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Jamie Bartlett, award-winning technology writer and bestselling author of How to Talk to AI, discusses why the skills that matter most for using language models are cognitive and linguistic, not technical. • How language models actually work and why understanding the basics changes how you use them • The sycophancy problem: how question framing and emotional pressure skew your results • Why cognitive offloading is a growing risk for individuals and organisations • Voice mode vs typing and when each approach serves you best • Practical techniques including devil's advocate prompting, cognitive friction, and reflecting before prompting • Why the best AI users are often people with no IT background at all More about Jamie and his work at jamiebartlett.co. Thanks to Jabra, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud.

Tristan Gayford, Microsoft Teams Product Manager at EY, discusses managing Microsoft Teams across one of the world's largest organisations and the challenge of shifting from predictable per-user licensing to consumption-based AI costs. • Tristan's journey through the unified communications evolution, from Office Communications Server in 2008 through Lync and Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams at enterprise scale • Running Microsoft Teams across 400,000+ employees in over 100 countries, and how professional services firms navigate data residency and regulatory complexity • How EY has adopted Microsoft Copilot for meeting recaps, transcription and notes, balancing retained and transient transcription across different regulatory environments • The fundamental shift from fixed per-user-per-month licensing to consumption-based AI billing, and why IT funding models need to evolve • Why AI consumption costs should be owned by the business rather than IT, treating AI as an employee whose output must be justified up the management chain • The challenge of model selection and cost transparency when business users lack guidance on which AI model to choose and cannot predict costs before running a prompt Thanks to Landis, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud

Pratik Chanda, WW Partner Sales Lead - Devices, GCPS GTM at Cisco, discusses Cisco's record-breaking growth in the devices market and why the company is uniquely positioned for Microsoft Teams Rooms deployments. • Cisco's journey to becoming one of the fastest-growing Microsoft Teams Rooms OEMs, crossing almost a billion dollars in devices revenue • What sets Cisco apart: the intelligent workplace experience, combining AV, networking, security and AI observability across the entire stack • The management story: ProPortal, Control Hub (soon to be Cloud Control) and dual registration for a single pane of glass across all endpoints • Cisco's open platform philosophy: native support for Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Google, and the rebrand from Webex Devices to Cisco Devices • How customers and partners can get started with Cisco for Microsoft Teams Rooms Thanks to Cisco, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud.

Chandra Chivukula, Vice President of Engineering at Microsoft Teams, discusses the evolution of Microsoft Teams into a platform for human and agentic interaction. • Microsoft Teams is being positioned as a secure, compliant enterprise surface for AI agents, bringing agentic infrastructure within the Microsoft 365 compliance boundary • Microsoft Scout demonstrates the power of enterprise-safe AI, running within the corporate boundary with full access to organisational data for real productive workflows • Facilitator, the meetings agent, is already delivering real value by automating meeting follow-ups and enabling voice-driven task creation in real time • Channel agent brings durable, searchable AI-ready knowledge to Microsoft Teams channels, offering better discoverability and long-term institutional memory than group chats • Copilot in chat enables multiplayer AI collaboration, acting as a virtual coworker within existing group conversations • Engineering teams at Microsoft are seeing significant productivity gains through coding harnesses built on Copilot CLI, with access to multiple AI models for cross-verification • Catch Up on mobile provides a card-based, one-handed way to triage important messages, pulling users back into channels with AI-curated relevance • Structuring work in channels rather than group chats builds an accruing knowledge base that AI agents can reason over, benefiting the entire organisation Thanks to AVI-SPL, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud

Victor Guzman, Senior Technical Program Manager at Microsoft, and Siunie Sutjahjo, Principal Product Manager, Microsoft Teams Meeting, walk through the exact quality review process from Microsoft's Get to Green programme, giving every Microsoft Teams admin the tools to diagnose and resolve call quality issues. • Victor shares the seven-step quality and reliability checklist that resolved 99% of escalated customer issues • A full walkthrough of the CQD QER 5.3 templates, covering usage summaries, media health dashboards, transport reports and VPN analysis • How to identify whether issues stem from proxy configurations, VPN tunnelling, DNS resolution or network congestion • Using weekly metrics and drill-down reports to pinpoint problems by country, subnet, hour and individual meeting • The per-user search experience for troubleshooting specific complaints and meeting IDs • How to present CQD data to network and security teams to drive action Thanks to Barco, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud.

