Microsoft will retire the “Favorite contacts” feature in Places to align with the people experiences across other Microsoft 365 apps. Outlook and Teams Places Cards will instead surface frequent contacts based on Microsoft 365 usage patterns.
Timeline
The retirement should be completed in December 2025.
Impact for your users
Today, all Microsoft Places users can define favorite contacts in the Places web portal. This option will be removed in December 2025.
Microsoft will determine favorite coworkers based on frequent contacts derived from Microsoft 365 usage patterns.
At the same time, Microsoft will retire the Places setting AllowInConnectionsList.
This setting allowed Places administrators to control whether users could appear in other users’ collaborator lists (another name for favorite contacts).
It’s a good idea to disable AllowInConnectionsList, as the setting will soon be obsolete. If you disable it, existing contacts remain available, but users can no longer add new contacts.
Connect-MicrosoftPlaces
Set-PlacesSettings -AllowInConnectionsList "Default:false"