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Organize content, create assignments, and assess learners’ understanding in Teams

Learn how to use Classwork to organize content, Grades to streamline assignments, Microsoft Forms to simplify assessments, and Insights to track academic and SEL trends.

Learning objectives

Upon completion of this module, you'll be able to:

• Create and organize class resources and assignments efficiently with Classwork in Microsoft Teams.
• Create, distribute, collect, and grade assignments with Assignments in Microsoft Teams.
• Create and embed polls, quizzes, and surveys with Microsoft Forms.
• Track learner progress with Insights in Microsoft Teams.

ISTE Standards for Educators :

Educator - Citizen

Educator - Facilitator

Educator - Collaborator

UNESCO Standards for Educators :

Application of Digital skills

Organization and Administration

• Introduction min
• Organize class resources and assignments with Classwork min
• Customize Assignments to support learning goals and foster engagement and collaboration min
• Check for understanding with Forms in Teams min
• Create assignments in Teams min
• Maximize flexibility with the Assignments app min
• Support efficiency with the Grades app min
• Improve learner outcomes with the feedback cycle min
• Teams provides insights min
• Knowledge check min
• Summary min

Simplify your class workflow with new Assignments features from Teams

September 20, 2023.

By Microsoft Education Team

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Whether it’s the beginning of a new school year or mid-winter semester, we know it’s important for you to have the right tools to help prepare, teach, and assess your students more efficiently. With customizable features and options, Microsoft Teams for Education helps you simplify your class workflow and create a quality learning environment for students as well as educators.

Explore four new Assignments features in Microsoft Teams for Education designed to help you make the most of your valuable instruction and assessment time.

1. Duplicate or share assignments in a snap with new quick actions

With the latest updates to quick actions in the Assignment list, you can click on an assignment and choose from these options: Edit, Copy Link, Duplicate, Mark as Inactive, or Delete. With Duplicate, you can copy the assignment to another class. With Copy Link, you can get a direct link to the assignment and share it over chat, email, or any other platform you use to communicate with your students.

With quick actions in the Assignment list in Teams, you can choose these options for assignments: Edit, Copy Link, Duplicate, Mark as Inactive, or Delete.

2. Set individual assignment due dates for multiple classes

If you have multiple classes to publish an assignment to, you can now set individual schedule, due, and close dates for each class with new multi-publish support. With new multi-class assignment options, you can quickly make one or more changes and publish to all your classes in one action, saving you time and streamlining the management of your assignment timelines.

3. Configure quiz time limits directly in Assignments

Timed Quiz is a popular feature in Microsoft Forms, enabling you to set the amount of time students have for a quiz. Now, you can configure and change the time for each quiz directly inside of Assignments settings in Teams. This new capability allows you to make any quiz a Timed Quiz without having to go into Forms to change the settings.

Configure and change the time for each quiz directly inside of Assignments settings in Teams.

4. Customize your grading with new Grade settings

In Assignments and Grades, the Grade settings now support multiple grading schemes. Use this feature to map to your grading schemes for grading inside Teams . Once configured, you can either use points or a new scheme of your choice in your grading and reporting. The system is flexible to support a variety of needs—you can even use emojis for your grading!

In Assignments and Grades, use the Grade settings to customize your grading schemes for grading inside Teams.

With the latest updates from Microsoft Teams for Education , you’ll find simplified ways to help streamline, manage, and customize your class workflow. Discover all the newest updates to Microsoft Teams in What’s New in Teams for Education | August 2023 .

Ready to go deeper? Take the free, online training Master Microsoft Teams for any learning environment from Microsoft Learn.

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Blog / Teams

Deploying custom teams group policy assignments.

Table of Contents

Packaging Some of the Many Policies Beloved by Teams

Group policy assignment functionality is available in the Microsoft Teams admin center and the Teams PowerShell module . Group policy assignment is a solution for a problem faced by many organizations, particularly large enterprises, who find it difficult to achieve consistent assignment of Teams policies to user accounts.

Read More: Seven Years Too Late, Microsoft Realizes the Reality of Group Sprawl.

The Many Policies of Teams

Teams loves policies. The Teams PowerShell module included 47 cmdlets with names matching a pattern of Get-Cs*Policy . Although many of these policies are a little obscure and might never be accessed or changed in a tenant, they do exist. When an administrator edits a user account through the Teams admin center, they can tweak sixteen different policies to affect how the user interacts with Teams (Figure 1).

Many of the policies used to manage Teams today originate in the calling and meeting heritage of Lync and Skype for Business Online, which use a similar policy-based management framework. There’s a lot to like about policy-based management. Applying a policy to an account to control functionality is more consistent than tweaking individual account settings. Changes are easily made by updating a policy instead of updating multiple accounts, and so on. But when so many policies exist, it can be hard to understand which policy controls what setting.

Policy Assignment to Many Users

Group-based policy assignment means that a set of users receive a package of Teams policies. The scope for the set of users comes from a distribution group, security group, or Microsoft 365 group. The package is composed of several Teams policies. Assigning the policy package to the group means that Teams assigns the policies in the package to the members of the group. Assignments only occur for accounts which are direct members of the group. Accounts in nested groups don’t receive assignments.

As the group changes, Teams assigns the package to new members and removes the package from those who leave (as we’ll see later, this didn’t happen in my tests). It’s a helpful solution to the problem in situations where you want to be sure that specific users see certain apps or are allowed to switch into the Teams public preview mode to see new features.

Bulk policy assignment is another solution. In this case, the administrator identifies a set of users (perhaps in a CSV file) and a background job assigns a policy to the target accounts. It’s the equivalent of a manual assignment of a single policy to an account repeated for each user.

Users don’t need any additional licenses to receive assignments through the set of predefined policy packages included in Teams. However, as announced in MC244607 on March 16, once you create custom policy packages, users who receive those packages need Teams advanced communications licenses ( Microsoft 365 roadmap item 70776 ). Quite why Microsoft demands this expensive license for what many would consider to be a fundamental management capability is not clear.

Administrators can’t amend the predefined policy packages to add or remove policies. However, they can edit the details of the individual policies in the packages. For instance, the Frontline Manager policy package includes meeting, messaging, live events, app setup, and calling policies. You could edit the package to amend the details of the include policies (but not the policies themselves) to customize them to meet organizational requirements. Whether this creates an additional licensing burden is another matter.

Let’s leave the topic of licensing aside and examine how to create a custom policy package.

Creating a Custom Policy Package

Creating a new policy package is straightforward (here’s Microsoft’s documentation ). As shown in Figure 2, it’s a matter of choosing the policies you want to assign to users. In this case, I’ve opted for four of the ten policy types supported for this form of assignment. The other policy types are Calling, Caller ID, Call Park, Live Events, Voice Routing, and Update.

