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Focus 2026.9 - Faster Search, Clearer Ownership, and updates for the users

· 9 min read
James Hiscott
James Hiscott
CAO @ Subphonic

Focus 2026.9 is a practical release for daily users: search and saved searches get a proper workflow, calls can be shared with a link or as a playlist, legal holds can be removed as easily as they are added, and recording configuration finally has one home.

Most of it is friction removed rather than features added: fewer clicks to the filter you always use, a link you can paste to a colleague, a setting that lives in exactly one place. Underneath, there is a substantial round of performance and reliability work on search, ingest, and playback.

Highlights​

  • Quick search across the main grids — up to three one-click filters, always visible.
  • Saved searches you can rename, pin, and reuse, with a proper first-run experience.
  • Event ID search, to find every participant's recording of the same call or meeting from one ID.
  • Deep links to a single call, a selected set, every part of a call, an event, or a playlist, straight from the 3-dot menu.
  • Share as a playlist when the person you are sending calls to needs access, not just a link.
  • Remove from legal hold in the Communications menu, and a real Edit control for renaming Access Groups.
  • Entra sync ownership split, so every recording setting has exactly one owner.
  • Faster searches and sooner playback, particularly on large accounts.

Quick Search and Saved Searches​

The Communications screen is where most people spend their day, and the filters they use are usually the same handful. 2026.9 makes those reachable in one click.

Quick search adds a bar to the grid toolbar on Communications, Audit, Endpoints, Subscribers, Users and Contacts. It holds up to three filters. On Communications those are your own pinned searches, with a + Add box that takes you into the Saved tab; on the other grids they are recommended presets. New presets include Active Users, Have an endpoint, and Active endpoints, and Long calls (over 15 minutes) is now one of the visible three.

Saved searches became a feature rather than a list:

  • Rename a saved search in place, with Save and Cancel.
  • Add to or remove from your quick search bar, which holds up to three.
  • The Saved searches tab is always available on Communications, with a how-it-works empty state the first time you open it.
  • The dropdown tab is now called Quick Filters, and Saved and Recent searches are labelled to match.
  • A new inline help icon gives you an instant explanation rather than the second-long wait of a browser tooltip.

The My user filter now does exactly what it says, on every grid that offers it.

Event ID is a new filter, and it answers a question the other IDs could not: show me everything from this call. Every participant's recording of a conversation shares the platform's own ID for it — in Teams that is the Call Chain ID — so searching by it returns the whole conversation rather than one side of it. It sits inside the existing Communication ID filter, alongside Focus ID and Origin ID.

  • One Event ID at a time, and include only. A communication belongs to exactly one event, so entering a second one replaces the first rather than narrowing to nothing.
  • Results come back as one row per participant's recording rather than grouped together, because grouping follows a single participant's call while an event spans several people.
  • Saved and quick searches keep the filter, so an event search can be pinned and reused like any other.

Full detail is on the Search documentation.

You can now share a call, or a set of calls, as a link.

Generate deep link appears in the 3-dot menu and in the multi-select toolbar, and opens a drawer showing the URL with a Copy button. The URL is preselected, so a manual copy works even where clipboard access is blocked. Selecting several calls produces the same kind of link as selecting one.

A link can now point at more than the rows you had selected. Advanced options in the drawer let you choose how wide it should be, narrowest first:

  • These calls — exactly what you selected. This is the default.
  • All parts of these calls — every leg of each selected participant's call.
  • All communications for this event — every participant's recording of the same call or meeting.

Where a scope cannot be expressed as a link, it is disabled with the reason shown beside it — the selection covers more than one event, or some of the rows have no event or no other parts. A greyed-out option and an explanation is better than a link that quietly leaves half your selection behind.

Links to a playlist work the same way, so a playlist you have shared can be sent as a URL rather than described.

The link grants no access of its own — it points at calls, and the person opening it sees only what their own permissions already allow. That is why it is available to everyone. See the Communications screen.

