How to Use Copilot in Teams Meetings

In its ecosystem, Microsoft has continuously enhanced Copilot’s capabilities. Recently, Copilot has been integrated into various Microsoft 365 applications with the purpose of fulfilling a specific function relevant to each app. One of these apps is Microsoft Teams, which now includes Copilot.

Within Microsoft Teams, a collaboration platform, Copilot strives to enhance collaboration by increasing productivity and efficiency. Copilot is accessible on Windows, Mac, Web, iOS, and Android, and can be utilized before, during, and after meetings.

Features of Copilot in Teams

Copilot in Teams has a wide range of capabilities, with additional features on the horizon.

Copilot now has the ability to view both your meeting chat messages and meeting transcripts.

The AI assistant can utilize meeting chats and meeting content to provide insights and recommendations. It can also offer a brief summary of meetings and calls, identify necessary follow-up tasks, create agendas, and ask relevant 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.

In addition, Copilot will clearly indicate in its responses which content was spoken (extracted from the transcript) and which was written (extracted from the meeting chat).

Moreover, it is capable of performing all these tasks in real time!

After the meeting concludes, Copilot will generate a comprehensive meeting recap that includes all important content, a summary of the meeting, and notes, as well as any action items. This allows you to stay updated on everything, even if you were not present during the meeting.

After creating the recap, you will be able to ask it the same questions as you would in real-time during the ongoing meeting.

Copilot is also compatible with chat threads and can be accessed through the Chat compose box. It has the ability to identify important individuals mentioned in any chat threads you are included in, as well as generate summaries and action items.

Copilot can assist with rewriting messages, adjusting tone, and adding calls to action. It also has the ability to make changes based on custom instructions. In the near future, it will even have the capability to generate messages from a given prompt.

Additionally, Copilot can be accessed in Teams without having to be in a meeting or chat by adding it as an app. This feature enables you to utilize Copilot for tasks such as meeting preparation, document retrieval, and assistance with requests, among others.

Utilizing Copilot During Meetings

To utilize Copilot during Meetings, specific prerequisites must be met beforehand.

To use Copilot in meetings, certain requirements must be met.

• Meeting transcription or recording should be enabled.

• 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.

To utilize Copilot during meetings, you have the option to either activate recording beforehand or enable transcript/recording at the start of the meeting.

• 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.
• In the meeting, click the ‘Copilot’ button from the meeting toolbar.

• Copilot will open in the side panel on the right.
• 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.

• You can also include more detailed prompts, such as Where do we have differing views on this subject? or What are the current sentiments surrounding this topic?.
• 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.

• Copilot will also display a notification towards the end of scheduled meetings to assist with concluding the meeting.

Maximizing Productivity with Copilot After Meetings

The ‘Recap’ tab also offers access to Copilot after meetings.

• Switch to the ‘Chats’ tab from the left menu in the Teams app.

• Then, open the meeting chat for which you want to use Copilot.
• Once the meeting chat opens, click the ‘Recap’ tab.

• In the ‘AI Notes’ tab, you will find notes for the meeting that were generated by AI.

• To access Copilot, click the ‘Copilot’ button in the top-right corner. Copilot will appear in the panel on the right.

• You can ask it questions to get insights on the meeting, like What questions were asked in the meeting?
• It can even perform actions with prompts like, Write an email for all meeting participants with meeting summary and include action items.

Utilizing Copilot in Conversations

Copilot can be utilized in individual or team conversations on Microsoft Teams as well.

• Go to the ‘Chat’ tab from the Teams app and navigate to the chat you want to use Copilot in.

• Copilot is available in Chats from two points: the Compose box and the side panel, and both have different functions.

• 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.

• 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.
• 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.

• Copilot will also provide links in its answers so you can verify the messages it’s using to provide the information.

Collaborating with Copilot in a Team Environment

So far, Copilot has relied on meeting or chat content to provide insights in all of the scenarios we have covered. However, you also have the option to use Copilot on its own.

• Go to the ‘View more apps’ option (three-dot menu) from the left.
• Then, search for ‘Copilot’ from the apps and add it to your Teams app.

• Copilot will appear in the navigation bar on the left.
• Here, you can send different types of prompts to Copilot and even reference people, files, meetings, emails, etc., by using / the prompt.

• For example, type List the main bullet points from and type ‘/’ in the prompt bar.
• From the menu that opens, you can select the file you want to reference, and send the prompt to Copilot.

Microsoft Copilot is a highly effective AI assistant within Teams that improves team collaboration and productivity. With ongoing updates and enhancements, Copilot ensures that collaborating in Teams is always intelligent and efficient.