Microsoft Copilot in Teams offers a new way to communicate and collaborate using artificial intelligence (AI). This introduction to Copilot in Microsoft Teams introduces you to the extensive functionalities and possibilities that elevate your team’s communication and collaboration. Copilot combines the power of technology and user-friendliness, supporting your communication, meetings, and teamwork. Discover how you can use Copilot in Teams as your AI assistant for communication and collaboration with your team.
Features of Microsoft Copilot in Teams
With Microsoft Copilot in Teams, you have access to various features, including:
- Meeting and chat summaries: Easily summarize the content, discussion points, or decisions made during meetings with Copilot.
- Catching up on meetings: Late for a meeting? No problem. Let Copilot give you a brief update on what you missed.
- More effective meetings: Use Copilot as a participant in your meeting and ask questions about the content to move your meeting forward.
- Generating action points: Have Copilot generate an action item list to wrap up the meeting efficiently.
- Insights from Recordings: Ask Copilot questions about your meeting content using a recording or transcription.
- Rewriting chat messages: Come across more professionally, convincingly, or confidently with Copilot.
- Personal assistant: Use Copilot as your personal assistant to help with your daily tasks and stay updated on action items, conversations, emails, documents, and more.
- Phone calls: Have your phone calls summarized or use Copilot to advance your call by asking relevant questions.
How Microsoft Copilot works in Teams
You can use Microsoft Copilot in Teams in three different ways: in meetings, chats and channels, or via the Copilot chat.
Copilot in Teams meetings
Copilot in Teams helps you make meetings more effective, communicative, and collaborative. It can summarize your meetings and generate action items, or you can use it as your personal assistant during the meeting or as a sparring partner.
Note: Copilot in Teams for meetings works based on meeting transcripts. Therefore, the meeting must be recorded or transcribed. Also, Copilot only works for internal meetings; it won’t work in externally hosted meetings.
Summarizing meetings
Use Copilot to make your meetings more efficient by summarizing the meeting, action items, or points of disagreement, before or after the meeting.
In the Teams meeting, click on the Copilot icon in the bar at the top. Then a chat window appears where you can type your prompt or click suggestion prompts such as “Show meeting notes”, “Recap the meeting”, or “List action items.”
Catching up on what you missed
If you’re late, click on the Copilot icon and request a quick summary of the discussed points to update yourself without interrupting the meeting. You can also ask, “Was I mentioned during the meeting?” to catch up on just the points where you were mentioned.
More effective meetings
Use Copilot in Teams to make your meetings more effective by utilizing Copilot as a sparring partner or personal assistant during the meeting. Click the Copilot icon during the meeting and use the appropriate prompts to optimize your meeting. You can also choose from suggested prompts like “Recap this meeting so far,” “List action items,” “Suggest follow-up questions,” “What questions are unresolved?”, “List different perspectives by topic,” “List the main items we discussed,” or “Generate meeting notes.”
Some prompts to try:
- “Where do we disagree in the meeting?”
- “What did [person] respond to Melissa’s proposal?”
- “What questions could I ask to move the meeting forward?”
- “List unresolved issues from the meeting.”
- “Where are the gaps in [person]’s argument?”
- “Create a table of discussed ideas with their pros and cons.”
- “Suggest follow-up questions to ask after the project evaluation.”
- “What points is the team currently not thinking about? Formulate them as questions I can ask the presenter.”
- “What have I missed in this meeting so far?”
- “What questions can the group ask to generate more ideas?”
Generate action points from meetings
End your meeting with an action items list generated by Copilot in Teams. Copilot notes the key action points discussed, including the assigned people. This helps wrap up the meeting with a clear action item list, optimizing communication. You can also ask Copilot to list open topics, unresolved issues, or unanswered questions before concluding the meeting.
Note: Copilot may have difficulty assigning the right people to tasks or summarizing when you’re running a physical meeting or when several people speak from the same meeting room.
