Copilot for Your Staff · Lesson 5 of 7

Copilot in Teams meetings

15 minutes. A recap that writes itself, if the meeting is set up for it. And a clear rule about when it shouldn't be.

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Comfort Zone Heating & Cooling (our fictional company) holds a 30-minute Teams meeting every Monday: jobs for the week, parts on order, who's on call. Gina wants the action items in writing. Nobody wants to be the note-taker.

Copilot can help. But this is the app where the difference between the two Copilots is sharpest, and where one setting decides whether anything is left after the meeting ends.

With Copilot Chat only (no paid license), you have the Copilot Chat app in Teams. Microsoft says that without the paid license its answers are grounded only in public web data. It can't read your meeting. You can still record and transcribe meetings, and the transcript itself is useful. You can paste parts of it into Copilot Chat and ask for a summary.

With the paid license, you get Copilot inside the meeting and afterward. Microsoft says each licensed participant can ask questions that only they can see: who said what, where people agree or disagree, and which follow-up tasks came out of it. The paid license also brings Copilot to Teams chats and channels.

Intelligent recap (AI notes and tasks after the meeting) comes with the paid Copilot license. Microsoft also sells it in Teams Premium, a separate add-on.

Copilot in meetings runs in one of two ways. The meeting organizer picks in the meeting options:

• During and after the meeting. Copilot works once someone starts transcription, and stays available afterward from the meeting chat and the Recap tab.
• Only during the meeting. Copilot runs on temporary speech-to-text that Microsoft says isn't saved after the meeting ends. When the meeting is over, so is Copilot's memory of it.
• Off. Nobody can use Copilot in that meeting. Microsoft notes that turning Copilot off also turns off recording and transcription.

Your company's IT admin sets the default. Microsoft's default policy requires a saved transcript for Copilot to work. So in many offices, no transcript, no Copilot.

Microsoft also says Copilot isn't available in meetings hosted outside your organization, or in end-to-end encrypted meetings.

In the meeting, select More actions in the meeting controls, then Record and transcribe > Start transcription. Confirm the language everyone is speaking and select Confirm.

Microsoft says every participant sees a notice that the meeting is being transcribed. Say it out loud too: "I'm turning on the transcript so Copilot can do the notes." After the meeting, the transcript appears in the Recap tab and is stored in the organizer's OneDrive.

Depending on your company's settings, organizers, co-organizers and presenters can start transcription.

Select the Copilot icon in the meeting controls. Microsoft's example prompts are good ones to start with:

• "Where do we disagree on this topic?"
• "What questions can I ask to move the meeting forward?"
• "Create a table with the ideas discussed and their pros and cons."

Joined late? Ask "What have I missed?" Your questions and Copilot's answers are visible only to you.

After the meeting, open the meeting chat and select the Recap tab. Microsoft's steps: select the Copilot icon, choose View prompts, then Recap the meeting. You can also select Open Copilot in the upper right of the meeting chat and ask your own questions:

• "List every action item, who owns it and any due date mentioned."
• "What did we decide about the Henderson job?"
• "Draft a short follow-up message to the team with the decisions and action items."

Check it before you post it. Microsoft's recap help says it plainly: AI-generated content could be incorrect. Read the action items against your memory of the meeting. Fix names. Make sure "Marcus will order the compressor" didn't become "Marcus ordered the compressor." Then post the follow-up yourself.

A transcript is a written record, stored in Microsoft 365, that can be kept, searched and handed over if there's ever a dispute. Copilot's prompts and answers in meetings may be kept for compliance too, depending on your company's settings. Some meetings shouldn't be written down by a machine.

Turn transcription off, and don't use Copilot, for:

• Performance, discipline or termination conversations
• Anything about an employee's health or personal life
• Talks with your lawyer or accountant about a dispute or audit
• Customer meetings, unless the customer agreed to it and your IT partner says it's fine

Rule of thumb: if you wouldn't want the meeting typed up and emailed to everyone who was in it, don't transcribe it.

• Pick one routine internal meeting this week, like Comfort Zone's Monday huddle.
• Tell everyone at the start that you're transcribing it for notes.
• Start transcription.
• If you have the paid license, use the Recap tab and the Recap the meeting prompt afterward. If you don't, open the transcript and paste the key part into Copilot Chat with the prompt: "List every action item, who owns it and any due date mentioned."
• Check the action items, fix them, and post them in the team chat yourself.
• Write your "transcript off" list on the Copilot Prompt Card template.

Check it worked

• One real meeting was transcribed, with everyone told first.
• You have a written list of action items, checked by a person and posted by a person.
• You know whether your meeting default is "During and after" or "Only during," and what that means for the recap.
• Your team knows which meetings never get transcribed.

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Next: Word, Excel and PowerPoint, built from files you already have.

→ Lesson 6: Word, Excel and PowerPoint from your own files

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