In this news-heavy episode, Andrew and Julie dive deep into the latest developments shaking up the Microsoft 365 and Azure AI landscape. Fresh off Julie's vacation to Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, the duo tackles a whirlwind of announcements dominated by artificial intelligence updates, including OpenAI's surprise release of open source models and the long-awaited launch of GPT-5. They explore how these developments impact Microsoft 365 Copilot users, from new budget controls and enhanced chat tools to the integration of GPT-5 as the foundational model for enterprise users.

The conversation takes an interesting turn as Andrew and Julie engage in a thoughtful debate about Microsoft's development philosophy, questioning whether the company's push toward simplified tooling and SDKs sometimes comes at the expense of developer understanding. They discuss the balance between productivity and transparency, using examples from Teams development and the SharePoint Framework to illustrate their points. The episode wraps up with Julie's fascinating pick about recreating ancient Egyptian bread using 4,500-year-old yeast, and Andrew's recommendation of Context7, an MCP server that provides access to over 31,000 documentation libraries for developers.

🔗 LINKS
Microsoft 365 Message Center
🔗 [MC1122160] Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat: Set budget limits for "Pay-as-you-go billing" in Microsoft 365 admin center
🔗 [MC1122153] New Tools feature coming to the Microsoft Copilot Chat prompt box
🔗 [MC1099692] Microsoft Copilot: Access SharePoint agents in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app
🔗 [MC1122144] Microsoft Graph Metered API Update

Microsoft 365
🔗 What's new in Copilot Studio: July 2025
🔗 Build Smarter with the Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit MCP Server
🔗 Bring your own agents into Microsoft 365 Copilot
🔗 Unlock the full power of Microsoft 365 Copilot search with the Copilot extension
🔗 Introducing Copilot memory: a more productive and personalized AI for the way you work

Azure AI Foundry
🔗 What's new in Azure AI Foundry July 2025
🔗 Announcing the browser automation tool preview in Azure AI Foundry Agent Service
🔗 Introducing Deep Research in Azure AI Foundry Agent Service
🔗 Building AI Agents: A2A .NET SDK
🔗 AI Agent MCP Tools: Quickstart to MCP tools development with Azure AI Foundry SDK
🔗 Announcing Model Context Protocol support preview in Azure AI Foundry Agent Service

OpenAI OSS models + GPT5
🔗 Open Models from OpenAI
🔗 The gpt-oss is probably Phi 5
🔗 GPT-5 is here
🔗 Introducing GPT-5 for developers
🔗 Microsoft & OpenAI GPT-5 announcement

Miscellaneous
🔗 Automate your project with GitHub Models in Actions
🔗 Introducing Gemini CLI & GitHub Actions
🔗 Google suffers data breach in ongoing Salesforce data theft attacks


🎁 PICKS
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Julie:
🔗 Ancient Egyptian Bread Making with 4,500-Year-Old Yeast

Andrew:
🔗 Context7 - Up-to-date documentation for LLMs and AI code editor 

🎙️ HOSTS
Julie Turner
Andrew Connell: LinkedIn, YouTube, Bluesky, Newsletter

Sympraxis (by Julie Turner) 🔗 Website 🔗 Ask Sympraxis 🔗 YouTube

Voitanos (by Andrew Connell) 🔗 Website 🔗 LinkedIn 🔗 Bluesky

Music Credit: Ken Bagley