Microsoft 365 in October 2026: a new Copilot app, a wider Frontier and Copilot in SharePoint without PowerShell

September brought a new pricing model for Copilot — the licence for everyday work and credits for advanced capabilities. October showed how that model is growing. Copilot got a new app where Chat, Cowork and Word, Excel and PowerPoint all come together. Copilot Code arrived, paid by credits, and the Frontier programme expanded to Teams, Outlook, OneDrive and SharePoint as well. And from 1 November, Copilot in SharePoint can no longer be turned off via PowerShell. This is the seventh instalment of the monthly recap — what October 2026 brought and what to do about it.

The new Copilot app: Home, Projects and Workspaces

Since late October the Copilot app opens on the Home page, where Chat and Cowork share one window — you switch between them right in the prompt box. Projects, Workspaces and Automations have appeared in the left panel, and instead of the Agents, Agents & Skills and Customize buttons there is a single Agents & Plugins. Deferred release gets the changes from late November (MC1535647).

• Projects keep chats, Cowork tasks, instructions and files together. They don’t store content themselves — files stay in OneDrive with the same permissions, labels and retention.
• Copilot Notebooks are becoming Copilot Workspaces and existing notebooks will be converted automatically.
• Word, Excel and PowerPoint right inside the Copilot app are rolling out to general availability, which should be complete by mid-November (MC1530611). Working through Chat is covered by the Copilot licence; working through Cowork is paid in credits. The standalone Word, Excel and PowerPoint agents will therefore disappear from mid-November to the end of December (MC1536062).
• Researcher and Analyst will no longer be pinned by default in the navigation. If you want to keep them within people’s reach, pin them in advance in the Microsoft 365 admin center (MC1479277).

For organisations this mainly means rewriting guides and training — instructions like “select the Word agent” or “open Notebooks” won’t be accurate in a few weeks.

Credits in practice: Code and spending policy defaults

In September we pointed out that spending policies have automatic addition of new services switched on by default. October showed what that means. In late October Microsoft began rolling out Copilot Code in the Frontier programme — from a description it builds a tracker, a dashboard or a simple app and publishes it to Copilot Managed Runtime (for now in public preview). Code is given automatically to every user in Frontier with a Copilot licence who is covered by a spending policy with the “Allow new Agents and services as they become available” option switched on (MC1519871). The September message (MC1470425) called that option “Auto-apply new services” — according to the description, it is the same behaviour. Autopilot, the persistent personal agent (formerly Scout), also paid by credits, is due to arrive in Frontier in November. So review who your spending policies cover and whether you want automatic addition of services for them.

Cost management is expanding at the same time. By 20 November at the latest, spending policies from the Microsoft 365 admin center can also be applied to Copilot Studio — the move is voluntary and the administrator makes it environment by environment — and costs will be shown in local currency (MC1530368). A Graph API for managing policies is in beta (MC1521616). And AI Builder credits are ending (MC1526652): from 1 November new and renewed Power Platform and Dynamics 365 licences no longer include them, and AI Builder is paid for with Copilot credits, with no fixed conversion rate. If you have flows built on AI Builder, keep an eye on when your contract ends.

Frontier for Teams, Outlook and SharePoint too

Until now the Frontier programme gave early access to new Copilot features. From November, public previews of Teams, the new Outlook for Windows, OneDrive and SharePoint also come through it, and a Copilot licence is no longer needed to enrol (MC1529472).

One consequence is easy to miss. If you set Frontier to All users because of Copilot, you are now letting the Teams, Outlook and SharePoint previews through to all users with the relevant licence. The setting is in the Microsoft 365 admin center under Copilot > Settings > View all > Copilot Frontier.

Users in Targeted Release don’t move to Frontier on their own, and Targeted Release ends in January 2027 — the pilot group has to be reconfigured manually. It helps that from late October Microsoft is raising the limit on exceptions for Standard and Deferred release from 100 to 10,000 users (MC1536057). We cover how to do it in a separate article.

Copilot in SharePoint and OneDrive from 1 November

The date we flagged in September has passed and Microsoft did not extend it. From 1 November the PowerShell opt-out from the preview is no longer honoured. Availability of Copilot in SharePoint is managed only in the AI settings of individual sites and through Restricted Content Discovery, which also removes AI entry points from selected sites. Management of Restricted Content Discovery can be delegated to site administrators.

October also brought new capabilities: Copilot in SharePoint can extract parts of a PDF, reorder pages or split a document into separate files, restore an older version of a file, send an email with a preview before sending, and work with plugins to other systems. Most of this is in the Copilot licence; image generation, faster metadata autofill and AI site analytics cost credits.

