Microsoft has been steadily increasing Copilot's capabilities in its ecosystem. Copilot has lately become an addition to many Microsoft 365 apps, aiming to serve a different function suitable for the app in question. Microsoft Teams is one of the apps that Copilot has become a part of.

In Microsoft Teams, a platform for collaboration, Copilot aims to make collaboration smarter and more efficient. Copilot can be used before, during, and after meetings. It is available on Windows, Mac, Web, iOS and Android.

Note: Copilot in Teams is available only with a Microsoft 365 and Microsoft 365 Copilot license.

What Can Copilot Do in Teams?

Copilot in Teams can do a whole variety of things. There are also new features coming along.

Note: You should be using the 'New Teams' client to use Copilot in Teams; it can be enabled from the three-dot menu.

Copilot can now access your meeting chats along with meeting transcripts.

With meeting chats and the content from meetings themselves, the AI assitant can generate insights and suggestions. It can give you a quick recap for meetings and calls, identify any follow-up tasks that need to be done, create agendas, and even ask questions.

  • Summarize the meeting: In a meeting, it follows along with the conversation and keeps track of who said what. At any point during the meetings, it can summarize key takeaways so you can efficiently grasp anything you might have missed.
  • Keep Track of Opinions: It can also track the progress during the meeting on any meeting consensus. It can neatly summarize people's opinions so you can clearly gauge where everyone stands on a matter.
  • Provide Unresolved Questions: Copilot can even identify unresolved questions in meetings. So, even if you miss some important questions or critical points, Copilot can identify them and make sure they're not overlooked.

Copilot will also explicitly identify in its answers what was spoken (i.e., taken from transcript) and what was written (i.e., taken from meeting chat).

Most importantly, it can do all this in real time!

Once the meeting ends, an intelligent meeting recap will automatically be created. The meeting recap will include everything – important content, meeting summary and notes, and any action items. So, even if you were not a part of the meeting, with Copilot, you can stay caught up on everything.

Once the recap is created, you can ask it everything that you can in real-time when the meeting is ongoing.

Copilot works in chat threads as well and is available in the Chat compose box. It can pinpoint key people of interest in any chat threads you are added to or provide summaries and action items.

You can also enlist Copilot's help to rewrite messages and adjust the tone. It can also add calls to action or make changes according to custom instructions. Soon, it will even be able to write messages from scratch by simply providing it with a prompt.

You can also access Copilot in Teams outside of the context of a meeting or a chat by adding it as an app. It can help you prepare for meetings, get information from documents, help you with requests, and much more.

Using Copilot in Meetings

To use Copilot in Meetings, certain requirements should first be fulfilled.

Requirements to Use Copilot in Meetings:

  • Meeting transcription or recording should be enabled.
Note: If you don't want to record a meeting, you can still use Copilot in meetings, but the option to use 'Copilot without Transcript' has to be enabled from meeting settings before starting the meeting by the meeting organizer. However, Copilot won't be available after the meeting in this case.
  • There should be enough meeting time, with enough participants speaking, i.e., Copilot needs enough information to be helpful and respond to prompts.
  • Copilot only works when someone in your organization created the meeting.

Now, to use Copilot in meetings, you can either automatically turn on recording before the meeting, or enable transcript/ recording during the meeting.

  1. If a participant joins a meeting late (more than 5 minutes since the meeting has started), then they'll get a notification to get the meeting summary. The meeting summary will appear automatically in this case when the participant opens Copilot.
  2. In the meeting, click the 'Copilot' button from the meeting toolbar.
  1. Copilot will open in the side panel on the right.
  2. You can send your own prompts at any time during the meeting. Type requests like Recap the meeting so far, List any action items or Show meeting notes in the Copilot panel and wait for the AI assistant to respond.
  1. You can even put more nuanced prompts, like Where do we disagree on this topic? or What are people's opinions on this topic so far?.
  2. Copilot can only be as helpful as the prompts you give to it. To get more ideas for prompts, click the 'More Prompts' button below the compose box.
  1. For scheduled meetings, a notification from Copilot will also appear near the meeting's end to help wrap it up.

Using Copilot After Meetings

Copilot is also available after meetings in the 'Recap' tab.

  1. Switch to the 'Chats' tab from the left menu in the Teams app.
  1. Then, open the meeting chat for which you want to use Copilot.
  2. Once the meeting chat opens, click the 'Recap' tab.
  1. You can see AI-generated notes for the meeting in the 'AI Notes' tab.
  1. To access Copilot, click the 'Copilot' button in the top-right corner. Copilot will appear in the panel on the right.
  1. You can ask it questions to get insights on the meeting, like What questions were asked in the meeting?
  2. It can even perform actions with prompts like, Write an email for all meeting participants with meeting summary and include action items.

Using Copilot in Chats

Copilot can also be accessed in 1:1 or group chats on Microsoft Teams.

  1. Go to the 'Chat' tab from the Teams app and navigate to the chat you want to use Copilot in.
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  1. Copilot is available in Chats from two points: the Compose box and the side panel, and both have different functions.
  1. With the Copilot button in the compose box, you can get help with rewriting your messages. It can rewrite the entire message, adjust the tone, like making it formal, casual, etc., and change the length, like making the message longer, shorter, etc. You can also provide custom instructions for how to modify the message.
  1. Copilot in the side panel can give you information and insights from the meeting chat. If you have missed the chat from the past few days, instead of going through the whole conversation, for example, you can ask Copilot for a summary.
  2. You can even give it a prompt like Give me the summary for last 1 (or 7, 30, etc.) days or Give me the action items that are still unresolved.
Note: Copilot cannot access messages that are older than 30 days.
  1. Copilot will also provide links in its answers so you can verify the messages it's using to provide the information.

Using Copilot Independently in Teams

Till now, in all the scenarios that we covered, Copilot uses meeting or chat content to give you insights. But you can also use Copilot independently.

  1. Go to the 'View more apps' option (three-dot menu) from the left.
  2. Then, search for 'Copilot' from the apps and add it to your Teams app.
  1. Copilot will appear in the navigation bar on the left.
  2. Here, you can send different types of prompts to Copilot and even reference people, files, meetings, emails, etc., by using / the prompt.
  1. For example, type List the main bullet points from and type '/' in the prompt bar.
  2. From the menu that opens, you can select the file you want to reference, and send the prompt to Copilot.

Microsoft Copilot in Teams is a powerful AI assistant that enhances collaboration and productivity. With new features continually being added, Copilot promises to make working together in Teams even smarter and more efficient.