M365 News Roundup for December 2025

Plus an update on a previous newsletter

Photo by John Cardamone on Unsplash

In September, I shared information about the warnings Microsoft had issued regarding the use of Anthropic’s Claude LLM in Copilot.

Essentially, Microsoft sent your prompt to Claude, then left your Data Protection Agreement and moved it into whatever data protection Anthropic offered.

For many of us, that proved to be a show-stopper, at least temporarily, because we hadn’t vetted that agreement.

Now, things have changed:

Anthropic is now a Microsoft Subprocessor

As a subprocessor, Anthropic will operate with Microsoft oversight through contractual safeguards and appropriate technical and organizational measures. The Microsoft Product Terms and Microsoft Data Protection Addendum (DPA) apply to use of Anthropic models through Microsoft’s enterprise Online Services. Such use is also covered under our Enterprise Data Protection.

This may change things for many of us, allowing us to take advantage of Claude without the concern of having our attorney vet data protection agreements.

Have you used Claude from within Copilot? How is that going?

Copilot News:

So many new features and changes coming:

• Copilot’s Temporary Chat

• Microsoft Agent 365: The control plane for AI agents

• This is one of those features enabled by allowing access to Claude - Microsoft’s new AI agents create your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint projects now.

• The next chapter for AI-powered work management in Microsoft Planner

• Copilot Notebooks Is Getting Better, Here’s What’s Coming Next in 2026.

• Voice turns Microsoft 365 Copilot into your thought partner.

• You can now choose between quick responses, deeper thinking, or letting GPT-5 decide for you. More in the video below:

If you’re not familiar with Security Copilot and wondering what it offers now that Microsoft will be including it with your Copilot license, these links might help:

• Agents built into your workflow: Get Security Copilot with Microsoft 365 E5

• With Security Copilot now part of Microsoft 365 E5, what do you actually get?

Finally, we can’t forget about Copilot governance:

• Preparing Your Microsoft 365 Environment for Copilot: A Security & Governance

• Governing Microsoft 365 Copilot: How to Mitigate Oversharing Risks?

• This should be a good session - Protect Your Microsoft365 Data in the Age of AI.

• Purview Launches New DLP Policy to Control Copilot Prompts

Non-Copilot News:

There’s a price increase coming, along with new features:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2025/12/04/advancing-microsoft-365-new-capabilities-and-pricing-update/

Other posts catching my eye lately:

• Insider Risk Management Demystified — How Microsoft Purview Helps You Spot Risks Before They Become Incidents

• Getting Sensitivity Labeling Right in Microsoft Purview: A Practical Guide for Modern Organisations

• Conditional Access in Microsoft 365 – Real-World Scenarios

• This series should be educational - Compliance Meets AI 2026: Microsoft Purview in the Age of AI.

• Microsoft Teams is finally getting two long-requested productivity features. - Autocorrect and cross-tenant notifications. Nice.

Of course, if you look at the M365 Roadmap, there’s a ton of change headed our way in 2026. Next week, I’m going to dig into some of the things from the roadmap coming in 2026 that will impact the eDiscovery process. If you’ve seen anything pop up there or in the message center lately, leave a comment or send me an email so I can make sure to pay attention to it. I fear that I cannot keep up with it all, and I am likely missing something.

Hoping the community can back me up. ;-)