Share as a Playlist​

A deep link grants nothing of its own, which is the point — but it also means a link is no use if the person opening it could not already find the calls. When you need to give someone access rather than directions, share a playlist. It is how Focus actually grants it: a user restricted to shared playlists sees only what has been shared with them this way.

The deep link drawer now says so, and offers the alternative. Share as a playlist opens a short wizard — name it, decide what happens to private calls, choose who to share it with, done — finishing on a link to the playlist itself.

  • The private calls step appears only if your selection contains any. Where you have the right to override, including them is an explicit choice, off by default, with a reminder that everyone you share with will be able to play them. Where you do not, the wizard states plainly that they will be left out.
  • Sharing with nobody is allowed. It simply creates the playlist, and the wizard tells you that before you finish.
  • If the sharing step fails partway, the playlist is kept rather than discarded. Open it from the playlist picker and share it from there, instead of curating it again.
  • Creating a playlist this way needs the playlist creation permission, and including private calls needs its own on top of it.

The active playlist is also clearer: it now shows as a coloured chip with an ✕ to clear it, so you can see at a glance which playlist is filtering the grid and drop it in one click. Previously that control only appeared on hover.

See Playlists.

Two smaller changes that make everyday admin quicker.

  • Remove a legal hold is now a submenu in the Communications 3-dot menu. It lists only the holds that call is actually on, and it is hidden entirely when the call is on none. Add to legal hold now offers only the holds the call is not already on. Removal is gated by its own permission, so you can grant the ability to add without the ability to remove. See the Legal Hold documentation.
  • Access Groups get a proper Edit button on the group heading and on each subgroup row. Renaming is now a single, obvious action rather than a hidden one. See Groups.

Entra Sync: One Owner Per Setting​

Recording configuration now has a single home. Each setting has exactly one owner, and one place to change it.

  • The account drawer is now Entra user sync, and covers user sync only.
  • Teams recording defaults have moved out of it entirely. Recording Policies is now the single place those live, with a link straight through to them.
  • The user sync switch has moved to Security and auth, above Local Accounts, following the same pattern as IP whitelisting: the switch gates the section, and the settings and Sync buttons appear once it is on.
  • Turning user sync off is now non-destructive. It records that sync is disabled instead of clearing your tenant, domains, and group names — so turning it back on does not mean re-entering everything.

Setup guidance is in Pre-provisioning users with Entra Sync.

Quicker Results, Sooner Playback​

A steady run of improvements to how quickly Focus gets things in front of you.

  • Searches come back faster, most noticeably on large accounts with a lot of history behind them.
  • Calls are ready to review sooner after they finish, so a completed conversation is available closer to the moment it ended.
  • Playback starts sooner. Recordings now stream by default, so a long call begins playing straight away rather than waiting on the whole file.
  • Transcripts arrive more consistently, and very short calls are handled sensibly rather than sent for transcription they do not need.
  • Recordings from other sources land more reliably, and cope better when the system they come from is slow to answer.
  • Bring-your-own-storage accounts now behave exactly as ours do, from first setup through to playback.
  • Text messages that arrive late are still delivered, and anything previously missed has been backfilled.

Behind the Scenes​

Work you should never need to think about.

  • We see problems sooner. Every service behind Focus now reports on its own health continuously, so we can spot something going wrong and act on it before it reaches you.
  • Security patching stays current across the platform, with this month's round closing everything outstanding.
  • The way we build and ship Focus has been tightened, so each release runs with the least access it needs.
  • The platform is a little smaller, with recording paths no longer in use retired — less to maintain, and less to keep secure.
  • The journeys you use most are tested continuously against real environments, so problems are caught before a release reaches you.

Focus 2026.9 is a release about the twentieth time you run the same search, the call you need to send to a colleague, and the setting you could never remember which page owned.

As always, if any of this changes how you work day to day, get in touch and we will walk you through it.

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