In OneDrive, on the other hand, the File Explorer context menu will lose its Copilot actions such as Summarize, Create FAQ or Compare Files — only “Ask Copilot” will remain (MC1515940, from mid-November). If your guides mention them, it’s time to update them.

SharePoint: site campaigns, the mobile app and SPFx 1.24

• Campaigns right in SharePoint. The Publish experience is taking over Viva Amplify features: news posts can be grouped into a site campaign, published to SharePoint and Outlook — and, with a Viva licence, to Teams too — and tracked with aggregated analytics. Sharing to Viva Engage is rolling out. Viva Amplify isn’t ending and licensing doesn’t change. Any site member or owner can create a campaign, though.
• The new SharePoint mobile app is rolling out by the end of November. From 27 November the SharePoint mobile app no longer works with SharePoint Server (MC1528013) — organisations with on-premises SharePoint should tell people in advance.
• The new SharePoint Lists interface switches on by itself from mid-December (MC1530610). If you use custom command bar formatting, check the new placement of commands.
• SPFx 1.24 and Copilot UX components have been generally available since 28 October — the September promise was kept. Interactive components (dashboards, forms, approvals) appear right in the Copilot conversation and are deployed via the App Catalog. Only users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence will see them, and they don’t work on mobile yet.

Teams and Outlook in October

• EWS is being switched off for real. Since October Microsoft has been switching off Exchange Web Services in tenants where the administrator hasn’t explicitly allowed it, and since 10 October the EWSAllowedAppIDs list decides. Among those affected Microsoft names Mail and Calendar on macOS, classic Outlook for Mac, some Outlook add-ins, outdated versions of Outlook for Windows and backup tools. EWS can be switched back on only temporarily; the final end is 1 April 2027.
• Sending from an alias is generally available (MC1515939). Users can send mail from any address of their mailbox. An administrator has to switch it on, for example Set-OrganizationConfig -SendFromAliasEnabled $True. Watch out for mail flow rules that look for a specific address — they may not catch the alias.
• AI in meetings under new rules. A meeting summary can now be created even without a saved transcript. From January 2027 the Copilot policy for meetings will be replaced by the MeetingAI and TranscriptionWithMeetingAI policies (MC1532253) — settings will be migrated automatically, but scripts built on the old policy will stop working. Around the same time comes meeting memory: meetings with a summary produce files from which Facilitator, and later Copilot, answers. It is on by default with a retention period of five years (MC1429018). The setting will appear in the Teams admin center in January and files will start being created about four weeks later — decide on the retention period as soon as the setting appears.
• Files in chats with external users (MC1479514). The paperclip and drag-and-drop of a file in a chat with another organisation will be switched on in all tenants that have never changed the setting; the file is saved to the sender’s OneDrive. Microsoft has yet to announce the date, but it recommended adjusting the setting by the first week of November. If you don’t want it, switch it off with Set-CsTeamsFilesPolicy -Identity Global -FileSharingInChatsWithExternalUsers Disabled.
• Security in Teams. Teams will use AI to look for phishing in chats with external users (from December, MC1519866) and, from early November, check QR codes in images in internal and external messages (MC1526651). From January 2027 it will be possible to require conditional access for selected sensitive meetings (MC1532256).
• Changing a meeting organiser in Outlook on the web, new Outlook and the Teams calendar arrives from early November (MC1472028), straight away for Teams meetings too — they get a new link, so attendees need to be told.

What switched on by itself

The October edition of the list we’ve kept since August. None of it is bad in itself — it’s just better to decide before you hear about it from the helpdesk:

• Copilot connectors are governed by the Allowed agent types setting from 30 October in the Microsoft 365 admin center (MC1454973). If you managed connectors by script, check the resulting state.
• Comments right in PDFs in the SharePoint and OneDrive file viewer (MC1470416). There is no dedicated switch; labels, DLP and IRM apply.
• A “Promotions” label on promotional emails in Defender for Office 365 (MC1279093). The labelling can’t be switched off.
• DLP alerts have disappeared from the incident queue in Defender (MC1465771). Since 12 October they are listed in Defender XDR as “behaviors”; in Purview they stay.
• Stricter security for Entra sign-in pages (MC1481309). Browser extensions that inject scripts into the sign-in page may stop working.
• Blurred QR codes from external senders in Teams (MC1470410).
• Outlook on the web and new Outlook block .msix and .msixbundle attachments from early November (MC1488841). An exception can be set in the Outlook on the web policy.

