May 28, 2025 – Catastrophic Failure

Microsoft announce some important updates to M365 Copilot Chat that will enhance security and user experience, following:

Integration with SafeLinks:
- M365 Copilot Chat will integrate with SafeLinks in Defender for Office 365 to provide time-of-click URL protection for the hyperlinks included in its chat responses.
- This change applies to users with Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 or Plan 2 service plans. No policy configuration is needed within the SafeLinks policy.
- Within Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Security Center, URL protection report will show the relevant summary and trend views for threats detected and actions taken on URL clicks.
Native Time-of-Click URL Reputation Check:
- For users without SafeLinks protection (which is available as part of Microsoft Defender for Office 365), M365 Copilot Chat will natively enable time-of-click URL reputation check for the hyperlinks returned in its chat responses.
Hyperlink Redaction Changes:
- M365 Copilot Chat will no longer redact hyperlinks in its chat responses if they are found in the grounding data used to generate the responses.

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out in late March 2025 and expect to complete by late May 2025.

Rollout will start on desktop and web and will complete with mobile versions. We plan to extend these updates to Copilot Chat experiences in Office apps in the future.

How this will affect your organization:

These updates are designed to enhance the security of the links included in M365 Copilot Chat response, ensuring that users are protected from malicious URLs.

What you need to do to prepare:

You may consider updating your training and documentation as appropriate to ensure users are aware of the change in behavior with hyperlinks in M365 Copilot Chat.

A new usage report for the new and classic Microsoft Outlook for Windows is being added to the Microsoft Exchange admin center.

This is the same data made available via the Microsoft 365 admin center usage report in March and is intended to make the data more easily accessible to Outlook admins who regularly use the Exchange admin center.

When this will happen:

General Availability (Worldwide): We began rolling out early May 2025 and expect to complete by late May 2025.

How this will affect your organization:

The new report Outlook for Windows Usage will be added to the Reports section in the EAC. This report will provide admins with detailed insights into user activity on the new Outlook for Windows versus the classic Outlook for Windows. The report includes a line chart showing the sum of users by endpoint over different time periods (days/weeks/months) and a data table with columns for email address, last activity date, and usage status for new and classic Outlook. You can export the data to csv and filter and search in the report.

The new report will be available by default in the Exchange admin center at Reports > Outlook for Windows Usage:

Examples of User details reports:

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout is happening automatically by the specified dates with no admin action required before the rollout. Review your current configuration to assess the impact on your organization. You may want to update any relevant documentation.

Familiarize yourself with the new report and its features. Ensure that your organization’s admins have access to the EAC and are aware of the new reporting capabilities to support their new Outlook migration efforts.