Prepare and collaborate with Copilot in Teams

  • 8 minutes

If you're already using Copilot for drafting or summarizing, the next step is to make it part of your meeting workflow so preparation and follow-up happen consistently, not just when you have time. This unit focuses on what happens before a meeting, and in the time between meetings.

Prepare for your meeting with Copilot

Copilot can generate a meeting summary directly inside the calendar event in Outlook. It brings together relevant emails, shared documents, prior action items, and chat history so you don't have to gather that context yourself.

The summary is based on what you have access to, which means it reflects your emails, files, and conversations, not a shared or generic view.

To prepare for a meeting:

  1. Open the meeting event in Outlook.
  2. In the Prepare for this meeting section, select Show more to read the full summary.
  3. Choose a suggested prompt or start a Copilot chat to explore specific questions about the meeting.

Note

The summary Copilot generates is unique to you. Other participants see a different summary based on their own permissions and access. For meetings without shared pre-reads or prior email history, the summary may be limited. The Meeting Insights setting must be configured by an administrator.

Try these prompts when preparing for a meeting:

  • What are the open action items from my last meeting with this team?
  • Summarize the documents shared for this meeting.
  • What outcomes are expected from this meeting?
  • What should I know about [attendee name] before this call?

When creating a new meeting in Outlook, Copilot can suggest an agenda based on the title, description, and attendees. Review and edit this agenda before sending the invite so participants know what to expect. When the meeting starts, the Facilitator agent can pick up this agenda automatically, which reduces setup time and helps keep the discussion on track.

Draft and refine messages

Before or between meetings, you often need to clarify details, ask follow-up questions, or share updates. Copilot in Teams helps you refine those messages before sending, whether you need to adjust tone, improve clarity, or change the length. Refinement options include:

  • Make it concise / Make it longer
  • Make it sound professional / Make it sound casual
  • Make it sound confident / Make it sound enthusiastic
  • Custom: enter your own instruction, for example, Rewrite this to emphasize urgency without sounding alarmist.

You can rewrite the full message or select a specific portion and rewrite only that section. You can also rewrite up to 10 times and navigate between versions using the left and right arrows. Select Replace when you're satisfied, or X to return to your original.

Once communication is clear, the next priority is staying caught up on conversations and shared content.

Catch up on chats, channels, and shared files

Before or between meetings, staying current on conversations and shared content is just as important as what happens in the meeting itself. Copilot helps you catch up across chats, channels, and files without reading everything manually.

Chats and channel conversations

To catch up in a chat, go to Chat, open a specific conversation, and select the Copilot icon in the upper-right corner. Select See more for built-in options, or type your own prompt directly.

Note

Copilot references information from the opened message thread, with a 30-day history as the default time frame unless you specify otherwise. Copilot can't summarize images, Loop components, or files shared in the chat thread.

For channel post threads, open the thread and select the Copilot icon at the top of the post. Copilot can summarize the discussion or answer a specific question about what was said in that thread, which is especially useful when a channel conversation runs long before a meeting.

Useful prompts for both chats and channels:

  • Summarize what I've missed in the past two days.
  • What decisions were made in this thread?
  • What are the open items from this conversation?
  • What did [a team member] say about [topic]?
  • What links or resources were shared?

Tip

Include a specific time frame in your prompt, such as last week or since Monday, to focus Copilot's response on the relevant period. If the results are cut off, select Generate next response to continue.

You can select Copy in the upper-right corner of any Copilot response to paste it into a chat, a channel, or elsewhere. Select the numbered citations in the response to jump directly to the source message in the thread.

Files shared in Teams

When a colleague shares a Word document, PowerPoint presentation, or PDF in a chat or channel, you don't need to open the file to get the key points. Select the file to preview it, then choose the summary icon or select Summarize with Copilot to get a quick overview. This summary is useful for reviewing pre-read materials in the minutes before a meeting starts.

Use agents in Teams chat

Beyond the built-in Copilot experience, agents in Teams chat let you get targeted help within the context of a specific conversation. An agent combines AI reasoning with your chat content, meeting transcripts, or connected data to answer questions, surface insights, and take action.

The Facilitator agent is the most relevant example here. Once Facilitator is active in a meeting, you can @mention it in the meeting chat to:

  • Find a specific decision
  • Identify open questions
  • Summarize part of the discussion

Team members who missed the meeting can also query Facilitator directly rather than waiting for a written recap.

With your preparation and catch-up workflows in place, you're ready to run more structured and effective meetings.