What’s New in Microsoft 365 | July Updates
Nick Ross · · Video and write-up
Below are all of the latest feature updates coming to Microsoft 365
Automated Security Assessments mapped to the CIS Controls
CloudCapsule is a tool I’ve been working on over the past year that automates your M365 security assessments against the CIS Controls. I started CloudCapsule because I saw the need to streamline the assessments of Microsoft 365 tenants to a trusted standard like the CIS Controls.
Run a Free Assessment (opens in new tab)
Microsoft Teams
1. Compact notification size for users
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
After this rollout, Windows users will be able to choose between the standard and compact toast notification sizes in Teams by navigating to:
Settings > Notifications > Choose Compact
This feature is off by default and must be enabled by the user. It is designed to improve focus and reduce screen clutter, especially in high-notification environments.
When will this happen:
mid-July 2025, expected to complete by late July 2025.
2. Users can save chats and channel messages for later
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
Allows individuals to save any message—whether it’s a post, reply, or chat—and access it later from the Saved view in their Chat or Teams list. Clicking a saved message will open the full conversation in the right pane, enabling users to review or respond directly. This helps users quickly return to important information without scrolling through long threads.
When will this happen:
late August 2025 and expect to complete by early September 2025.
3. Meeting Join Bar
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
New in-context meeting join experience to help users seamlessly access meetings they’ve RSVP’d to as “Yes” or “Tentative.” When a meeting is live, a banner will appear, allowing users to join directly. If multiple meetings are active, the banner will display the count and offer a “View More” call-to-action, enabling users to choose which meeting to join. This enhancement supports quicker access to meetings and improves user productivity.
When will this happen:
Mid-July 2025 – Late July 2025
4. Teams Meeting Join URL Validation
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
To enhance the security and integrity of Microsoft Teams meetings, we are introducing a new feature that validates Teams meeting join URLs. This update helps ensure that meeting links are not altered or rewritten by security products in ways that could render them unusable or flagged as malicious.
Action Required/Recommendations
- Ensure that your security products do not rewrite Microsoft Teams meeting join URLs.
- Whitelist Microsoft Teams join URLs in your security software.
- Review your organization’s URL rewriting or inspection policies before the rollout date.
- Communicate this change to your helpdesk and security teams.
When will this happen:
September 30, 2025
5. Introducing the New Workflows Experience
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
The Workflows app helps you automate repetitive tasks and streamline everyday processes across Teams and Microsoft 365. Whether you’re scheduling messages, managing approvals, syncing updates across apps, or triggering actions from chat messages, Workflows makes it easy to build automations in just a few clicks. It’s powered by Power Automate and designed to help you stay focused on what matters most.
Browse and add workflows in Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Support (opens in new tab) – will be updated before WW rollout
When will this happen:
September 2025.
6. Teams Premium: SMS support expands to Australia
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
We’re expanding the reach of SMS appointment notifications in Microsoft Teams. Soon, organizers with a Teams Premium license will be able to send SMS notifications to phone numbers in Australia using Microsoft Bookings, the Virtual Appointment Teams meeting template, and other Teams experiences. This update enhances global communication capabilities without changing existing SMS behavior.
When will this happen:
late July 2025 and expect to complete by early August 2025.
7. Enhance your Teams experience with new accent colors
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
Users will be able to personalize their Teams experience by choosing an accent color for the Teams shell. Change accent colors in Settings > Appearance.
When will this happen:
late July 2025 and expect to complete by late August 2025
Microsoft Outlook
1. iOS/Android: Large audience warnings for users
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
Users will receive a warning when they are about to send an email to a large number of recipients, which can help them make the correct decision about wording, tone, and content.
When will this happen:
early May 2025 (previously mid-April) and expect to complete by early July 2025 (previously early June)
2. Outlook Mobile: New unverified sender banner in reading pane
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
When users receive an email from an unverified sender, they will see a banner in the reading pane explaining why the sender is flagged and warning about potential impersonation. This complements existing safety messages such as:
- “External sender”
- “Not on safe senders list”
- “You don’t often get email from this sender”
When will this happen:
mid-July 2025 and expect to complete by mid-August 2025.
3. Report junk + block or unsubscribe in one same action
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
When users report an email as junk, they’ll now see an option to unsubscribe—if the sender supports it. This helps reduce unwanted messages at the source and keeps users’ blocked sender lists from growing unnecessarily.
When will this happen:
mid-July 2025 and is expected to complete by late July 2025.
Microsoft Entra
1. Improved backup and restore experience for Microsoft Authenticator on iOS
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
Starting in September 2025, Microsoft Authenticator on iOS will offer a more seamless and secure backup and restore experience using iCloud and iCloud Keychain. This update eliminates the need for a Microsoft personal account to back up account names and third-party TOTP (Time-based One-Time Password) credentials, simplifying setup on new devices.
Microsoft Intune
1. Hotpatching is now available for 64-bit Arm architecture
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
More enterprise environments can now experience the power of security updates that do not require a restart. Hotpatching is now available for Windows 11, version 24H2 Arm64 devices. All you need to do is check your prerequisites, disable Compiled Hybrid PE (CHPE), and enroll these devices into a quality update policy with hotpatching enabled.
2. LAPS for macOS
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
This month we made Local Admin Password Solution (LAPS) integration generally available for macOS automated device enrollment. Now, when organizations configure a macOS ADE profile, Intune can provision devices with a local administrator account for new enrollments via ADE only. The administrator account includes a strong, encrypted, and randomized password that’s automatically rotated every six months. Alongside a standard user account with naming conventions and account details configured exactly how the admin wants.
