What actually is Teams Phone? After episodes on voice apps, the Queues app and full contact centres, Ben and Zach finally go back to the beginning.

In episode twelve of 365 Explained, Zach takes the lead and covers Teams Phone from the ground up:

◆ What a PBX is, and why Teams Phone is one living in the cloud

◆ The four ways to get phone lines into Teams — Calling Plans, Direct Routing, Operator Connect and Teams Phone Mobile — and how to pick between them

◆ Emergency calling and the regulatory side, plus where to check country coverage

◆ Licensing: Teams Phone Standard, the bit you might already own in E5, and Shared Calling

◆ The PBX table stakes — hold, transfers, forwarding, multi-line, presence-based routing and cloud voicemail

◆ SIP Gateway for keeping older handsets (and the phone on the warehouse wall) working

◆ What happens when the internet goes down: SBAs, redundant ISPs and satellite backups

◆ Copilot in Teams Phone — Teams Phone agent, Copilot call delegation, mid-call Copilot and AI transfer summaries

Whether you've inherited a Teams Phone estate or you're staring at a PBX contract renewal wondering if there's a better way, this is the grounding episode.

We say 101, but naturally it gets complicated fairly quickly.

What's carrying your calls today: Calling Plans, Operator Connect, Direct Routing, or a PBX that refuses to die? Let us know.

#TeamsPhone #MicrosoftTeams #Microsoft365 #Copilot #365Explained

What is Power Automate, really, and why should an IT Pro care when it’s usually pitched at citizen developers?

In episode eleven of 365 Explained, Ben and Zach look at Power Automate from the admin’s side of the fence.

We cover:

• How triggers, actions and connectors fit together
• Cloud flows, desktop flows and generative flows
• When a personal flow should probably become an Azure Logic App
• Power Platform environments and why they matter
• Standard and premium connectors
• The Workflows app in Teams and its slightly confusing AI workflows
• How Power Automate supports parts of Copilot Studio and agent flows

Whether you’re new to Power Automate or you’ve been using flows without looking too closely at what sits underneath them, this is our attempt at a 101.

We say 101, but naturally it gets complicated fairly quickly.

What are you automating with Power Automate, and where do you draw the line between a personal flow and a proper business process? Let us know.

#PowerAutomate #PowerPlatform #Microsoft365 #CopilotStudio #365Explained

Recorded live at CommsvNext in Denver, Colorado. Ben and Zach are joined by Oli Lifely from Luware to talk about what happens when native Teams call queues aren't enough and you need a full contact center.

In this episode, we cover:

• The three Microsoft certification models for contact center integration: Connect, Extend, and the newly renamed Unify
• How each model handles the call differently — from SIP trunk hairpinning to Graph API signalling
• What a contact center adds beyond Queues App: skills-based routing, cradle-to-grave reporting, omni-channel, and outbound
• Where AI fits beyond chatbots — proactive SLA monitoring, natural language workflow configuration, and automated remediation
• The biggest mistakes organisations make when migrating off legacy PBXs to Teams

Whether you're hitting the limits of Queues App or planning a move off Avaya, Mitel, or Cisco, this one's for you.

How does Microsoft actually roll out updates across M365 — and how much control do you really have? Ben and Zach break down the update lifecycle across the entire Microsoft 365 ecosystem in episode seven of 365 Explained.

In this episode, we explore:

• The "rings" model — from dev teams to dogfooding to your tenant
• Targeted release vs standard release — and where to find the settings
• Office app update channels — current, monthly enterprise, and semi-annual (spoiler: Microsoft no longer recommends semi-annual for most users)
• How Teams updates differently to the rest of Office
• The OneDrive sync client and its own update rings
• Where Windows fits into the picture
• Message Centre vs the M365 Roadmap — and why you need to watch both
• How Copilot Frontier adds yet another layer to all of this

Whether you're an admin trying to get ahead of changes, or you're just tired of users asking "why don't I have that feature yet?", this one's for you.

Or listen on all good & bad podcasting platforms alike

Microsoft has announced Microsoft 365 E7, "The Frontier Suite", the first new enterprise tier above E5 since 2015. It goes GA on May 1st at $99/user/month, wrapping E5, Copilot, Agent 365 and the full Entra Suite into one SKU.

In this episode, Ben and Zach break down what's inside E7, how the enterprise licensing ladder has evolved from E1 through to E7, and whether the pricing math adds up vs buying à la carte. They also get into what's still missing from the bundle (Teams Premium, calling plans, attendee packs) and whether E7 actually solves the add-on sprawl problem.