The next step is to assign the new custom policy package to one or more target groups. I used distribution lists for this purpose, but you can also use a Microsoft 365 group or security group. Note that policy assignments only work for direct members of the distribution list; members of nested distribution lists don’t receive assignments.

A policy package can be assigned to multiple groups, but a group can only be assigned one policy package. However, you can’t assign a policy package to multiple groups at one time. Instead, each assignment must be processed individually by selecting the target group. This action allows Teams to calculate the priority (or ranking) order for the assignment (Figure 2) based on what’s already in place.

The priority order is important because it’s used by Teams to know which policy to apply when several policy assignments exist for an account. The existence of the priority order allows assignment of several policy packages to an account with a known outcome. The rules of precedence are:

• Manual assignments always win. In other words, if an administrator assigns a policy to an account, that assignment takes precedence over any group assignment.
• If a manual assignment doesn’t exist, the group assignment with the highest priority takes precedence.
• If no manual or group assignments exist, Teams applies the default (global) policy.

Teams adjusts the priority given to assignments as people join or leave groups or when packages are assigned to or removed from groups. This is done automatically by the background process responsible for tracking policy assignments due to group membership.

After a policy package is assigned to a group, a background process applies the policies covered by the package to the accounts in the target group. Team policy assignments are notoriously slow to become effective. There’s no indication in the Teams admin center about the progress of the background job, so the only way to track assignments is to examine user accounts through the admin center (Figure 3) or PowerShell.

Clicking details for a policy shows how Teams applies the policy based on the rules of precedence (Figure 4). In this case, the user has a direct assignment and inherits an assignment from a group. The direct assignment has precedence.

Individual Package Assignment

If a user account doesn’t come within the scope of a group policy assignment, you can edit their account to assign a policy package manually. Each of the policies included in the package is assigned to the account as if an administrator had assigned the policies directly.

The Odd State of Updates

Over time, the policies assigned to accounts also change. Microsoft’s documentation says, “ As members are added to or removed from a group, their inherited policy assignments are updated accordingly .” My understanding of this text is that Teams updates group policy assignments to reflect changes to the underlying groups, a belief emphasized when Microsoft goes on to explain that the background process which handles updates “ might take some time ” to do the job. The memo might not have reached the background process because my observations based on multiple tests show that:

• Accounts receive group policy assignments when a policy package is first associated with a group.
• Accounts added to the distribution list do not receive the group assignment.
• Accounts removed from the distribution list did not have the policy assignment removed.
• Target groups removed from a policy package leave the policy assignments in place for the members of the removed group.

Either the documentation is incorrect, or the functionality doesn’t work as expected. At least, not in the week or so of my testing. It’s an odd situation for a premium feature to be in. I contacted Microsoft and discovered that a problem exists in processing changes made to distribution list membership. Everything works as expected for Microsoft 365 groups and security groups. I just happened to choose the group type which didn’t work so well. Microsoft expects to fix the problem soon.

For now, if you remove non-direct policy assignments made through groups, be prepared to do some manual cleanup to make sure that accounts have correct policy assignments.

Check Assignments with PowerShell

You can check the policy assignments to user accounts with PowerShell by running the Get-CsUserPolicyAssignment cmdlet. This cmdlet exposes some other detail of the policies applying to an account. For example:

The three direct assignments shown at the top of the listing are automatic. For example, the location profile (IE = Ireland) comes from the user account location, which then determines things like the available dial plans. The meeting policy shows as BposSAllModality , a throwback to the past (BPOS = Business Online Productivity Services, the predecessor to Office 365). This was the name of the default Skype for Business Online meeting policy that’s found its way into Teams.

We can also see five group policy assignments. These are the four assignments (messaging, meeting, teams, and app setup) assignments from the package plus the package itself ( TeamsVerticalPackagePolicy ). The reference is the GUID for the group to which the package is assigned. We can check the group by feeding the GUID to the Get-Group or Get-AzureADGroup cmdlets. Here’s an example:

Many Ways to Assign Teams Policies

Between the Teams admin center, PowerShell, and bulk policy assignments, many ways exist to assign Teams policies to user accounts. Group policy assignment is a good approach to applying multiple policies to many accounts at the same time.

However, charging extra to use custom policy packages is an odd decision for Microsoft to make, especially as easy workarounds exist in both the admin center and PowerShell. It’s also regressive in that it’s surely better for Microsoft to help customers manage Teams policy assignments effectively. After all, Microsoft has created an array of policies which administrators need to master to work with Teams. Why should customers pay Microsoft for software to make that task easier?

Read More: Tony Talks to Microsoft About Group Sprawl.

About the Author

Tony Redmond

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14 Virtual Games to Play on Microsoft Teams with Coworkers

By: Angela Robinson | Updated: February 26, 2024

You found our list of fun Microsoft Teams games .

Microsoft Teams games are games, competitions, and puzzles playable on the Microsoft Teams platform. For example: Trivia, Guess Who, and Scavenger Hunts. These games use the platform’s features like video, chat and white boards to engage remote workers and facilitate virtual team bonding during online meetings and conference calls. These activities are also known as “MS Teams games.”

These games are a subset of video conference call games , virtual team games and virtual meeting games , and are similar to Zoom games , Webex games and Google Meet games .

This article contains:

• fun Microsoft Teams games
• free virtual games to play on Microsoft Teams
• MS Teams games to play with coworkers

So, here is the list!

List of Microsoft Teams games

From Guess Who to scavenger hunts to truth or dare, here is a list of fun games to play on Microsoft Teams.

1. Microsoft Teams Bingo

Microsoft Teams Bingo is a version of Online Team Building Bingo .

Gameplay for playing Bingo via Microsoft Teams is simple. First, distribute game boards to participants. Next, decide whether to play for a single meeting, or over a string of meetings. Whenever they observe a mentioned behavior in a meeting, teammates will mark a square with the name of the offending coworker.

We made a Microsoft Teams Bingo board template you can use:

Be sure to randomize the squares, so that not every teammate wins at once!

This game drives focus during meetings, as attendees will pay close attention to their peers in hopes of scoring squares.

If your colleagues master this version, then check out Remote Work Bingo , which focuses on working from home.

2. Espionage!

Espionage! is a fully hosted virtual team building game you can play on Microsoft Teams. The game uses elements of puzzle solving and social deduction to challenge your colleagues to work together. The game is spy-themed, which is a fun and engaging way to bring your people together.

The game is 90 minutes, and led by an experienced and engaging event host. We use audio and visual components to enhance the experience. Your team will love it!

Learn more about Espionage!

Get our free team building toolbox

• icebreaker games
• bingo cards

3. Trello Truth or Dare

To play a game of Truth or Dare in Microsoft Teams, use the Trello integration. First, install the app within your Teams chat. Then, create a board exclusively for the game, and invite all team members to join. Designate one column for truths and one for dares.