Full Announcement: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoftintuneblog/what%E2%80%99s-new-in-microsoft-intune-july-2025/4435146 (opens in new tab)
3. Real-time visibility into Apple Device Upda tes
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
Mac admins have long asked for live update progress tracking—and today we’re delivering. The team is rolling out enhanced reporting for software updates built on declarative device management (DDM). This represents a major step forward for IT administrators. They can check update progress in real time, gain enhanced visibility into failures, and understand user interactions with these updates. Devices now proactively report their status through each stage, from downloading the update through installation, without requiring manual check-ins.
Full Article: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/intune/intune-service/protect/software-update-report-apple-per-device (opens in new tab)
4. Wildcard Support for EPM
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
Just as LAPS and real-time DDM reporting ease Mac work, Windows admins face their own time drain: rewriting elevation rules every time an installer or updater rolls to a new build. To reduce that workload, we’re adding wildcard support to Microsoft Intune Endpoint Privilege Management (EPM) for Windows endpoints. Instead of creating separate rules for every versioned executable, administrators can use wildcards to match dynamic file names or version patterns. This represents one of those quietly powerful capabilities that automates rule creation while maintaining strict security precision.
5. Customize device cleanup for different platforms
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
We’ve expanded device clean-up capabilities with per-platform rules, allowing organizations to configure different cleanup criteria for Windows, iOS/iPadOS, macOS, and Android devices. Organizations can now use the Audit logs to track and review which devices have been concealed by cleanup rules, providing complete visibility into device management hygiene processes.
Microsoft Copilot
1. Conditional Access Optimization Agent and Security Copilot in Microsoft Entra now GA
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
- Conditional Access Optimization Agent in Microsoft Entra — This agent scans your tenant daily for policy gaps as new users and applications come online. It offers precise, one-click remediations so you can keep policies up to date without the overhead.
- Security Copilot in Microsoft Entra — You can now interact with Copilot in Entra to investigate threats, manage the identity lifecycle of employees and guests, and take action quickly across users, apps, and access. All of this works through natural language, without writing custom queries or scripts.
Full Anouncement: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft-entra-blog/smarter-identity-security-starts-with-ai/4429001 (opens in new tab)
When will this happen?
early July 2025 and is expected to complete by early September 2025.
2. Microsoft Security Copilot in Intune is now generally available
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
Microsoft Security Copilot in Intune advances the way IT admins can accelerate their day-to-day endpoint management tasks by embedding generative AI capabilities directly into your Intune workflows, transforming how IT teams plan, troubleshoot, and optimize device configurations
3. Copilot Notebooks in OneNote
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
Copilot Notebooks in OneNote are your own AI-powered notebooks built right into the notetaking experience you already love. Bring together everything you need for your project such as Copilot chats, Word documents, PowerPoint decks, Excel files, and more into a single, focused space. Ask Copilot questions grounded in your collected content and get tailored answers, summaries, and insights.
Full Announcement: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft_365blog/introducing-copilot-notebooks-a-whole-new-way-to-work-with-ai-in-onenote/4428626
When will this happen?
GA
4. Copilot in Teams: Visual Insight for intelligent recap
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
Intelligent meeting recap will be able to incorporate content shared on screen into the AI-based summary provided after the meeting, providing a richer and more comprehensive recap of the meeting. Intelligent meeting recap will capture details shown when a participant shares their screen, ensuring those unspoken insights become part of the meeting recap.
When will this happen:
mid-September2025 and expect to complete by late-September 2025.
5. New policy to manage Copilot Chat button visibility in Edge for Business
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
Starting in August 2025, Microsoft Edge for Business will support a new policy—Microsoft365CopilotChatIconEnabled—that allows administrators to control the visibility of the Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat button in the Edge toolbar. This gives organizations more flexibility in managing user access to Copilot features in Edge.
When will this happen?
early July 2025 and expect to complete by late July 2025.
6. Researcher Agent in Microsoft Word
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
Rolling out the new Researcher agent in Microsoft Word for Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed users. This agent combines OpenAI’s deep research model with Copilot’s orchestration and search capabilities to help users conduct complex, multi-step research across work and web data.
When will this happen?
August 18, 2025 (previously July 16) and completes by September 1, 2025 (previously July 28).
Microsoft Admin
1. Linkable token identifiers now GA
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
General availability of linkable token identifiers, which let you trace a user’s session across workloads from a specific authentication event. This feature improves incident response and anomaly detection, helping mitigate threats like remote phishing and malware attacks. Linkable token identifiers are now available for:
- Microsoft Entra sign-in logs
- Microsoft Exchange Online audit logs
- Microsoft Graph activity logs
- Microsoft Teams audit logs
- Microsoft SharePoint Online audit logs
2. Token Protection Available for Entra ID P1 Licenses
Licensing Update ×
How this will affect your organization
Token protection in conditional access policies are now available in P1 (previous only in P2)
Microsoft Makes Token Protection Available for Entra ID P1 Licenses (opens in new tab)
3. New Detection technology for Mail Bombing attacks
New Feature ×
How this will affect your organization
To address the limitations of current defenses which often include the victim’s attempt to build their own mail flow rules, Microsoft Defender for Office 365 releases a comprehensive solution involving a durable block to limit the influx of emails, majority of which are often Spam. By intelligently tracking message volumes across different sources and time intervals, this new detection leverages historical patterns of the sender and signals related to spam content. It prevents mail bombs from being dropped into the user’s inbox and the messages are rather sent to the Junk folder (of Outlook). Note: Safe sender lists in Outlook continue to be honored, so emails from trustworthy sources are not unexpectedly moved to the Junk folder (in order to prevent false positives).
When will this happen:
GA
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