Weekly Update 24 November 2025 – Ignite News, Agent Factory, SQL Server 2025

This week:

Microsoft Entra ID authentication for bots is now available in group scope

Microsoft Ignite Book of News

Introducing Microsoft Agent Factory

Azure at Microsoft Ignite 2025: All the intelligent cloud news explained

SQL Server 2025 now GA

You can also listen to the audio-only version: Thoughtstuff Podcast – Tom Morgan on Teams Dev: Weekly Update 24 November 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. A little bit of a different setup today as I’m traveling and using someone else’s gear, but hopefully it all makes sense and comes together in the edits.

SSO for Teams Bots Now Supports Group Scope

The first thing I want to talk about isn’t specifically Ignite news – although it may have been mentioned there. It’s about SSO (Single Sign-On) for your Teams bots. SSO has been supported in 1:1 chat scope for a while, but now it’s also available for group chat scope, which is really exciting. This enables entirely new functionality and use cases.

There are still some limitations – it’s not yet supported in channel scope – but at least now you can use it in both 1:1 and group chats. If you’ve previously been blocked on this, go back to your code, review your use cases, and be aware that some code changes may be required.

Microsoft Ignite Book of News 2025

Ignite happened recently, and while there’s too much to cover in ten minutes, I want to highlight the official Ignite Book of News. It’s usually used by journalists, but it’s public, and this year includes summarizations tailored for roles like developers, product managers, and more.

You’ll find a complete top-level summary with links to dive deeper. You can search the site, browse the table of contents, or use AI-powered perspectives. Overall, it’s an accessible way to get the big announcements.

Microsoft Agent Factory

One announcement I find particularly interesting is Microsoft Agent Factory. There’s a solid blog post about it on the Tech Community. This functionality is an abstraction layer on top of tools like Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio. It offers a unified ‘currency’ to pay for AI services – kind of like the Euro for enterprise AI billing.

For large enterprises, this makes a lot of sense as it consolidates spend. For smaller shops, hopefully it’s optional. It’s something to keep an eye on as more details emerge.

Azure Intelligent Cloud – Key Takeaways

I also recommend checking out Jessica Hawk’s blog post from the Azure team, which summarizes the “Intelligent Cloud” announcements. She introduces concepts like Work IQ, Foundry IQ, and Fabric IQ, and provides useful jumping-off links.

There’s a really helpful TL;DR style summary and positioning statements to help you quickly understand the new landscape.

SQL Server 2025 is GA!

Last but not least – SQL Server 2025 is now generally available. Like me, if you last looked at SQL Server 20-something years ago and assumed it hasn’t changed much – brace yourself. There have been huge innovations both in how it supports AI workloads as a data platform, and how AI is being used to help you become a more effective developer.

From AI-assisted T-SQL to being “AI ready” in terms of performance and data caching – it’s definitely worth updating your knowledge of what SQL Server can do in 2025.

That’s everything from me this week. It’s been a busy one as we’re all still catching up from Ignite and processing the many announcements. Take care, and I’ll speak to you next time.