If you plan to play truth or dare in real time during a meeting, then pre-fill each column with cards. Label each card only with “Dare #1” or “Truth #1,” and type the question or command within the description section. Players will only read the descriptions after picking the card, and will answer or perform immediately on camera.

If you play on an ongoing basis throughout the workweek, then assign players to cards randomly, and take turns giving each other truths and dares. Participants type answers to questions in the comments section, or link to video or photo evidence of dares.

Since this is an office game, all content should be work-friendly! Here are a few PG truths and dares to get you started:

• What non-work website do you check most during office hours?
• How many dirty dishes are in your sink right now?
• What is the biggest exaggeration on your resume?
• What is the strangest conversation you ever had with a client?
• I dare you to share your last five Google searches.
• I dare you to message a coworker you have never chatted with before.
• I dare you to show the strangest object in your workspace.

Trello enables due dates, so set a deadline for the player to comply. If your teammate passes, then assign a good-humored consequence like having to share an interesting article with the team, or listening to Hanson’s “Mmm-bop” at full volume.

Here is a list of more fun question games .

4. Microsoft Teams Trivia

Trivia is one of the most popular remote team building activities , and one of the go-to games you can play on a virtual call. The Kahoot! app extension makes it easy to play trivia games within Microsoft Teams.

To launch a game of Kahoot! trivia:

• Add the Kahoot! app to a channel or group
• Login to Kahoot!
• Launch a game.
• Share the pin to join if any team members do not receive invitations.

Either select a pre-made trivia game, or write your own. Depending on whether you present a live game or assign a challenge, teammates can either compete simultaneously on a time limit, or can complete questions by a certain deadline. Players can join the game from any computer or mobile device.

Check out this post for more virtual trivia games .

5. Together Mode Guess Who?

Microsoft Teams offers a feature called Together Mode that displays meeting attendees lecture-hall style, placing the image of each participant in an auditorium seat. You can use this capability to play a modern, online-friendly version of Guess Who. Together Mode Guess Who is one of the best online Microsoft Teams games.

To play Together Mode Guess Who:

• Activate Together Mode in your meeting
• Choose a team member as the secret person
• Have players take turns asking questions like “does this person wear glasses?” or “does this person have a natural hair color?”
• Ask each player to turn off their video when eliminated by the answer to the question
• The game ends when only one player remains on screen, or when a player correctly identifies the person.

Because the characters are your coworkers, this version of Guess Who is extra fun! Plus, if players use non-physical characteristics, such as “does this person run marathons?” to narrow down the choices, then teammates can learn more about each other, too.

Here are more online board games to play .

6. Who Scavenger Hunts

The best Microsoft Teams games incorporate the platform’s unique features, and Who Scavenger Hunt is one great example.

Who is a bot within Microsoft Teams that enables quick searches within organizational directories. Users can find answers to questions such as:

• Who knows about
• Who works with
• Who reports to
• Who is the manager of
• Who has the same manager as
• Who have I emailed about
• Who was in the meeting about

Using these commands, create a scavenger hunt that helps teammates get acquainted with other members of the organization. You can combine prompts, such as, “who works with Gladys, knows about CPR, and was in the meeting about social media policy?” or can also pair Who prompts with non-widget trivia, such as “who has a cat named Fluffernutter?” or “who used to work in the entertainment industry?”

The game works best as a race, so set a time limit and award the first player or team who answers all questions correctly.

Check out our post on virtual scavenger hunts for a more traditional scavenger hunt experience online.

7. Microsoft Teams Family Feud

By using the Survey Monkey add-on for Microsoft Teams, you can quickly gather data to use for Family Feud games. Simply send questions to colleagues, and record top answers.

We created some example Family Feud questions to get you started:

• What is the biggest distraction while working from home?
• Items you forget to pack when going on vacation
• Movies with the word “love” in the title
• Favorite waffle toppings
• What is the most embarrassing thing that could happen on social media?
• Name a virtual meeting faux pas

Ideally, your pooling pool should be larger than your immediate team. In fact, the more neutral parties you collect answers from, the better the game will be.

During your game, split the group into two teams, and challenge each team to guess the top answers for each question, and either speak the answer aloud, or write it in the chat box. Teams can confer amongst themselves by entering a private chat room. Each correct response nets the team an assigned number of points; the more popular the answer, the more points.

Here is a list of the best questions for Family Feud , and a guide to play coworker feud .

And here are more virtual game shows to try .

8. Microsoft Teams Pictionary

Pictionary is a popular video call game that you can play in Microsoft Teams, too.

To play this party game during remote meetings:

• Split the group into teams
• Use a Pictionary generator to select a word
• Ask one team member to draw that word using the whiteboard feature
• Give teammates sixty seconds to identify the word
• Award points if the team guesses correctly

Be sure to tally points, and give the winning team bragging rights until the next game.

Microsoft Teams team building games like Pictionary practice effective communication, a critical skill for remote employees.

Check out this list of online Pictionary games .

9. Wiki Kingdom Founders

Microsoft Teams has a Wiki feature that allows users to draft and share notes and collaborate with teammates. While most folks use the Wiki for work projects, you can also use this function to create a fictional country as a team building exercise. Wiki Kingdom Founders is an ongoing game where teammates expand an imaginary world by adding or editing Wiki pages.

To start, create a name for the country, make a basic page, and invite your teammates. Then, encourage team members to add details like maps, laws, history, and customs. Sections can also be hyper-specific, for example, “Christmas traditions,” or “politician scandals.” Each week, send out a new prompt.

Participants propose new changes, and other players vote on which ones to keep. Players can also “go to war” over some of the updates!

10. Praise Compliment Tag

The Praise add-on enables users to send digital kudos to colleagues, making games of compliment tag easy and extra fun.

To use Praise:

• Install the add-on
• Look for the Praise icon in the chat
• Select a badge
• Write a personal message to send with the pin

To kick off a game of compliment tag, first set a time-frame, such as a week, and announce the game to the team. Players will spend the duration of the game “tagging” each other with compliments. When participants receive a piece of praise, they must reciprocate by sending a genuine compliment to another teammate. The fun part about playing this game in Microsoft Teams is that you can send Praise to individuals or groups, maximizing the impact. However, all compliments must be sincere.

At the end of the game, tally up the total number of Praise badges. While the folks who send and receive the most compliments get special honors, everybody who participates wins!

11. Snap Camera Photobooth

Snap Camera integrates with Microsoft Teams, meaning you can use filters to make meetings more fun. Typical Snap Camera filters include flower crowns, dog ears, cat hats, floating pizza slices, as well as lenses that transform users into potatoes or tigers. To learn how to use Snap Camera filters within Microsoft Teams, read this tutorial from TechRepublic .

