Overview 

Recently, Microsoft announced that they would be changing the format of the data that is being sent as notifications of changes to presence. These changes are set to take effect from June 1st, 2024. This document provides Akixi’s response to these upcoming changes.  

There has been quite a lot of discussion in the Teams community about these changes, particularly since it appears that these changes will be happening at short notice and are being delivered into the main Teams API with no ability to opt out. 

Impact on Go Integrator and Go Connect 

Go Integrator and Go Connect does use the presence data from Microsoft Teams and allows users the ability to combine this information with the telephony states to give a complete indication of the availability of their peers. Therefore, it is important to understand if there will be any problems or reduction in functionality because of these changes. 

Our team have reviewed the planned changes and have determined that they will not have a material impact on Go Integrator and Go Connect and its ability to monitor the teams presence of other users within an organisation. This is because Go Integrator and Go Connect are not reliant on the element of data that has changed. Instead, it already receives changes to presence through the GET operation, and this is not changing currently. 

Details of the Microsoft Update 

According to the official statement, Microsoft are making a “breaking change” to the way that presence notifications are provided to third party applications.  

The change does not appear to be a security fix, since the missing data can still be obtained my developers making a change to their application. Instead, it appears that the change may have been made to reduce system load. 

Further Information and Resources 

For anyone who would like to read more about the change, please refer to the official Microsoft statement: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/microsoft365dev/breaking-changes-to-microsoft-graph-presence-and-online-meeting-basic-change-notifications/?WT.mc_id=M365-MVP-5001530  

Conclusion 

Although the planned changes do not affect our products, we have taken the decision to inform our customers what is happening and why it does not affect us. This is in line with our ongoing commitment to transparency and support and remove any anxiety or doubt over that may be caused by the Microsoft announcement.