WEEKLY BRIEFING · 23 FEB – 1 MAR 2026 · UTC
Public sources only
128 public updates in week 9
Microsoft published 3 Windows KB releases (3 optional previews). No new MSRC release that week. 29 roadmap changes, led by Outlook (7) and Defender (5). 15 lifecycle milestones fall in the next 30 days. 11 Windows and security articles from Microsoft blogs.
3Windows KB releases
0MSRC release notes
29Roadmap changes across 9 products
11Windows and security articles
Windows releases3
Windows and security news11
- Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28020.1673 (Canary Channel)27 Feb
- Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.7939 (Dev Channel)27 Feb
- Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7934 (Beta Channel)27 Feb
- What’s New in Windows Group Policy Preferences Debug Logging27 Feb
- Announcing ReFS Boot for Windows Server Insiders27 Feb
6 more
- Windows Server 2025 Remote Desktop Session Host Capacity Planning Whitepaper26 Feb
- VMSA-2026-0002: VMware Workstation and Fusion updates address multiple vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-22715, CVE-2026-22716, CVE-2026-22717, CVE-2026-22722)26 Feb
- Reading GPSVC Like a Crime Novel25 Feb
- When Group Policy Goes Haywire: Spotting registry.pol Corruption Fast (and other problems too)24 Feb
- Windows Server Secure Boot playbook for certificates expiring in 202623 Feb
- Security baseline for Windows Server 2025, version 260223 Feb
Lifecycle milestones in the next 30 days15
- Retirement: Speech to Text API v3.0 API Retirement 13 Mar
- Retirement · 2 products: DMS (classic) – SQL Scenarios only retirement, Feature deprecation: Trigger playbooks on alerts by analytics rule 15 Mar
- Retirement: AzureML Batch Endpoints API Preview retirement 16 Mar
- Retirement: Classic VMware protection scenario using ASR 29 Mar
- Retirement · 9 products: API Keys for querying Application Insights, Batch Region Retirement, Classic alerts for Azure Backup, Classic Compute Node Communication Model, Deprecation of flash-extract custom fields, Retire Require Approve Client App Conditional Access Grant, VHD and Managed Images, Windows Server 2019 on AKS hybrid, Windows Server 2019 on AKS Retirement 31 Mar
- End of support: Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Parallel Data Warehouse (Analytics Platform System) 31 Mar
Microsoft product news85
Microsoft Entra what's new · 21
- General Availability - Enabling Email and SMS OTP MFA in Entra External ID Native Authentication1 Mar
- General Availability - Just‑in‑Time Password Migration in Microsoft Entra External ID1 Mar
- General Availability - Microsoft Entra Connect Health now enforces TLS 1.21 Mar
18 more
- General Availability - Microsoft Single Sign-On for Linux support for authenticating with Phish-Resistant MFA credentials1 Mar
- General Availability - New M365 group creation experience in My Groups1 Mar
- General Availability - Passkey profiles in Microsoft Entra ID1 Mar
- General Availability - SCIM 2.0 APIs for Microsoft Entra ID1 Mar
- General Availability - Synced passkeys in Microsoft Entra ID1 Mar
- General Availability - Tenant configuration management APIs1 Mar
- General Availability – Improved readability for Authentication Methods Policy Update audit logs1 Mar
- Plan for change – Agent Registry consolidation into Microsoft Agent 3651 Mar
- Public Preview - Cross-tenant security group synchronization1 Mar
- Public Preview - Entra Hybrid Join using Entra Kerberos1 Mar
- Public Preview - Microsoft Entra Backup and Recovery is now available1 Mar
- Public Preview - Microsoft Entra passkeys on Windows1 Mar
- Public Preview - Passkey Adoption Campaigns with the Conditional Access Optimization Agent1 Mar
- Public Preview - Phased Rollout with the Conditional Access Agent1 Mar
- Public Preview - Related Tenants1 Mar
- Public preview - Secure add-on tenant creation1 Mar
- Public preview - Tenant configuration management administration portal experience1 Mar
- Public preview - Tenant governance relationships1 Mar
Copilot Studio what's new · 14
- (Preview) Use Work IQ tools to connect Microsoft 365 Copilot and your agents to the Work IQ service.1 Mar
- Add Bing Custom Search as a knowledge source to ground your agent's responses in a curated, scoped web index by using a Custom Configuration ID.1 Mar
- Agent evaluations are now generally available (GA).1 Mar
11 more
- Apply accessibility best practices for Adaptive Cards to support screen readers, keyboard navigation, and Teams-specific scenarios.1 Mar
- ChatGPT‑5 is now generally available globally (excluding GCC environments) for use in production agents.1 Mar
- Claude Sonnet 4.5, Claude Sonnet 4.6, and Claude Opus are now generally available globally (excluding GCC environments).1 Mar
- Configure post-call action topics for voice-enabled agents to trigger backend actions automatically after a call ends, based on how the conversation concluded.1 Mar
- Configure reprompt messages in Question nodes with randomization support to improve conversation recovery for retry prompts, entity recognition failures, and voice scena…1 Mar
- Create multi‑turn conversation tests in Copilot Studio to evaluate how agents perform across realistic dialog flows instead of single‑turn interactions.1 Mar
- For users with Bot transcript viewer privileges, after you filter your list of questions or reactions, you can download the filtered questions or reactions to a .csv fil…1 Mar
- For users with Bot transcript viewer privileges, downloaded session transcripts from Copilot Studio now include session-level customer satisfaction (CSAT) values.1 Mar
- Use an agent node to call a Copilot Studio agent from an agent flow.1 Mar
- Use the Prompt assistant in Prompt builder to draft prompts faster with GPT model–powered suggestions.1 Mar
