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Welcome to August’s edition of Mondo Clouds Microsoft Rewind - your monthly digest of what’s changing, improving, or retiring across Microsoft 365, Azure, Windows and Copilot. From Intune updates to the latest AI enhancements and cloud services in Azure. This is the place to get the latest news.
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Copilot Updates
Starting with your favourite AI Solution - Copilot! It’s no surprise that Microsoft continue to invest & develop improvements with another raft of updates.
GPT-5 released for M365 Copilot
We bought you a blog post about this earlier this month which you can check out here but as a quick refresh Microsoft has rolled GPT-5 into Microsoft 365. A new Smart Mode lets Copilot choose how much “brains” to apply to each job. Quick asks are faster; deeper work is smarter. The result is less admin, better content, and clearer decisions across your day.
Copilot Surveys Agent
Surveys Agent is a new Copilot agent that turns a plain English prompt into a complete survey workflow. It designs your survey, helps you send it through the right channels, tracks responses, and produces actionable insights, all inside Microsoft 365. It’s currently public preview via the Frontier program.
Key capabilities
Prompt to survey: Describe your goal (e.g., “run an employee satisfaction survey”) and get a structured draft you can tweak.
Smart distribution: Generates a send plan with recommended channels (Outlook/Teams, links), response strategy and a monitoring timeline.
Automated follow-ups: Tracks progress and sends reminders via Outlook to lift completion rates.
Built-in analysis: When you hit a response threshold, it summarises findings and exports both raw data + insights to Excel for collaboration.
This solution can give your business faster insights into things such as Customer Feedback, Employee Engagement or onboarding & training activities.
Streamlined File & Preview for Copilot chat within M365 (iOS)
Users of the M365 Copilot App on iOS may have started to see banners in the M365 Copilot App that’s to ensure users have the equivalent Office Applications installed on their phones for Editing documents (Word, Excel etc). Here’s a quick run through of the changes
From 15 September 2025, the Microsoft 365 Copilot app on iPhone becomes preview-only for Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. You’ll still see content and comments and you can use Copilot Chat against the file, but editing now opens in the standalone Word/Excel/PowerPoint apps.
Banners started 22 August 2025 nudging users to install the standalone Office apps. Teams, OneDrive and Outlook will also redirect editing to those apps
The Create button in Copilot becomes chat-first: you generate a new file via a prompt, then continue editing in the standalone app.
No dates confirmed yet for the change to occur on Android but we’re confident it won’t be far away.
Outlook attachment Summarisation
Outlook now includes a Summarise attachment option powered by Copilot that generates quick, in-context summaries for classic file attachments (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF) directly from the message-handy triage for busy inboxes.
The feature is rolling out across New Outlook for Windows, OWA, Outlook mobile and Outlook for Mac, with Outlook classic also getting the update; Microsoft’s timeline targeted completion by late August 2025.
There are two key caveats: encrypted/labelled files aren’t supported, and archive mailboxes aren’t processed—you’ll need to open those files in the Office app and use Copilot there. Small change, big win: faster “is-this-important?” decisions without opening every attachment.
Tenant Controls for Sharing Links for Copilot Agents
Microsoft has added a tenant-level control to the Microsoft 365 admin centre to govern org-wide sharing links for user-built Copilot agents. Rolling out mid-September 2025, admins can allow all users, no users, or specific users/groups to create these links—useful for tightening agent governance without blocking legitimate collaboration.
You’ll find it at Admin Centre > Copilot > Settings > Data access > Agents.
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Microsoft Teams
Teams Premium – Prevent Screen Capture
Organisers can toggle a “Prevent screen capture” option in Meeting options to block screenshots and most recordings across Windows, Mac, Android and web (platform behaviour varies; iOS restricts live video capture). It’s off by default and must be enabled per meeting, making it ideal for board meetings, HR cases and other high-sensitivity sessions.
The roll out for this is to start imminently from early September.
New Organiser Controls for in-meeting management
Teams is adding a dedicated Organiser Controls menu to the meeting toolbar, consolidating key actions (lock meeting, lobby bypass, participant moderation, screen sharing limits, etc.) into a single fly-out for organisers and co-organisers. This changes the entry point (Meeting options now surface via the new fly-out) but doesn’t add net-new capabilities or require admin changes. Teams Premium customers can also Prevent Copy of Chat under Advanced Protection in the same menu.