These special effects make excellent online photobooth props. Once each teammate chooses a filter, snap a team photo by taking a screenshot.

12. GIF Story Challenge

GIF Story Challenge compels players to tell a story using only GIF images.

• Send each team a tale to tell, either a famous book, movie, song, TV show, or an original story.
• Allow teams five minutes to strategize and select GIFS
• Have each team take a turn telling the story via chat
• Challenge the opposing team to guess the story

If the team guesses correctly, then award a point. You can award extra points for creativity, humor, and good use of GIFs, too! The team with the highest score after all rounds winds the game.

14. Online Team Building Quizzes

Online quizzes are one of the most straightforward Microsoft Teams games. To create quizzes for Microsoft Teams, use the Forms app. This function allows you to create and share quizzes, surveys, and polls. When making forms, choose whether to display results instantly, or keep votes anonymous.

You can use the Forms feature to play a variety of mini-games, such as:

• Would You Rather
• This or That
• Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
• Fact or Fiction
• Most Likely To

Here are lists of questions for would you rather and this or that .

Play live during a meeting or over the course of the workweek, and share results with the group at the end of the activity.

Or, make quizzes geared towards testing how well teammates know each other, or helping teammates know each other better. Either assign points for correct answers, or let participants play just for fun.

For more ideas, check out our ultimate team building quiz playbook .

Microsoft Teams’ apps and add-ons offer many opportunities for playing fun games that drive engagement, banish isolation, and dispel virtual meeting fatigue. The games on this list are entertaining and engaging, but there are plenty of other challenges and virtual activities you can use to break up the monotony of web meetings. We recommend browsing the apps selection in Microsoft Teams to find even more game possibilities.

Next, check out our article on online games for virtual teams , this list of games to play on Skype , these free online office games , and this one with virtual game night ideas .

We also have a list of fun team building games for Zoom , a list of the best online team games , and a list of fun ideas for virtual team events .

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FAQ: Microsoft Teams Games

Here are answers to common questions about Microsoft Teams games.

What are Microsoft Teams games?

Microsoft Teams games are online team building games that use the unique features of the Microsoft Teams platform to enable team bonding and remote worker engagement. These games are great additions to virtual meetings as icebreakers, closing activities, or breaktime re-energizers during longer meetings.

What are some fun Microsoft Teams games?

The best Microsoft Teams games capitalize on the platform’s special features and encourage full group participation. Some fun Microsoft Teams games include Microsoft Teams Trivia, Together Mode Guess Who, Who Scavenger Hunts, and Microsoft Teams Family Feud.

How do you play trivia on Microsoft Teams?

The easiest way to play trivia on Microsoft Teams is to use the Kahoot! app extension. Simply install the app on Microsoft Teams, then log in to Kahoot! and assign a game or challenge to your team. Or, you can book a fully-facilitated team trivia experience from an online team building company to drive virtual engagement among your group.

A list of games to play on Microsoft Teams. Great for driving engagement and team bonding.

Author: Angela Robinson

Marketing Coordinator at teambuilding.com. Angela has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and worked as a community manager with Yelp to plan events for businesses.

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Angela has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and worked as a community manager with Yelp to plan events for businesses.

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Create an assignment in Microsoft Teams

Create  assignments for your students in Microsoft Teams for Education . Manage assignment timelines, add instructions, create resources to turn in, and more.

Note:  Assignments is only available in class teams . You can assign assignments to classes of up to 1000 students. Classes larger than 300 can't use a Class Notebook or Makecode.

In this article

Create a new assignment, title and category, instructions and attachments.

Points, rubrics, and grading

Assigning to students or groups

Due dates and scheduling, assign, save, or discard, classwork modules.

Navigating the Grades tab

Navigate to the desired class team, then select Assignments .

Select Create >   New   Assignment .

At a minimum, you must give the assignment a title. This is required. You can optionally add a tag, which will make this assignment easier to search for in the future. 

Assignments only supports the following image file types: .png, .jpeg, and .gif. 

On mobile, Images will resize to the screen. 

On desktop, you can use sizing handles on images to resize them.  

You can also attach existing files, links, or assignment integrations and create and name a new file right from here for students to turn in.

Note:  You can add up to five files for students to edit. The total number of resources you can add to an assignment is 10, whether editable or non-editable. Read-only reference files can be up to 500 MB in size. Files for students to edit can be up to 50 MB in size.

Select Attach  to attach resources to the assignment. Choose a file from your OneDrive, upload a file from your device, or choose one of the other options set by your admin, such as MakeCode.

Note:  If you're assigning a Class Notebook page, check what version of OneNote your students are using to ensure that their assignment pages will lock after the assignment due date passes.

Select +New  to create a blank Word (.docx), Excel (.xlsx), PowerPoint (.pptx), or Whiteboard document, or a new video recording to hand out to your students.

Select  Apps  to attach content from an app to the assignment. Admins can  manage Teams apps in the Microsoft Teams admin center .

Select Learning Accelerators  to add Reading Progress , Search Progress and other Learning Accelerators to the Assignment.

By default, Students can't edit  attached documents, meaning the document is read-only. This is a great option for reference materials.

Note:  If you have older documents with the file extension .doc, .xls, or .ppt, students won't be able to edit them. You can either attach them as read-only reference material or create a new file in Teams, copy in the old content, and save it. All new files you create in Teams or other Microsoft 365 apps will have the correct extension.

The Assign to field is where you choose the class for this assignment. By default, the class team you are in will be selected. 

Multiclass Publish

Multiclass publish allows educators to create an assignment for multiple classes with the same due date. 

Do this by navigating to the Assign to field and check the boxes for classes the assignment will be published to. 

Points and rubrics

You can select which grading scheme,  grading categories , and points the assignment is worth. 

If you have configured the class to use Grading Categories, you need to select a Grading Category for assignment with points.

Select the amount of points this assignment is worth, if any. You can use points on any number-based scale including whole numbers of 100 and set your own denominator. Examples:  88/100 or decimals 3.7/4.0.

Select  Add rubric  to  create a rubric .

Select  Manage grading categories  to create or edit the grading categories for the class.

Setting up Grading Schemes

Letter grading and grading categories must be set as a Grading Scheme in the Grade settings section to display these options.

2. Navigate down to Grade settings .

3. Choose Add Schemes or  Manage schemes .

Note:  If no other grading schemes other than "Points" have been set, this link will read  Add Schemes . Once you have gone through the steps to add a new scheme, the link will change to  Manage schemes. 

5. Set the grading levels. Letter grades will be the normal A, B, C, D, F, scheme. Ensure that there are enough levels to cover the entire 0-100 percent range.

6. Select the Save button when complete. 

Finish by choosing the  Done  button. 

