E3/E5—have increased by 5% to 33% depending on the specific SKU. This adjustment reflects newly bundled value, including Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 and various Intune advanced capabilities rolling out through Q3 2026. Standalone Teams and Copilot SKUs are excluded.
- Unlicensed OneDrive Staged Retention: OneDrive has adopted a strict, staged retention lifecycle for unlicensed accounts. This provides IT administrators a standardized window to assign licenses or back up content before the data is automatically archived and eventually deleted.
- Microsoft Purview DLP File Quarantine: Data Loss Prevention (DLP) for SharePoint and OneDrive now supports automatic file quarantine, immediately moving policy-violating files to a restricted location. Policy synchronization times have also been drastically slashed from 2 hours to just 30 minutes.
SharePoint Online News
- InfoPath Forms Official Retirement (July 14, 2026): InfoPath forms in SharePoint Online will completely cease to function on July 14, 2026. Users will lose the ability to create, edit, or submit these forms, forcing immediate migration to Power Apps or modern solutions.
- SharePoint Server Legacy Deadlines: On-premises SharePoint Server 2016 and 2019, along with SharePoint Designer 2013, reach official End of Support on July 14, 2026, ending all security patch distribution.
- File-Level Archiving & Billing Adjustments: File-level archiving is now Generally Available (GA) in SharePoint Online, allowing individual files within active sites to be moved to cheaper storage. Concurrently, OneDrive has launched pay-as-you-go billing for storage consumption beyond allocated tenant quotas.
Microsoft Teams News
- Major UI/UX Redesign: Teams has deployed a sweeping visual and functional redesign this month. Key updates include centered meeting controls, a restructured sharing panel built to prevent accidental screen-sharing leaks, and highly customizable personal meeting tools.
- External Sharing Authentication Shift: The classic One-Time Passcode (OTP) system for external sharing is ending, forcing organizations to transition fully to Microsoft Entra B2B Direct Connect for external collaboration.
Copilot Chat & Copilot Studio News
- Copilot Cowork Reaches General Availability: The multi-agent “Cowork” capability set is now GA, bringing updated skill management, deep Microsoft Purview data compliance integration, and corporate branded templates natively into the app experience.
- Multi-Model Choice (Anthropic Claude Integration): Active subscribers of Copilot Chat can now select Anthropic Claude as an alternative underlying model directly within the conversational interface.
- Closed-Loop Learning and “Memory”: Copilot Studio has rolled out persistent memory. When users correct an agent connected to a Power Apps Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, that correction is stored as a structured preference and applied automatically in future runs.
- GPT-5.5 Reasoning Deployment: GPT-5.5 Reasoning has entered the early release cycle for Copilot Studio and is actively rolling out across Microsoft 365 Copilot apps (Chat, Word, Excel) to enhance complex analytical processing.
Power Platform News (Apps, Automate, Pages, BI)
- Advanced Tenant-Wide Connector Inventory: A new “connectors” column has been added to the Power Platform Admin Center inventory grid. Admins can now instantly see exactly which connectors and operations are being used by every app, flow, and agent in their tenant—crucial for security auditing and licensing reviews.
- Native App-to-Flow Communication: Power Automate for desktop has introduced a “Run Power App” action (Public Preview). This allows a desktop flow to launch a Power App natively, pass variables back and forth, and trigger subflows without relying on clunky UI-based workarounds.
- Power Apps Canvas Offline Toggle: Canvas apps now feature a native Online/Offline toggle under settings, giving end-users the ability to manual-switch modes. The app remembers their preference upon reopening.
- Power Pages Native Dataverse Authorization: Power Pages has launched a public preview of Native Dataverse Authorization, heavily hardening portal security by aligning access rules directly with Dataverse’s internal security architecture.