Governance: Purview postpones and labels multiply

• Teams retention policies will stop covering Copilot only in January 2027 (MC1481313), not at the turn of October and November. If you need to retain or delete Copilot conversations, you have more time for a separate policy — but you will need one.
• Classic DSPM and DSPM for AI will be switched off only in March 2027 (MC1481315). The date shifted twice in October.
• Sensitivity labels for Entra security groups too (MC1508238), from mid-November. Once a label is assigned to a group it can’t yet be changed or removed — try it on a new group first.
• Auto-labelling for the old .doc, .xls and .ppt formats too (MC1530948). Existing policies need a minor edit, then saving and running again.
• Search-UnifiedAuditLog ends on 15 October 2027 (MC1505599). Audit via the Graph API is generally available and returns up to a million records per query — it’s time to start rewriting scripts built on the old cmdlet.

One thing about Cowork: Grok 4.7 has been added to the model picker. Microsoft offers it as a model from an independent processor — Microsoft’s contractual terms and the Data Protection Addendum (DPA) don’t apply to the data you send to it. A global administrator has to switch it on. Organisations in the EU Data Boundary have only GPT models available in Cowork.

Identity: your own SMS provider is here

Your own SMS provider (Choose Your Own Telephony Provider) has been generally available since 30 October (MC1519855). You can choose from Soprano, Telesign and Infobip. The organisation needs a paid Azure subscription, and the integration runs as an Azure Function in its own subscription — so you pay for both the provider and the running costs in Azure. Sign-in with an SMS code only, without a password, can’t be solved this way. Microsoft recommends having the provider set up at least four weeks before 1 February 2027.

The end of Microsoft-provided SMS and voice-call verification on 1 February 2027 stands (MC1528000). Users with another method will use it; users with only SMS or voice calls must register a passkey. SMS will also end for self-service password reset — 50 days after the end of SMS for sign-in reaches the tenant (MC1536049). A passkey alone doesn’t meet the reset requirements, so people also need another method for reset.

Two changes will help with rolling out passkeys: Windows Hello for Business and Platform SSO on macOS will count as standalone multifactor authentication (MC1450134), and a user with only a password can register a passkey as their first method without SMS beforehand (MC1450133).

Slips and corrections

The column also tracks what slipped or didn’t go to plan:

• Credits on newly purchased Copilot Business licences via CSP won’t switch on on 1 December, as we wrote in September. Microsoft moved the date to January to March 2027 and dropped the exemption for eleven countries. The default limit remains 4,000 credits per user per month, and buying a new licence switches credits on for the existing Copilot Business licences in the tenant as well.
• Credit-paid models in Chat and in Office (Claude Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 Astra) will be generally available only in December, not in November (MC1519122).
• The “Plugins” button from the September edition is in the end called “Agents & Plugins”.
• Copilot Search in SharePoint and OneDrive won’t be the default only for users with a Copilot licence. According to a newer message (MC1540513), search is changing for everyone who searches SharePoint and OneDrive on the web; some of the AI features depend on the licence. General availability comes from mid-January to mid-April 2027, and the new experience can be deferred for the tenant and for individual sites.
• Self-service password reset with registered methods only: in September we wrote about 7 November. In its documentation Microsoft moved enforcement to February 2027, but the Message Center post (MC1325414) still gives November.
• Auto-labelling simulation for 20 million items is still in preview; general availability has slipped to mid-November (MC1469958).
• Mailbox archives of up to 3 TB apply only to eligible licences — for example E5, A5, G5, Microsoft 365 Purview Suite or F5 Compliance; other mailboxes stay at 1.5 TB (MC1472592). We didn’t mention this condition in September.
• Expiration of the main sharing link, which we described as “no date yet”, has general availability in February 2027 on the roadmap, including admin policies (RM571399).
• Cross-tenant calendar sharing via Cross-Tenant Access Policy has slipped from 30 October to 6 November (MC1446796).

Deadlines: what’s coming

Since the September edition we have already seen Teams reporting to Defender switched on and uploading of advanced agents allowed for everyone where an administrator didn’t decide otherwise (25 Oct), general availability of your own SMS provider (30 Oct), and the end of the PowerShell opt-out for Copilot in SharePoint and of AI Builder credits in new and renewed licences (1 Nov).