Choose multiple classes, individual students, or groups of students  in one class to assign to.

By default, only students who are in your class now will receive this assignment. Change this by selecting an option from the dropdown menu.

Note:  If you choose a close date, any student who joins will receive this assignment until the close date.

Select a time and date for the assignment to be due. To schedule an assignment, next to  Assignment will post immediately with late turn-ins allowed  select Edit assignment timeline . Here, you can customize when your assignment will be posted to students and when it will close for turn-ins. By default, no close date will be selected, which allows students to turn in assignments late.

Note: If you choose multiple classes to publish the assignment to, you can select Set due date per class to set individual schedule , due and close date for each class

You can choose whether to add this assignment to your calendar on Outlook, students' calendars, and other educators or staff in your class team. Set this preference for all assignments in Assignments Settings .

Next to Add assignment to calendars , select the dropdown and pick one of the following options:

Students only  adds the assignment to just student calendars.

Students and me adds the assignment to both student calendars and your calendar.

Students and team owners to adds the assignment to both student and other educators or staff in the class team calendars.

Choose the channel where you'd like notifications for this assignment to post. This allows you to keep student work and discussion organized by unit, topic, or subject. By default, assignments will be posted in the General channel or your selection in Assignments Settings.

To choose a channel to post in, next to Post assignment notifications to:  select the down arrow for a list of available channels. 

Pick the channel you’d like this assignment notification to post in, your selection will be applied immediately.

To post assignment notifications to a channel, make sure bot posting is enabled. You can check that here  or ask your IT Admin for help.

Assignments will post to channels that are visible to all students. Private channels will not appear during this step.

If you have selected multiple classes, select Set per Class to set which channel to use or just use the General channel. Assignments to individual students do not post to channels.

When you're ready, you can finish the process of creating your new assignment by assigning it to students.

Note:  If your school uses Turnitin, you can sync assignment turn-ins to Turnitin .

Assign  will immediately publish the assignment and your students will be notified of the new assignment on the day you specified and the notification linking to this assignment will post in the channel you selected. They'll also have an entry on their Teams and Outlooks calendars if you've selected that option.

Save  will save a draft of the assignment. Students will not receive any notification, and nothing will be added to any calendar. 

Discard  will delete the draft of the assignment. Students will not receive any notification, and nothing will be added to any calendar. 

Create a New Module

1. Navigate to the desired Class Team, then select Classwork.

2. Select Add module. 

3. Enter a title for the new module.

4. Optionally, enter a description.

5. Select Save to save the module as a draft.

Note: Draft modules are only visible to Team owners (teachers) until published. All new modules are created in draft states. 

Learn more about managing classwork modules in Microsoft Teams.

Navigate the Grades tab

To open the Grades tab, navigate to your desired class team and select Grades .

You'll see that students appear in a column, with their assignments in a row next to their name. Assignments are listed in order by due date with the nearest date at the beginning. 

Learn more about the Grades tab. 

Create a group assignment

Edit an assignment

Save an assignment as a draft

Grade, return, and reassign assignments

Additional resources for educators

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Grading Schemes in Teams Assignments

Alternative Grading Schemes are now available in Teams Assignments! Alternative Grading Schemes allow educators to create different Grading Schemes, such as letter grades, proficiency systems, pass/fail, and more for their class. This feature enables gives educators the flexibility to add different Grading Schemes to different Assignments and to see grade using a different scheme. Users will now also be able to see average grades in an Alternative Grading Scheme as well. 

How to set up Grading Schemes

To set up Alternative Grading Schemes in Teams Assignments, follow the steps below:

Navigate to a class team and select either Assignments or Grades.

Under the Grade Schemes section, select Add schemes.

Note:  If other grading schemes have already been set, this link will read  Manage schemes . 

4. Choose the + Add scheme  option in the Manage grading schemes popup dialogue box. 

5. Add a grading scheme by first naming your new scheme and then assigning a percentage range for each grade. Ensure that you have enough levels to cover the entire 0-100 range.

The first two levels will automatically populate by default. Add levels by choosing the + Add level option. You can also delete levels by selecting the trash icon. 

Choose the Save button when finished. 

6.  Select the Done button to complete the process. 

Now you have the ability to choose between a points or letter based grading scheme. Additionally, you'll notice that the link formerly labeled "Add schemes" has been renamed to Manage Schemes. 

Grade, return, and reassign assignments

Set up weighted grading categories in Teams Assignments

Adjust assignment settings for your class team

Create and manage grading rubrics in Microsoft Teams

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Why can't I make a new meeting in teams I have a group of 12

Why can't I make a new meeting in teams I have a group of 12 students attending my class and I was able to make a classroom for five students but it's saying there's a schedule overlap and there isn't and there's something like creating a webinar but it's not a webinar I'm so confused and I've spent hours and hours trying to figure out what am I doing wrong it said something like at the end of June that something's changing I have the paid version my company pays for it and the company who I'm working with are also valid I tried everything I don't know what to do the error on the page says conflicts with another schedule why is driving me nuts

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• Microsoft Agent |

Dear  Beth Bradley (Trainerin FOKUS Stuttgart) ,

Good day! Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community. We are happy to help you.

I'm sorry to hear that you're having trouble scheduling a meeting in Microsoft Teams. The error message you're seeing may be due to a scheduling conflict with another meeting or event that is already scheduled in your calendar.

To troubleshoot this issue:

Have you checked your calendar to see if there are any conflicting events or meetings that may be causing the issue?

Have you tried scheduling the meeting for a different time or date to see if that resolves the conflict?

Have you tried creating a new meeting in Teams web and check if it works? If it works, please try updating you Microsoft Teams app and check if it resolves the issue.

Have you tried clearing your Teams or browser cache and cookies to see if that resolves the issue?

If you're still having trouble, you can try creating a new team or channel specifically for your class and scheduling the meeting within that team or channel.

If none of these steps work, please let me know and I can provide further assistance. Please note that our initial response may not always resolve the issue right away. However, with your help and more detailed information, we can work together to find a solution. Thank you for your help.

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Thank you for your message, I have two teams accounts both for separate companies and with the new company I had the basic version of teams installed therefore it wouldn't allow a classroom experience so with the updated version now both versions are the new teams I was able to create a classroom so it was just a case of upgrading but thank you so much for your answer that's so kind of you

Hello Beth Bradley (Trainerin FOKUS Stuttgart) ,

Many thanks for the response.

You're welcome! I'm glad to hear that you were able to upgrade to the new version of Teams and create a classroom experience. If you have any further questions or issues with Microsoft Teams, feel free to reach out to us for assistance.

If you don't mind, could you kindly submit your feedback and vote in order to make this thread a top content and help any other community users who might be facing a similar scenario to easily find this thread/post.