Extract Insights from Recordings
After your Teams meeting, you can use Copilot with the recording or transcript. These can be found in your meeting chat under the “recap” tab. Click the Copilot icon in the recap tab to open a Copilot chat window where you can select suggested prompts or enter your own. Ask Copilot broad or specific questions about the meeting’s content.
Some prompts to try:
- “Which questions were asked, answered, or remain unresolved?”
- “What was the mood and tone of the meeting?”
- “Summarize what everyone said but in a less technical way.”
- “Why did [person] say this was a good idea?”
- “What was each participant’s biggest concern? What were they most excited about?”
- “What ideas did [person] have that I can share with the marketing team?”
- “Draft an email for all participants with the discussed action items.”
- “What were each participant’s biggest concern and excitement points? Keep it short.”
Copilot in Teams chats
With Copilot in Microsoft Teams, you can easily follow up on and summarize open messages. No more scrolling through long conversations. Copilot can summarize key points, action items, and decisions from Teams chats over the last 30 days.
Summarize Teams chats with Copilot
When you open a one-on-one chat, group conversation, or meeting chat, click the Copilot icon in the top-right corner. Then, a Copilot chatbox will open where you can choose from suggested prompts like summarizing highlights from the last 7 or 30 days, listing action items, or writing your own prompt.
In Copilot’s generated response, you’ll see links to specific messages so you can quickly navigate back to the relevant parts of the conversation.
Some prompts to try:
- “What are the open items in this chat?”
- “Give me the highlights of [chat] from the last 7 days.”
- “What was [person]’s opinion on my proposal about sales presentations?”
- “Where was I mentioned in this group chat in the last 14 days?”
- “Are there specific action items for me?”
Rewriting texts
Improve your texts in Teams chats to come across as more professional, persuasive, or confident. Start typing your text, click the Copilot icon in the toolbar, and select “Rewrite“. You can then choose to replace the generated text by clicking “Replace” or adjust the tone, length, or style by clicking “Adjust“.
Copilot in Teams channels
In addition to using Copilot in Teams chats or meetings, you can also use Copilot in Teams channels. Go to the conversation in the channel and click the Copilot icon in the top-right corner. Choose a prompt from the suggestions under “more prompts” or write your own prompt.
Copilot chat in Microsoft Teams
Use Copilot Chat to ask questions about data from documents, presentations, emails, agendas, notes, contacts, chats, meetings, and more. Copilot processes the business data you have access to and becomes your powerful assistant for all your inquiries. Say goodbye to endlessly searching for notes or conversations you vaguely remember.
Copilot appears as a chat, like group or one-on-one conversations in the “Chat” tab. If you don’t see it, go to “Apps” and search for ‘Copilot’ in the search bar. You can then add Copilot as a chat in Teams. Select the chat and choose a suggested prompt or create your own. Easily refer to the sources Copilot consulted to quickly find documents or information.
Tip: Use “/” to invoke files, people, meetings, or emails for Copilot to reference.
Some prompts to try:
- “What are the action items from my last meeting?”
- “When is my next meeting with [person] scheduled?”
- “Update my unread chats.”
- “List my upcoming meetings for this week.”
- “Help me prepare for all my meetings tomorrow.”
- “Draft a message stating that sales results should be submitted next week.”
- “Tell my team how we’ve updated the marketing campaign.”
- “Summarize all chats, emails, and documents on [client] from the last 30 days.”
- “What’s the next milestone in [project]? Are there risks? Help me brainstorm a list of risk mitigation actions.”
- “Write a schedule in the style of [file] that includes the timeline from [another file] and the project list from [person]’s email.”
- “Help me prepare for a meeting about [topic]. Refer to all documents, chats, and emails about [topic].”
- “What were the main topics of the [meeting]? Format each section with a bold headline, bulleted list, and bold names.”
Copilot in Teams calls
Just like you use Copilot in Teams meetings, you can also use it as an assistant during phone calls. Click the Copilot icon during a call and start the transcription. You can adjust the spoken language. Then, open the Copilot chat window during the call and use Copilot as your assistant. After the call, you can continue using Copilot for assistance.