Date	What ends / changes
mid-Oct–end of Nov 2026	End of one-time passcodes (OTP) for external sharing in SharePoint and OneDrive — move to Entra B2B
3 Nov 2026	Entra — end of the MemberOf operator in dynamic groups
4 Nov–end of Nov 2026	Regular users may create agent blueprints in Entra unless an admin turns it off
6 Nov 2026	Cross-tenant calendar sharing via Cross-Tenant Access Policy
10 Nov 2026	Windows 11 23H2 Enterprise and Education — last update
12 Nov 2026	Copilot Studio — end of the older GPT-4.1 and GPT-5 models, agents move to the new models (outside the US, where data movement across geographies is restricted, GPT-4.1 and GPT-5 remain)
mid-Nov–early Dec 2026	OneDrive — Copilot actions disappear from the File Explorer context menu; .agent agents get an Upgrade button to Agent Builder
by 20 Nov 2026	Copilot Studio in Cost Management in the Microsoft 365 admin center
November 2026	Targeted Release — no more assignment changes (full retirement in January 2027)
27 Nov 2026	SharePoint mobile apps stop supporting SharePoint Server
30 Nov 2026	End of the App Builder agent and vibe.powerapps.com; from this week the Join button in Outlook only for meetings with an HTTPS link
1 Dec 2026	Copilot and Copilot Business can be bought without a base Microsoft 365 subscription too, at the same price
early Dec 2026–end of Jan 2027	Defender — the new permissions model (Defender RBAC) switches on by itself, about 30 days after a notice in the portal
mid–end of Dec 2026	New SharePoint Lists interface
31 Dec 2026	End of the exemption from the teams.cloud.microsoft redirect; around year end SMTP AUTH with Basic authentication also off by default
early–mid Jan 2027	Teams — MeetingAI and TranscriptionWithMeetingAI policies instead of the Copilot policy for meetings
mid–end of Jan 2027	Teams retention policies stop covering Copilot; Teams meeting memory settings (default retention 5 years), files about 4 weeks later
31 Jan 2027	Restricted SharePoint Search ends (replacement: Restricted Content Discovery)
January–March 2027	Copilot Business via CSP with credits on by default
1 Feb 2027	End of Microsoft-provided SMS and voice-call verification; for password reset about 50 days later
February 2027	Self-service password reset with registered methods only (according to the documentation)
28 Feb 2027	Teams Live Events stop working even for previously scheduled events (replacement: town hall)
1 Mar 2027	Classic publishing sites — no new ones
early Mar–end of Jun 2027	Teams — new voicemail email format (sender “Microsoft Teams”); check your mail flow rules
mid–end of Mar 2027	Purview — end of classic DSPM and DSPM for AI
1 Apr 2027	EWS switched off for good; Graph file APIs stop returning pre-authenticated URLs
April 2027	SharePoint agents in the .agent format stop working
1 Jul 2027	Remote Event Receivers — final date; SMS and voice also for global admins and external users
15 Oct 2027	Purview Audit — end of Search-UnifiedAuditLog
1 Oct 2028	Classic SharePoint pages read-only

What’s around the corner

• Microsoft Ignite, 17–20 November. Expect more announcements on Copilot, agents and SharePoint — we’ll go through them in the November edition.
• Copilot Chat without a licence gets limits. Users of the free Copilot Chat will hit “fair use” limits on further features; Microsoft sets them itself and administrators can neither see nor change them. Prepare the helpdesk for questions about why “Copilot stopped answering”, and think about who approves licence requests.
• HTML pages in SharePoint go to general availability from mid-November to the end of December (MC1479517).
• Archiving files by retention policy to Microsoft 365 Archive starts in mid-November (MC1325441).
• The group access report in the SharePoint admin center will show all sites a given group has access to. Microsoft recommends reviewing it before assigning Copilot licences (MC1540348).

Small things worth a mention

• Brand Center no longer switches on the Public CDN by itself (MC1505610) — only when an administrator explicitly confirms it. Custom fonts still require it, though.
• Turning off Copilot memory doesn’t delete saved memories (MC1478965). Copilot just stops using them — good to know for compliance.
• Basic insight into agents even without an Agent 365 licence — the Microsoft 365 admin center shows active users, error rate and run time of agents (MC1506727).
• Teams has moved to a quarterly overview of new features. The October “What’s New in Microsoft Teams” didn’t come out; the next one is due in December.

What to take away from October

Three things to remember:

1. Copilot is now one app. Rewrite your guides (Notebooks are now Workspaces, the Word, Excel and PowerPoint agents are going away) and decide whether to pin Researcher and Analyst for people in advance.
2. Review your spending policies and Frontier. Automatic addition of services now means, in practice, Copilot Code for everyone in the policy who is in Frontier, and Frontier set to All users means Teams, Outlook and SharePoint previews for everyone with the relevant licence.
3. Decide on SMS and EWS by December. Your own SMS provider should be set up at least four weeks before 1 February; make sure everyone else has a passkey and another method for password reset. And check which apps still rely on EWS.

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At EP365 we handle these transitions with companies almost daily — and after October we expect the most questions about spending policies and new credit-paid services, setting up Frontier and pilot groups and managing Copilot in SharePoint through site settings. If you run into any of the above and don’t know where to start, take a look at our services or simply write to us — we’ll talk it through, no strings attached.

The next instalment of the monthly column comes out in early December — a recap of what November 2026 brought, including the Ignite conference.