Thank you for your time and have a great day.

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Moving from individual contributions to team achievements in group projects

Putting the emphasis on a deliberate, reflective approach that emphasises clear goals and active engagement is a better way to prepare students for teamwork in their future careers, write William Owen and Leah Chambers

William J. Owen

.css-76pyzs{margin-right:0.25rem;} ,, leah chambers.

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.css-1txxx8u{overflow:hidden;max-height:81px;text-indent:0px;} Students using generative AI to write essays isn't a crisis

How students’ genai skills affect assignment instructions, turn individual wins into team achievements in group work, access and equity: two crucial aspects of applied learning, emotions and learning: what role do emotions play in how and why students learn.

Some students thrive in the collaborative environment of group work; others grapple with disparities in contributions and conflicting goals. A 2003  survey by Jane Burdett from the University of South Australia revealed that 36 per cent of students in a final-year business course did not enjoy group work, citing uneven workload and contributions as major concerns. Moreover, Alistair Mutch, of Nottingham Trent University, had earlier  indicated that the dynamics and tensions within academic group settings mirror those in professional teamwork scenarios. These observations suggest a pressing need for educational strategies that better equip students for collaboration in their future workplace.

We have identified several points where group work could be improved: clearer learning outcomes, better communication, and a focus on individual responsibility and active engagement.

Be clear about the goal of group projects 

A lack of clarity regarding learning objectives for group projects can be a key factor in exacerbating group tensions, according to Mutch. For example, suppose one of the learning outcomes was to prepare students for team-based projects in the workforce. In that case, we as educators would need to articulate this and design the project to support that outcome. Instead, many instructors simply infer that team-based outcomes arise from these group interactions. 

Give students individual tasks and responsibilities

Donald R. Bacon of the University of Denver  demonstrated that group projects in business schools might need to be revised to fulfil their educational goals. His 2005 study revealed that students who completed projects individually learned more of the project-related content than those who worked in groups, suggesting a gap between group goals and individual accountability. Bacon’s research underscores the need to rethink the design and implementation of group projects within educational settings. Aligning more closely with principles of collaborative learning will ensure both group engagement and individual responsibility.

Communicate the aims of group work with your students

If we aim to embed learning outcomes that move students from independent contributions to group projects to more collaborative and team-based contributions , we must clearly identify the outcome(s) and communicate how the learners will acquire those skills. We know that effective workplace teams develop over time. B. W. Tuckman’s 1965  stages of group development – forming, storming, norming and performing – provide a theoretical framework for understanding team dynamics. The ability to communicate and coordinate the group project sub-tasks increases as group members move through these stages. However, the constrained timelines of academic schedules, where group projects are often initiated a few weeks into or midway through a semester, limit the natural progression through these stages and make it harder for groups to develop teamwork skills within a semester.

A strategy to give students the skills to work together

To address these challenges, we use pre-project group development tasks in psychology courses to accelerate the “forming and storming” phases of group development and achieve more effective collaborative and cohesive outcomes. Before initiating the group project, we require the learners to engage in self-reflection and share the outcomes with their group. These activities are recorded and submitted as part of the project. Also, during the initial stages of the project, students use their analysis of group strengths to assign roles and tasks for working together as a team on the group project.

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We have employed this framework for group projects across second-year and fourth-year psychology classes, as well as in subject areas such as psychology of leadership and psycholinguistics. First, students complete a simple self-evaluation of their task versus relational leadership behavioural preferences (adapted from Peter G. Northouse’s 2009  Leadership: Theory and Practice ). We use this questionnaire to help the group project members to recognise their general inclinations towards either task achievement or fostering people-related connections. 

Following a session where they share, discuss and document each other’s leadership strengths, group members collaborate to identify the stages and responsibilities required to achieve the project outcome. For instance, should the team decide to create a podcast exploring whether other primates use language or communication, they may identify essential steps such as content research, production research (for example, how to create an engaging podcast), drafting, rehearsal, in-class delivery and report write-up. After identifying roles and sub-tasks, the group indicates who is responsible for which task and why they are best suited to it. This process fosters a transparent distribution of responsibilities and provides a mechanism for individual and team accountabilities.

A systematic approach to reflection and sharing expedites the progress through the forming and storming stages of group collaboration while fostering stronger team cohesion. This pre-project endeavour significantly influences the evaluation of team synergy and elevates the project’s overall calibre. Student feedback attests to their personal growth in both task-related proficiency and relational strengths, which in turn amplify the team’s cohesion. Moreover, student testimonials reveal a marked improvement in their perception of this group project compared with prior experiences. The process of moving from team formation to effective teamwork was smoothly facilitated and highly appreciated.

Making group work relevant to workplace skills

Enhancing the clarity of learning outcomes, particularly those directly tied to workplace team skills, significantly boosts the relevance of group projects. Additionally, integrating individual reflections on strengths in task- and relational-based behaviours, which are then shared with team members, provides a firm foundation for swift progression through groups’ forming and storming phases. This fundamentally shifts individuals from merely making independent contributions to the project to actively contributing to the collective achievements of the team.

By reimagining group projects as a platform for meaningful collaboration and personal growth, we can prepare students more effectively for the complexities of teamwork in their future careers. This shift requires moving away from traditional, loosely structured methodologies towards a more deliberate, reflective approach that emphasises clear goals, active engagement and leveraging individual strengths.

William J. Owen is interim vice-president academic and provost, and Leah Chambers is a sessional instructor and PhD candidate in the department of psychology, both at the University of Northern British Columbia, Canada. 

If you would like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week, sign up for the Campus newsletter .

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Microsoft unveils Team Copilot that can assist groups of users

It can cater to the needs of a department or even a whole organization..

At this year's Build event , Microsoft has announced Team Copilot, and as you can probably guess from its name, it's a variant of the company's AI tool that can cater to the needs of a group of users. It expands Copilot's abilities beyond that of a personal assistant, so that it can serve a whole team, a department or even an entire organization, the company said in its announcement. The new tool was designed to take on time-consuming tasks to free up personnel, such as managing meeting agenda and taking down minutes that group members can tweak as needed.

Team Copilot can also serve as a meeting moderator by summarizing important information for latecomers (or for reference after the fact) and answering questions. Finally, it can create and assign tasks in Planner, track their deadlines, and notify team members if they need to contribute to or review a certain task. These features will be available in preview across Copilot for Microsoft 365 — and will be accessible by those paying for its license — starting later this year.

In addition to Team Copilot, Microsoft has also announced new ways customers can personalize the AI assistant. Custom copilots users create from SharePoint can be edited and improved further in Copilot Studio, where they can also make custom copilots that act as agents. The latter would allow companies and business owners to automate business processes, such as end-to-end order fulfillment. Finally, the debut of Copilot connectors in Studio will make it easier for developers to build Copilot extensions that can customize the AI tools' actions.