There are also questions Microsoft hasn't answered yet: is Agent 365 a tenant-level unlock or a per-user licence? Who do you actually need to licence? And what does this mean for organisations still on E3 or E5?

Topics covered:

• History of Microsoft enterprise SKUs (E1, E3, E4, E5, E7)
• What E7 adds: Copilot, Agent 365, Entra Suite, advanced security
• Pricing breakdown: $99 bundled vs $117 à la carte
• What's NOT included: Teams Premium, calling plans, attendee packs
• The Agent 365 licensing question
• Who should consider E7 vs staying on E5

Links:

• Microsoft announcement: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2026/03/09/introducing-the-first-frontier-suite-built-on-intelligence-trust/
• Microsoft 365 blog: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2026/03/09/powering-frontier-transformation-with-copilot-and-agents/

Copilot Frontier keeps showing up across M365 admin centres, but it's not well explained and the documentation doesn't make it much easier. In this episode, Ben and Zach dig into what Frontier actually is, why it exists as a separate thing from targeted release, and what's in it right now. From Researcher and Analyst agents through to the Opal computer use agent.

We talk through the admin controls (and the inconsistencies across them), licensing questions nobody has answers to yet, MCP servers appearing under the Frontier banner, and whether you should turn it on for your users.

We'd love to hear what you're doing with Frontier in your environments. Get in touch on LinkedIn or leave a comment on YouTube.

Ever wondered if the Teams Queues App could save you from a full contact centre deployment? Ben and Zach get into Microsoft's Contact Center Lite experience in episode six of 365 Explained. In this episode, we explore:

• What the Queues App actually is (and what it isn't) 🔹The Teams Premium licensing question—who needs it?
• Monitor, whisper, barge, and takeover functionality explained
• Real-time analytics (spoiler: it actually updates in seconds)
• Shared call history, the feature that finally arrived
• When Queues App is enough vs when you need a proper contact centre
• What's still missing (hello, Copilot button?)

Whether you're already running Call Queues and curious about the upgrade, or evaluating whether to skip the third-party contact centre entirely, this one's got you covered.

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Join us on LinkedIn, we'd love to hear what you thought & any requests for future topics!

Don’t worry if you don’t know your IaC from your elbow, neither did Ben or Zach when they started recording! Thankfully, Elliott Woodruff, Principal Architect at Synextra, was onboard to help make sense of it all for us!

In this episode, we explore:

• What Infrastructure as Code actually means in Azure and M365
• The differences between Bicep, ARM, and Terraform (and when to use each)
• Real-world use cases, risks, and a few horror stories
• How IaC can help standardise tenant setups and improve security
• Why AI and Copilot might soon be writing your deployment scripts

Whether you're IaC-curious or already knee-deep in Terraform state files, this one’s packed with practical insights, honest takes, and a few cautionary tales.

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Join us on LinkedIn, we'd love to hear what you thought & any requests for future topics!

In this episode, Ben and Zach explore what it’s really like to use M365 Copilot in practice. They break down how it compares to Copilot Chat, where it fits into daily workflows, and what you actually get for your $30 per month.

They cover:

• The difference between M365 Copilot and Copilot Chat
• Licensing, data protection, and value for money
• How Copilot works across Teams, Word, Excel, Outlook, and Loop
• Tips for better prompts by being clear about your goal, context, and expectations
• New features like Memory and Custom Instructions
• The rise of Agents and how to build your own with Copilot Studio
• Integrations with tools like Jira and Confluence
• A look at Notebooks and Pages for more persistent, project-based Copilot use

It’s a grounded, honest take on what Copilot can and can’t do today, with a few wishlist items thrown in for good measure.

Whether you're testing Copilot now or just trying to make sense of the hype, this episode gives you a practical lens on where it fits in the M365 ecosystem.

In this episode, Ben and Zach dive into the world of Microsoft Teams Voice Apps: the unsung heroes behind call routing, Auto Attendants, and Call Queues.

Whether you're new to Teams Phone or knee-deep in deployment, this episode breaks down:

• What Voice Apps are and where they fit in the Teams Phone ecosystem
• How Auto Attendants and Call Queues work (and when to use each)
• The role of Resource Accounts and how licensing works (spoiler: it’s not as scary as it sounds)
• Real-world examples like IT support lines, sales queues, and holiday routing
• Tips for managing greetings, voice menus, and directory search
• What’s possible with Teams Premium (and what’s not)

Expect practical guidance, a few laughs, and plenty of “oh, that’s why!” moments.

🎧 Tune in to learn how to build smarter call flows and make Teams Phone work harder for your users.