Gidi Adlersberg, Voca CIC Business Line Manager at AudioCodes, discusses the new Microsoft Teams Voice Agent Certification Program, with AudioCodes being the first vendor to achieve certification. • How the certification builds on Microsoft's Unify integration model, using the same Azure technology stack as the Microsoft Teams Contact Centre certification • The difference between Microsoft's native Teams Phone Agent and the extended, fully managed AI receptionist service from AudioCodes • Real-world use cases including caller authentication, knowledge base-driven troubleshooting, and sentiment-aware bot responses • Why proper bot-to-human escalation is critical and how context is preserved when transferring to a live Microsoft Teams user • AudioCodes' predictable, capped commercial model with no token-based charges • Implementation as a fully managed service, from proof of concept through to production Thanks to AudioCodes, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud.

MVP Tom Arbuthnot shares all the latest Microsoft Teams news and announcements in less than 15 minutes for September 2026 Upcoming Events Events are back after the August pause: Teams Fireside Chat — Kim Matlock, Principal Lead Program Manager, Teams Rooms, with Matt Slomka · 10 September — going deep on Rooms, Android and the Pro Management Portal; bring your questionsHow a Global Legal IT Team Turned Message Center Chaos into Governance · 16 SeptemberMicrosoft Teams Devices Ask Me Anything · 22 SeptemberM365 Change Community Round Up · 29 SeptemberMicrosoft Teams Contact Center Face-Off: 5 Solutions, 5 Demos, 50 Minutes Live · 15 October — five certified vendors in one live session, each walking through their solution and what makes it different. Come and ask questions. Many thanks again to Ribbon, this month's benefactor. Hope this update has been useful

Chris Bailey, Lead Infrastructure Engineer (Voice and Contact Centre) at Maersk, discusses the practical realities of deploying voice AI across a global enterprise, from early proof of concepts to live production in 50 countries. • Why the business drove Voice AI adoption, approaching IT rather than the other way around • Inbound vs outbound use cases and why outbound finance collections proved the bigger success • Vendor selection beyond the incumbent: balancing AI voice quality and telephony integration • The integration challenge with PSTN transfers, SIP trunking, and API media streaming as the gold standard • Hidden costs including PSTN, resourcing effort, and the ongoing refinement voice AI demands • The "new hire" analogy for onboarding and monitoring your AI agent • Who should own voice AI in your organisation and bridging the skills gap between telephony and prompt engineering • Why business collaboration and clear ownership of responsibilities matter from day one Thanks to Ribbon, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud

Mahendra Sekaran, Corporate Vice President for Product Management and Data Science at Microsoft, discusses the rapid pace of AI transformation and its impact on the communications and collaboration space. • Azure continues its strong growth at 43%, fuelled by accelerating AI adoption and cloud investment, with remaining performance obligations reaching $678 billion. • Microsoft's product teams are using AI agents to compress planning cycles from six to eight weeks down to days, with approximately 80% accuracy on cost estimates. • Full agentic loops are being built across Microsoft's code bases, transforming the software development lifecycle and accelerating iteration velocity. • Work IQ provides the platform layer that makes enterprise knowledge, including documents, emails, chats, meetings, and transcripts, accessible to Copilot and agents, whilst maintaining data governance and compliance. • Microsoft's multi-model approach gives customers choice across OpenAI, Anthropic, and in-house models, optimising for cost, performance, and flexibility. • Microsoft Teams Phone Agent is in Frontier Public Preview, enabling voice AI agents to front customer interactions with an expected 70-80% call deflection rate. Thanks to Pure IP, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud.

Ally Ward and Kevin Spence discuss the practical realities of moving 2,500 of 8,000 users from Microsoft E5 to E7, covering migration strategy, agent governance, consumption costs, Entra Suite, and lessons learned from a global legal practice. • Why E7 is far more than a simple licence swap and the operational complexity behind it • The hotel room analogy: how unassigned E7 licences impact your E5 capacity • The double-hop migration process and why the order of operations matters to avoid service desk chaos • Agent 365's promise versus reality: regional reporting gaps, licensing for agent consumers, and governance challenges • Entra Suite as a sleeper benefit bundled into E7 and the partial-coverage problem • The Cowork consumption credit conundrum: 175,000 credits burned in under a month by 20 users, how do you measure value? • Why agent governance is not an IT problem and needs business-wide engagement This episode is sponsored by Luware Recording - a cloud compliance recording and analytics solution that helps organisations securely capture, archive, and analyse communications across multiple platforms to meet regulatory requirements.