Update, May 21, 2024, 1:24AM ET: This story has been updated to clarify that Team Copilot is an assistant that can serve the needs of a group of users and is separate from Copilot for Teams.

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Microsoft Build recap: Team Copilot, a Sam Altman surprise, and other AI announcements from the developer conference

• Microsoft's Build 2024 keynote for developers happened on Tuesday.
• CEO Satya Nadella  gave updates on Microsoft's generative AI products, like Copilot.
• Major announcements included Team Copilot, GitHub Copilot extensions, a Khan Academy partnership, and a surprise Sam Altman interview.

OpenAI and Google may have held the AI spotlight last week, but now it's Microsoft's turn.

The annual Microsoft Build developer conference keynote lasted over two hours on Tuesday, during which CEO Satya Nadella unveiled Microsoft's latest generative AI offerings, including Copilot updates.

Copilot was the dominant theme, continuing what Microsoft started on Monday when it held a press event and unveiled its new Copilot+ PC lineup, which includes the AI-infused Surface Pro and Surface Laptop. Focusing on hardware announcements on Monday gave Microsoft plenty of airtime to focus on AI software and features during Tuesday's keynote.

Microsoft unveiled Team Copilot, bringing its AI agent to workplace chats and meetings within Microsoft Teams. Team Copilot is designed to be a "valuable member of the team" that helps people be more productive at work, according to Microsoft.

Other major announcements included GitHub Copilot extensions, a Khan Academy partnership to bring free AI tools to teachers in the US, and real-time intelligence capabilities coming to Microsoft's AI analytics platform, Fabric. Microsoft also said it was "deepening" its partnership with Meta to bring volumetric Windows apps to the Quest headset, extending the apps into 3D space.

But the biggest surprise came at the end of the keynote when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman came to the stage to talk about GPT-4o and his advice to startup founders and developers. Microsoft has invested billions into OpenAI as its partner, and that means GPT-4o is directly integrated into Copilot and the Azure AI cloud suite.

Business Insider liveblogged the entire Build 2024 keynote so you can catch up on the highlights below.

And that's a wrap on the Build 2024 keynote!

Microsoft's CTO Kevin Scott thanks Sam Altman for joining, and then closes things out by thanking the Build developer crowd one last time.

And that's it for the main keynote, which clocked in at over 2 hours.

Build 2024 continues with developer sessions in the coming days.

But that's a wrap on our live blog — thanks for joining!

A surprise guest: Sam Altman!

We're getting a surprise interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to close out the Build 2024 keynote.

Sam Altman takes the stage and says it's been a "wild week" since OpenAI showed off GPT-4o, its new flagship AI model.

"I've never seen a technology get adopted so quickly in such a meaningful way," Altman says.

Altman says he was genuinely surprised how much he liked ChatGPT's new voice mode powered by GPT-4o.

Altman says it's a huge deal that "the models are just going to get smarter."

The OpenAI CEO says his biggest piece of advice is that this is a special time, so take advantage of it and don't wait to build what you're trying to make. Now is the "most exciting time" to work on a startup since the mobile boom in 2008, and maybe even the internet, Altman says.

But don't expect AI to do all the work for you, Altman adds.

"AI alone is a new enabler but it does not automatically break the rules of business," he says.

AI has huge potential to reduce suffering in the world, Microsoft's CTO says.

Kevin Scott asks the developer crowd to think big with AI, and especially about the potential for AI tools to "reduce suffering" around the world.

For example, he wonders if AI could help his mother with her sickness. It would be great if she could upload her medical charts for AI analysis and get some smart test recommendations, Scott says.

Khan Academy's CEO comes out to chat about its new partnership with Microsoft.

"This is a big deal," Khan Academy CEO Sal Khan tells the Microsoft CTO.

Every teacher in the US will have access to Khan Academy's "state of the art" teaching tools for free, Khan says.

He says he thinks teaching will be the first profession to really benefit from AI, and if they can win them over, students will follow.

CTO Kevin Scott shows off a GPT-4o demo that was recorded in the last 24 hours.

We see a Microsoft employee get some quick coding help with OpenAI's GPT-4o by using her phone camera to show the AI agent the Python code on her laptop screen.

The Scarlett Johansson-like "Sky" voice is gone, with a deeper, more robotic-sounding voice in its place. OpenAI pulled the "Sky" voice recently , and Johansson has since said that she was approached to voice GPT-4 last year but declined. After hearing a voice "eerily similar" to hers, she said she's lawyered up .

Scott says the OpenAI GPT-4o demo was conceived of and recorded in the last 24 hours, and its coding abilities give him hope that a "rusty" CTO could still dive back into coding if called upon to do so.

Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott is up next as we near the end of the Build 2024 keynote.

He thanks developers for "all of the great shit you have made over the past year."

He shouts out the over 50,000 customers using Azure AI tools and the platform, ranging from small startups to Fortune 100 companies.

Specifically, he highlights some generative AI work done with Etsy to build features like the marketplace's new "gift mode."

"It is a really innovative way to figure out how to buy things for people who are really difficult to buy for," Scott says.

He then zooms out and reflects on the huge technological shift that AI represents, comparing it to the dawn of the internet. He also shouts out OpenAI's new GPT-4o model.

If you just look at AI compute over time, Scott says, the rate of increase in compute when applied to AI training has been increasing exponentially — and the point of diminishing returns hasn't been hit yet.

Microsoft is working to optimize the current frontier while also investing at "a pretty incredible rate" to "push the frontier forward," Scott says.

Microsoft is "deepening" its partnership with Meta.

Pavan Davuluri announces that Microsoft is "deepening" its partnership with Meta to bring Windows apps to the Quest that extend into 3D space.

We're seeing a clip about bringing volumetric Windows apps to Meta's Quest headsets.

Heads up, gamers: Copilot can help you when you're stuck on that tricky quest.

Pavan Davuluri runs a clip showing how Copilot can work in Xbox games.

We see footage of someone asking Copilot questions about how to complete an in-game task, and the AI agent helps out.

And don't forget the "Minecraft" example we saw earlier.

It sounds like Xbox players won't have to Google as much if they get stuck in a game.

Next up: Copilot+ PCs, which were first unveiled yesterday.

Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of Windows + Devices, gets onstage to talk more about the big announcement from Monday: Copilot+ PCs.

Davuluri says the Copilot+ PCs are "redefining what you can do on a PC and setting the direction for the next decade of Windows."

He runs a sizzle reel about the new AI-powered computers, which integrate AI chips and processors along with AI apps, like "Recall," which acts as a "photographic memory" of sorts for your computer, making it easier to quickly find information anywhere on your PC.

