Weekly Update 8 December 2025 – Teams Phone Extensibility, VS AI updates, Winter for Windows

This week:

Teams Phone Extensibility: Bridging Microsoft Teams with Contact Center Platforms
Visual Studio November Update – Visual Studio 2026, Cloud Agent Preview, and more
Unlocking the Power of Web with Copilot Chat’s New URL Context
Introducing “Winter for Windows” – the fun festive desktop addition for the season

You can also listen to the audio-only version: Thoughtstuff Podcast – Tom Morgan on Teams Dev: Weekly Update 8 December 2025.

Find all my videos at thoughtstuff.co.uk/videos. You can also subscribe to the audio-only version of these videos, either via iTunes, Spotify or your own podcasting tool.

Transcript (AI-Generated)

Hello and welcome to another weekly update. I hope you’re doing well.

Back from ESPC last week – that was fantastic. It was really good to catch up with so many of you and say hello. Great sessions, lots going on. Hopefully the audio and video quality are a bit better now. Things had been a bit up and down, thanks to a major computer failure – my main PC’s motherboard just randomly died, and traveling for ESPC didn’t help either. Anyway, we’re back and there are things to talk about!

Post-Ignite, Pre-Holiday Season

We’re entering that post-Ignite, pre-Christmas season where things slow down. Feels quieter than previous years. Maybe everyone at Redmond just needs a well-earned break. Let me know if you feel it’s equally as busy as past years.

Teams Phone Extensibility

The Microsoft Teams Community blog just put out a reminder post on Teams phone extensibility. This isn’t about new features but is a recap of what’s possible. It references several APIs—Cloud Communications, Graph API—and mentions various integration options like certified contact centers. If you’re unsure what Teams phone extensibility is, this is a good starting read.

Visual Studio November Update

Visual Studio continues to push forward. The November update includes:

• GitHub Copilot Actions in Context Menus – Right-click on selected text or a class and choose actions like explain, optimize, generate comments, or generate tests.
• Intent Detection for All-in-One Search – Smarter search suggestions based on what you’re trying to find.
• Visual Studio 2026 is now out. I’m planning to upgrade this week.

These changes are really helpful. Little things like improved search and context menu Copilot actions really enhance the developer experience. Given how long Visual Studio has been around—30 years or more—it’s great to see it adapt to the AI age and stay relevant.

Copilot Chat and URL Context

There’s a new capability in Copilot Chat to include URL context. This means you can ask it to write a README ‘like this one’ and reference a GitHub URL. I used this recently via the Copilot CLI and it worked fantastically well. Another evolution worth trying, even if you don’t hear about it—things are changing fast!

Vibe Coding and Holiday Fun

Scott Hanselman recently built “Windows Edge Light”—a WPF version of macOS’s ring light app—using GitHub Copilot CLI and Claude Sonnet 4.5. That inspired me to try something similar.

On a weekend, I built a desktop app that adds festive decorations to your screen—fairy lights, snowfall, a Christmas countdown, and even a dancing penguin—all powered by GitHub Copilot CLI. I didn’t write or even look at the code. This form of ‘vibe coding’ is definitely not the answer for all projects, but for fun, bounded side projects? It’s surprisingly powerful.

Seeing results like this, and knowing experienced devs are getting value out of CLI-based LLM prompts, makes me optimistic. Your mileage may vary, but it’s worth exploring.

That’s all from me this week. Have a fantastic week, whatever you’re doing, and I’ll speak to you all next time!