Adnon Dow, Chief Product Officer at Pure IP, discusses how Pure IP is evolving from a traditional voice carrier into an intelligent SIP edge platform powered by AI. • How AI is reshaping voice infrastructure across three layers: network management, data intelligence, and service enablement • The shift from over-the-top services to embedding intelligence natively at the network edge, enriching calls at the point of entry • Why Pure IP's platform-agnostic approach works across Microsoft Teams, Webex, Zoom, and Contact Center environments • How a best-of-breed partner strategy delivers recording, fraud detection, and analytics without building everything from scratch • The rising threat of AI-driven robocalls and deep fakes, and how trusted call scoring and LRN networks help combat fraud • Where voice agents and agentic AI workflows are heading, and why network fundamentals remain critical to making them reliable Thanks to Pure IP, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud

Emily Kirby, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Teams Engineering, discusses the latest developments and future direction for Microsoft Teams Phone. • Multi-line calling: a multi-year effort now shipped, allowing multiple phone numbers on a single account across geographies • Consult and merge in meetings: dial out to an external party, navigate an IVR, and merge them back into the call - a big win for financial services and similar industries • Call transfer improvements: presence visibility for transfer destinations, blind handoff, and streamlined control bar buttons for faster workflows • Teams Phone Agent: an intelligent AI frontline to answer and route customer calls for your organisation • Intelligent call delegation: a personal AI delegate that screens calls, communicates on your behalf, and helps you stay focused • Automatic recording for call queues: now on the public roadmap, decoupling recordings from individual agents and centralising them in SharePoint • Making Copilot intelligence seamless: efforts to simplify turning on transcription, recaps, and other AI features in everyday phone workflows • Teams Phone Community: a quarterly initiative from the Microsoft calling team — join to connect with product managers and shape future topics Thanks to AudioCodes, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud.

Javed Khan, CEO at Neat, discusses his return to the industry and his vision for simple, open, intelligent collaboration experiences. • How advances in edge computing and smaller AI models are enabling a new wave of innovation in conference room experiences • The benefits of running AI locally on devices, including reduced latency, enhanced privacy, and real-time transcription and translation • Neat's vision for simplifying room setup and device management through Neat Pulse and their new MCP server integration • Supporting multiple platforms as the "Switzerland" of the devices industry, including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google • The partnership with Microsoft on MDEP and what it means for manageability, security, and standardisation across devices Thanks to Neat, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud

MVP Tom Arbuthnot shares all the latest Microsoft Teams and Copilot news and announcements in less than 15 minutes for August 2026 Link to the deck: Microsoft 365 Enterprise Update - August 2026.pptx Fresh on Empowering.Cloud AudioCodes: Multi-Camera Teams Rooms on Android - with Alex Tan Teams Insider Podcast Microsoft Places Updates Explained - with Martin Boam, Microsoft. Desk booking, room booking and where AI fits. Dynamics 365 Contact Center Explained - with Alpana Bajaj, Product Lead, Microsoft. A great walk through where D365 Contact Center sits. Why Microsoft Is Quietly Winning with Enterprise AI - with Rishi Kumar, Logitech. A really interesting take on Microsoft's enterprise AI position.  Thanks to Landis for their support of Empowering.Cloud

Graham Hosking, Senior AI Solutions Engineer at Microsoft, breaks down Agent 365, Microsoft's approach to observing, governing, and securing AI agents across multi-platform environments. • How Agent 365 builds on existing Entra, Defender, and Purview capabilities to provide full visibility over AI agents • Live demo of a fully autonomous LangChain agent automatically flagged for risky behaviour by Defender • How third-party agents from Amazon, Google, Databricks, and Salesforce can be brought into a central registry • The Agent 365 SDK and how partners like Adobe, Atlassian, and Lovable are already baking in observability • Shadow IT monitoring for local AI agents via Defender for Endpoint • MCP tools and plugin management for controlling end-user access • Licensing breakdown: end-user based, one seat lights everything up, and the E5 to E7 step-up path • Bonus demo of Morgan, a fully autonomous digital CFO with voice and avatar interaction built on LangChain Thanks to Crestron, this episode's sponsor, for their continued support of Empowering.Cloud