"This new class of PCs is up to 20 times as powerful and 100 times as efficient for running AI workloads compared to traditional PCs from just a few years ago," he adds.

Next up, Microsoft's president of collaborative apps and platforms takes the stage.

Jeff Teper is here to talk about Copilot extensions and do some demos to show what it's like to create and use one.

This is the part of the Build keynote where the more in-depth technical demos come out, so our updates might be less frequent.

Teper talks about how you can "drill deeper" into a conversation with Copilot extensions, such as asking about a key feature of a delivery drone. Copilot will provide the necessary information quickly to cut down on having to ask a real person for that information.

Teper's next demo is in Sharepoint, as he creates a custom and secure Copilot extension.

You can publish Copilot extensions back to Sharepoint and Microsoft Teams afterward, where they're visible in a marketplace.

We're hearing a lot more about how Team Copilot works.

Team Copilot goes beyond the individual user to help with project management.

It's a "valuable member of the team," and gets added to your chats and meetings — such as a "meeting facilitator" to keep conversations productive. It can tell the team in a meeting when it's time to move on to the next topic, and takes notes that anyone can add to.

Team Copilot keeps up-to-date information, including timely items or open issues that need to be addressed.

"The entire team will be more productive and collaborative," the video about Team Copilot says.

These features will be available to customers in preview later this year.

We're now hearing from Lumen, a company using Copilot for Microsoft 365 to help their sales staff. What normally takes hours can now take minutes, Lumen says. They've seen an increase in outbound calls by 40%.

Nadella heads off, and Microsoft exec Rajesh Jha takes the stage.

Rajesh Jha, executive vice president of Microsoft's Experiences + Devices Group, takes the stage to talk more about Copilot.

He says that "nearly 60%" of Fortune 500 companies now use Copilot.

Microsoft has added more than 150 Copilot capabilities since the start of this year, he adds.

Nadella unveils Team Copilot and updates to Copilot Studio.

Microsoft's Team Copilot works in Microsoft's Teams workspace.

It can be your meeting facilitator when you're in Teams, creating agendas, tracking time, taking notes for you, Nadella says — it can even be your project manager.

He also talks about updates coming to Copilot Studio, where you can design your own Copilot AI agent and test it before you deploy it. You can then use the AI agent across multiple channels.

Next up: Microsoft announces GitHub Copilot extensions.

Nadella announces GitHub Copilot extensions.

We're seeing a live demo where GitHub Copilot is asked in Spanish to build Java code.

GitHub Copiot extensions are good at "keeping you in your flow across your entire day."

The GitHub Copilot Azure extension makes it possible to diagnose issues as you code and plan to implement changes. We're also seeing the AI tool help come up with a development plan, and then getting its help in implementing the code for a developer.

Coders have long dreamed of "staying in the flow," Nadella says.

Microsoft announces Real-Time Intelligence in Microsoft Fabric.

Microsoft Fabric is the company's AI data analytics platform.

More than 11,000 organizations use it, Nadella says.

With the newly announced real-time intelligence capabilities coming to Fabric, customers can enjoy "instant actionable insights on streaming data."

Microsoft is partnering with Khan Academy.

Khan Academy will use Microsoft's Phi-3, a family of small language models (SLMs), to make math tutoring more accessible; Khan Academy is making its AI assistant Khanmigo free to all US teachers.

In a clip, Khan Academy CEO Sal Khan says he expects the partnership to have a "dramatic impact on US education."

Nadella on stage says he's very excited to see the impact of the Khan Academy partnership.

We're seeing another demo, this one about hiking shoes.

In the video, a man holds up a shoe to his computer and asks the Copilot AI agent if they're fit for a camping/hiking trip.

Copilot responds, and then the man tells the AI agent to identify the best shoe for the trip and add it to his cart. The man speaks Spanish for the next question and the AI agent responds in Spanish.

More than 50,000 organizations use Azure AI today, Nadella says.

"With Azure AI, we offer the broadest selection of frontier and open source models including LLMs and SLMs," Nadella says.

He mentions how GPT-4o is integrated into Azure AI already.

What OpenAI demoed last week, "that was pretty magical stuff," Nadella says.

OpenAI is Microsoft's "most strategic and most important partnership," Nadella says. Copilot will also leverage GPT-4o, Nadella adds.

You can share your screen with Copilot, and have it help with whatever you're working on.

We're seeing a demo of someone playing "Minecraft" and talking to Copilot, which can see what's on the screen, to help the gamer craft and survive. It offers timely suggestions, like seeing shelter "now."

After the demo clip ends, Nadella announces that GPT-4o is now "generally available" on Azure AI.

Next up, AI infrastructure.

Microsoft has "the most comprehensive world infrastructure" for AI, Nadella says.

"We're on track to have our data centers powered 100% by renewable energy by 2025," Nadella says.

The number of countries where its cloud-computing Azure AI services are available has quadrupled, he adds.

Microsoft will be among the first cloud providers to offer Nvidia's latest Blackwell AI chips, he said. The company has a " deep partnership with Nvidia," Nadella says.

The first major topic is Copilot, and the Copilot+ PCs announced yesterday.

Nadella talks up the Copilot Library, with ready to use local APIs.

There are 40+ on-device models to use "out of the box," he adds.

He also shows a sizzle reel about Copilot+ PCs and the AI apps that are tightly integrated in the computers.

Nadella starts a round of applause for developers helping build out AI applications.

Nadella mentions some developer interactions over the past year that stuck out to him, and how the AI apps people are making are making an impact.

Nadella thanks those who "bringing the impact" of AI to the rest of the world.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has taken the stage.

He's talking about key moments in Microsoft's history.

"It feels like we're yet again, at a moment like that," he says.

AI is reshaping "every layer of the tech stack," Nadella adds.

Microsoft has two real dreams, Nadella says: Can computers understand us instead of us having to understand computers? And, in a world of ever-increasing information, can computers help us reason, plan, and act more effectively on that information? He says there are "real breakthroughs" on both fronts.

Ok here we go! The Microsoft Build keynote is kicking off.

We're seeing a video about the "new era" of technology to kick things off. There's a snapshot of OpenAI's text-to-video image generator, Sora, in the video.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella confirms lots of Copilot news is on the way...

" Looking forward to #MSBuild today, where we'll share how we're creating new opportunity for developers across every layer of the Copilot stack. Please join us," the Microsoft CEO posted to X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday morning ahead of the keynote.

You can also watch a livestream of the Microsoft Build keynote.

While plenty of developers and press will be in attendance, Microsoft has also made a livestream of the opening keynote available for those who prefer to watch and listen in real time.

But we'll be covering the highlights here too.

Axel Springer, Business Insider's parent company, has a global deal to allow OpenAI to train its models on its media brands' reporting.

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