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Hello Champions!
Here’s a recap and top Q+A from our July M365 Champions monthly call of 2026. We kicked off the call annoucing a new Champion Stories program to showcase real-world Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption success stories from the Champions community. Organizations that have successfully introduced or scaled Copilot are invited to share their journey, lessons learned, and best practices. Selected stories will be professionally filmed and published to help other Champions learn from peer experiences. Submit your story at aka.ms/ChampionStory.
This month’s main topic featured the redesigned Microsoft Teams meeting controls with Michelle Maislen, Principal Product Manager and Ryan Miller, UX Researcher from the Microsoft Teams product group. She explained that the redesign was driven by customer feedback around cluttered meeting controls, accidental clicks, and difficulty finding key features. The new experience introduces a cleaner, more organized toolbar with mic, camera, and share controls prioritized, separates the Share and Leave buttons to prevent accidental exits, moves advanced features into a structured “More” menu, and allows users to customize their meeting controls through drag-and-drop pinning. She acknowledged that changes such as moving Raise Hand under Reactions may be polarizing, but emphasized that users can personalize the toolbar to fit their workflow. Michelle also detailed the phased rollout plan, with users receiving opportunities to opt in before automatic migration, and shared that the redesign will extend across meetings, webinars, and town halls. Throughout the discussion and Q&A, she reinforced that the goal is to create a simpler, more intuitive, and highly customizable Teams meeting experience while preserving access to all existing meeting functionality. Click here to learn more about the Teams Meeting Controls redesign.
Q+A from this month’s session:
1. When will the new Teams Meeting Controls reach General Availability (GA)?
Answer: Microsoft expects the redesigned meeting controls to roll out worldwide in September 2026, following preview validation and user feedback.
2. How does the 20-day rollout experience work?
Answer: Users will receive several opportunities to opt in to the new experience. After approximately 20 days, they will be automatically migrated.
3. Can users switch back to the old meeting controls?
Answer: Yes. A temporary toggle allows users to switch back to the old experience, although Microsoft plans to remove this option in the future.
4. Why was Raise Hand moved under Reactions?
Answer: Research showed users frequently clicked the wrong button when Raise Hand and Reactions were adjacent. Moving Raise Hand under Reactions reduces accidental clicks.
5. Can users move Raise Hand back to the main toolbar?
Answer: Yes. Users can drag and pin Raise Hand to the main toolbar if they prefer it there.
6. Can users customize the meeting toolbar?
Answer: Yes. Most controls can be pinned, unpinned, and rearranged using drag-and-drop customization.
7. Which controls cannot be moved?
Answer: Microphone, Camera, Share, and Leave remain fixed to ensure a consistent core meeting experience.
8. Will toolbar customizations persist between meetings?
Answer: Yes. Customizations persist across meetings on the same device.
9. Will toolbar settings sync across multiple devices?
Answer: Not initially. Microsoft indicated multi-device synchronization is planned for a future update.
10. Can users pin specific reactions (such as Thumbs Up) to the toolbar?
Answer: Not in the initial release. The team acknowledged the request and is considering expanded reaction customization.
11. Will Microsoft add more meeting reactions?
Answer: Yes. The Teams team confirmed they’re exploring expanded reaction sets and potentially custom organizational reactions.
12. Does the redesign apply to Webinars and Town Halls?
Answer: Yes. The redesigned controls will be available across Teams meetings, webinars, and town halls.
13. Is the redesign available in both Teams Desktop and Teams Web?
Answer: Yes. The redesigned controls are supported in the Desktop and Web clients.
14. Will Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environments be supported?
Answer: Yes. Microsoft confirmed support for VDI deployments.
15. Why redesign the meeting controls at all?
Answer: The redesign addresses common pain points including:
Toolbar clutter
Difficulty locating controls
Accidental clicks
Confusion between Reactions and Raise Hand
Accidentally clicking Leave instead of Share
16. Where did features like Notes, Rooms, Apps, Facilitator, and Captions go?
Answer: These capabilities were not removed. They have been reorganized under the new More menu to create a cleaner primary toolbar.
17. What adoption and readiness resources are available?
Answer: Microsoft published:
An IT Pro Change Management Guide
An End User Visual Guide
Adoption content on adoption.microsoft.com
These resources are designed to help organizations prepare users for the transition.
18. Is Microsoft addressing AI-related meeting security concerns?
Answer: Yes. The Teams team is actively working on better visibility and notifications for:
AI note-taking bots
External recording tools
Third-party meeting assistants
19. Can meeting actions and decisions automatically flow into other Agents or workflows?
Answer: The question was raised by attendees, and Microsoft acknowledged the scenario as valuable feedback. No roadmap or confirmed functionality was announced.
20. Will Education (EDU), GCC, and other government environments receive the redesign?
Answer:
GCC is expected to receive the update roughly in line with worldwide rollout.
GCCH and DoD environments are expected to follow later.
EDU deployment details were still being validated during the session.
Join us on September 22nd for our next community call.
- Haven’t joined the program yet? It’s free! Join here: https://aka.ms/M365Champion.
- Bring your questions to our discussion forum: https://aka.ms/DriveAdoption.