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Windows
Windows Backup
Windows Backup for Organisation Now generally available, this enables IT to back up user settings and the list of installed Microsoft Store apps on Windows 10/11 and restore them during OOBE on an Entra-joined device-speeding rebuilds, break/fix, and Windows 10 - 11 move
Configure the backup/restore policies in Intune and ensure devices have the August 2025 security update or later and note that automated backups run roughly every eight days (users can also trigger backups in the Windows Backup app). Great for reducing downtime and standardising post-reimage experience.
M365 Companion Apps
Microsoft 365 Companion apps (Windows 11) new application shortcuts on the taskbar for - People, File Search, and Calendar. These new lightweight applications are designed so users can find colleagues, files, and join meetings without context switching.
Here's a breakdown of each of the companion apps:
People companion - “who’s who” at speed
Fast lookup of colleagues (name, title, dept, skills), org chart navigation, and rich contact cards.
Pin favourites, see availability cues, and jump to Teams chat/call or email in a click.
If Teams isn’t in your plan, calling/IM hooks won’t appear.
File Search companion - files without context-switching
Search and preview Microsoft 365 files from OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams, Outlook; filter by person, type, activity.
Share or copy a link straight from the panel.
Scope is Microsoft 365 file types (non-Microsoft files are out of scope today).
Calendar companion - time and meetings at a glance
See upcoming events, join meetings, and search appointments without opening Outlook.
If Teams isn’t licensed, Teams meetings/chats won’t surface here.
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Microsoft Intune
App Control with new targeting Capabilities
App Control (WDAC) now supports granular targeting—you can assign Managed Installer and app control policies to specific groups instead of going tenant-wide. There’s also a guided wizard to scope, assign and review without guesswork.
Autopilot – Install of Quality Updates during OOBE
Windows can now apply quality updates during the out-of-box experience, so users receive devices already patched. You control this via a new ESP setting in Intune (“Install Windows quality updates”), and it honours your existing deferrals and pause policies. Expect ~30 minutes depending on hardware and network. Great for consistent day-one experience.
Multiple-admin approval (MAA) covers RBAC and device actions
Protect against fat-fingered wipes and privilege drift: Intune now supports two-person approval for sensitive RBAC changes (roles, assignments, scope tags) and critical device actions (wipe, retire, delete). Define approver groups and require a business justification on submit.
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Microsoft 365 Admin
Cloud Managed Remote Mailboxes
Microsoft has introduced a new cloud-managed model for directory-synced users with mailboxes in Exchange Online – this is a step forward for organisations that have the “last exchange server” still knocking around for managing them on-premise exchange attributes.
With this update you can change the “Source of Authority” from exchange attributes to the Cloud with M365. Meaning you can updates all them attributes directly within your M365 Admin centre.
This rolls out in two phases. Phase 1 (Preview) is live now and enables per-mailbox control; Microsoft also plans an org-level default so new directory-synced users can be cloud-managed by default.
Phase 2 will add write-back of key attributes (for example, proxyAddresses, Custom/Extension attributes) to on-prem AD via Entra Cloud Sync—useful if downstream systems still read these from AD. Until Phase 2 lands, treat cloud-edited attributes as authoritative in EXO only.
Minimum requirement: Entra Connect Sync 2.5.76.0+
This is a practical step many of us needed to finally decommission the last Exchange server used purely for attribute management.
Microsoft Sentinel Move to Defender Portal
Microsoft is moving all Sentinel operations from the Azure portal into the Microsoft Defender portal to unify SIEM + XDR in one console. New customers are already being routed to Defender, and Microsoft has set a target to retire the Azure portal experience on 1 July 2026
What’s new / why now
Ongoing feature work and UX improvements are landing in the Defender experience first; Microsoft’s August notes again advise customers to plan the move.
Microsoft published step-by-step guidance for transitioning (no data migration; mainly enablement, permissions, and workspace readiness checks).
Key dates
Now: Many new tenants/workspaces default to Defender portal for Sentinel.
By 1 July 2026: Azure portal for Sentinel retires; users are redirected to Defender
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Do any of these updates spark your curiosity?
If you’re interested in any of these exciting Microsoft updates and want to see how they can improve your organisation’s productivity, security, management, or overall efficiency, don’t hesitate to Get in touch!
Our Microsoft experts are here to guide you through these new features and help you make the most out of them. Let’s work together to ensure your business is ahead of the curve!
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