- View and filter detailed lists of user questions and reactions from your agent's conversations.1 Mar
Microsoft Defender for Cloud release notes · 11
- AI model security for Azure Machine Learning (Preview)1 Mar
- Automated malware remediation in Defender for Storage1 Mar
- Code to runtime enrichment for recommendations (Preview)1 Mar
8 more
- Deprecation of preview of container and container images vulnerability recommendations1 Mar
- Expanded multicloud coverage for AWS and GCP (Preview)1 Mar
- File Integrity Monitoring requires MDE agent version 10.8799+ for legacy Windows machines1 Mar
- Kubernetes gated deployment support for AKS Automatic (GA)1 Mar
- New individual recommendations format in Azure portal (Preview)1 Mar
- On-demand malware scanning of Azure Files in Microsoft Defender for Storage (Preview)1 Mar
- Severity-based risk assignment for "Not evaluated" recommendations1 Mar
- Support for additional Azure regions for Defender for APIs and API security posture management with Defender CSPM1 Mar
Microsoft Defender for Identity what's new · 10
- Continued rollout of new health alert: Sensor v3.x RPC audit misconfigured1 Mar
- Defender for Identity sensor updates1 Mar
- Defender for Identity sensor updates1 Mar
7 more
- Identity security enhancements1 Mar
- Identity security enhancements1 Mar
- Migrate Defender for Identity sensors from v2.x to v3.x1 Mar
- Migrate Defender for Identity sensors from v2.x to v3.x1 Mar
- New Defender for Identity security alerts1 Mar
- Sensor v3.x support for domain controllers with Microsoft Entra Connect identity roles1 Mar
- Suspected pass-the-ticket attack alert is now generally available1 Mar
Classic Outlook known issues · 5
- [FIXED] Classic Outlook crashes and opens in Safe Mode starting March 12 20261 Mar
- [FIXED] Classic Outlook replaces accented and extended characters with question marks1 Mar
- [FIXED] Users get errors 0x800CCC0E & 0x800CCC0F synchronizing Gmail and Yahoo accounts in classic Outlook1 Mar
2 more
Microsoft Graph changelog · 5
- Teamwork and communications (v1.0): Added the replyWithQuote method to the chatMessage resource.26 Feb
- Teamwork and communications (v1.0): Added the longRunningOperationStatus enumeration type. (+19 more)26 Feb
- Identity and access (v1.0): Add the allDirectoryAgentIdentities member to the allowedTargetScope enumeration.26 Feb
2 more
OpenAI API changelog · 5
- Expanded input_file support in the Responses API to accept more document, presentation, spreadsheet, code, and text file types.24 Feb
- Released gpt-5.3-codex to the Responses API.24 Feb
- Released phase to the Responses API.24 Feb
2 more
Microsoft Defender XDR what's new · 4
- (Preview) Customers can now use filters on very large incidents with many alerts and entities or hide specific entities to simplify complex incident graphs.1 Mar
- (Preview) The following advanced hunting schema tables are now available for preview: The CloudDnsEvents table contains information about DNS activity events from cloud…1 Mar
- The proactive user containment (contain user) action as part of the predictive shielding feature is now generally available.1 Mar
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 what's new · 2
- Added support for contextual Teams messages in User reported Teams Messages1 Mar
- Expanding User reporting in Teams to include Calls1 Mar
Gemini API release notes · 2
- Deprecation announcement: Gemini 3 Pro Preview (gemini-3-pro-preview) will be shut down March 9, 2026.26 Feb
- Launched Nano Banana 2, Gemini 3.1 Flash Image Preview, a high-efficiency model optimized for speed and high-volume use cases.26 Feb
Azure Connected Machine agent release notes · 1
Microsoft Sentinel what's new · 1
Azure Virtual Desktop what's new · 1
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps release notes · 1
Microsoft OneDrive Blog · 1
Windows 365 what's new · 1
Microsoft 365 roadmap29
Outlook · 7
- Outlook: New search folder types27 Feb
- Outlook: New search folder types27 Feb
- Outlook: Online archive for shared mailboxes in the new Outlook for Windows27 Feb
4 more
Defender · 5
- Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Admins can hunt on calls in Microsoft Teams27 Feb
- Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Agentic AI Phish Submission Analysis & Response24 Feb
- Microsoft Defender for Office 365: Auto-Remediation of Malicious Similarity Clusters in AIR24 Feb
2 more
Teams · 5
- Microsoft Teams: Chat Notes27 Feb
- Microsoft Teams: New SlimCore-based optimization for Microsoft Teams in VDI - support for Windows endpoints on Omnissa environments27 Feb
- Microsoft Teams: Organization Evaluation Score for Apps and Agents27 Feb
2 more
Purview · 4
- Microsoft Purview compliance portal: Insider Risk Management - Administrative units support27 Feb
- Microsoft Purview compliance portal: Insider Risk Management- Adaptive scopes27 Feb
- Microsoft Purview: Information Protection-Email attachment Preview in Activity Explorer26 Feb
5 more products · 8 changes
Microsoft 365 Copilot · 3
- Microsoft 365 (Microsoft Copilot): Copilot Chat - Loop Notebooks in ContextIQ27 Feb
- Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft 365): Voice chats can reference Memory26 Feb
- Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft 365): Copilot can edit your document by default in Word25 Feb
Viva · 2
- Microsoft Viva: Viva Pulse - Capture targeted Copilot sentiment from power and novice users26 Feb
- Microsoft Viva: Viva Pulse - Measure Copilot sentiment to change manage and scale Copilot adoption26 Feb
Minecraft Education · 1
OneDrive · 1
SharePoint · 1
Every line opens its detail page or the original Microsoft source. This briefing uses public sources only and says nothing about your tenant or devices.