Microsoft Teams is about to become a lapdog for your boss — automatically snitching on your live location when connected to the office Wi-Fi

As you may know, Microsoft Teams has been under scrutiny for bundling Teams with Office 365, with rivals like Salesforce's Slack citing anticompetitive business practices. In 2023, the tech giant caved to antitrust pressure, forcing it to unbundle Teams from Office 365. This means users can purchase Office plans without Teams or Teams as a standalone service.

More recently, Microsoft dodged a hefty fine from the European Commission by changing the pricing of Office 365 and Microsoft 365. Both services will now be provided without Teams at a lower cost. For context, you'll have to purchase Teams as a standalone service for approximately $5.50 (€5) per user per month.

As it happens, Microsoft is currently working on a new Teams feature that will use Wi-Fi network connections to pinpoint a user's exact location. For context, Teams will automatically update a user's work location when they connect their device to an office Wi-Fi network (via TechRadar).

The feature is poised to reduce confusion at the workplace, allowing managers and employees to identify each other's location in the office. According to the Microsoft 365 roadmap post announcing the new feature, "when users connect to their organization's Wi-Fi, Teams will automatically set their work location to reflect the building they are working in."

To that end, the feature is still in the development phase, but it is expected to ship to broad availability later in December 2025. It's not yet clear what advantage this feature will serve.

It can be a productivity booster, meaning you'll no longer have to manually look for your counterparts at the office or even give them a call; you can easily pinpoint their location via Teams as long as they are connected to the office's Wi-Fi network.

On the other hand, it can also be used to identify who's not working from the office. This news comes after many organizations are rapidly ditching work-from-home and hybrid work arrangements.

In September, Microsoft announced that employees who work within 50 miles of a Microsoft office will be expected to work onsite three days per week by the end of February 2026. The company further indicated that employees work best when collaborating in person.

However, the move has raised concern among employees who claim that the mandatory return to office could be a type of stealth layoffs.

Elsewhere, Microsoft recently shipped a new feature to Microsoft's Copilot Dashboard in Viva Insights called Benchmarks. It is designed to help Copilot identify relevant data, allowing it to track AI adoption rates at your company. This allows management to keep track of how much AI you're using.

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