Kesslernity · M365 Copilot Field Guide
Copilot in Teams Meetings
What Copilot can do depends on when you ask — and whether the transcript is on.
Copilot in Teams works across three phases: before, during, and after a meeting. Almost every feature that matters requires a transcript. Without one, Copilot has no text to work from.
Licence required before you start
Copilot in Teams meetings requires the Microsoft 365 Copilot paid add-on. Without it, the Copilot panel does not appear in meetings. Transcription can still be enabled for all users regardless of Copilot licence — but Copilot cannot query the transcript without the paid add-on. Verify under Settings → Subscriptions or contact your Microsoft admin or check your organisation's licence portal.
What's new — June/July 2026
Copilot Cowork is now generally available and billed on usage (Copilot Credits, $0.01/credit pay-as-you-go), and the Work IQ APIs reached GA. The $30 Copilot add-on that unlocks in-meeting Copilot is unchanged — but if your org builds custom agents that ground in M365 data via Work IQ, that usage is metered in Copilot Credits. See the licensing/comparison guide for the full cost picture.
July 2026 additions: Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 5 is rolling out in Microsoft 365 Copilot, including Copilot Cowork and PowerPoint, for agentic multi-step work. Relevant here because Cowork sits alongside meeting-adjacent flows (recap generation, follow-up drafting, agent-driven action items). Deep citations now link Copilot's answers to the specific portion of the source Word or PowerPoint file (Rolling Out; Meetings, Web, and PDF support coming). Sales Agent and Service Agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot are now generally available, working inside Outlook and Teams and grounded in Dynamics 365 data. Copilot Cowork's plugin catalogue expanded to include Enosix, Harvey, LSEG, Miro, monday.com, Moody's, Morningstar, S&P Global Energy, and TeamsMaestro (Databricks via sideloading), plus Fabric and Dynamics 365 apps. Agent Mode in PowerPoint can now reference a Teams meeting or chat directly when creating a presentation (GA, Roadmap IDs 555885, 555884, 555883). The Facilitator agent is expanding to Teams Rooms for in-person meetings on Android (Roadmap 560700) and Windows (Roadmap 560318), and can now automatically detect open questions during a meeting and offer answers via web search (In Development, Roadmap 558341). Planner integration into Microsoft Cowork is in development (Roadmap 567315), letting Cowork view, create, and update plans and execute Planner tasks across M365.
At a glance
The single blocker
No transcript = no Copilot features.
Enable it before the meeting starts.
During the meeting
Real-time recap, catch-up, and questions.
All based on the live transcript feed.
After the meeting
Intelligent recap, action items, and follow-up drafts
available in the meeting chat within minutes.
Three phases — what Copilot can do
- Get context from previous meetings via @ reference in Chat
- Summarise pre-read documents (@file in Chat)
- Prepare questions based on the last session's open items
- Brief yourself on a person's recent activity (@person in Chat)
- Catch me up — instant summary if you joined late
- What has been decided so far?
- What topics haven't we covered yet?
- Suggest a question I should ask next
- Summarise this discussion in 3 bullets
- Intelligent recap with meeting summary
- Action items with owner and due date
- Key decisions list
- Follow-up email draft for attendees
- Reference the meeting in Copilot Chat via @
What requires a transcript
| Feature | Requires transcript | Notes |
|---|
| Catch me up (during) | Yes | Transcript must be running before you join. Cannot catch up on content before transcript started. |
| Questions during meeting | Yes | Copilot reads the live transcript in real time. |
| Post-meeting intelligent recap | Yes — or recording | Transcript preferred. Recording alone generates a basic recap, not full chapter/action extraction. |
| Action items extraction | Yes | Extracted from spoken commitments in the transcript. |
| Key decisions list | Yes | Requires full transcript — not available if transcript was stopped mid-meeting. |
| Follow-up email draft | Yes | Based on the recap. Requires transcript for accurate content. |
| @ reference in Chat (after) | Yes | Meetings without a transcript cannot be referenced in Copilot Chat. |
| Meeting notes (auto) | Yes | Automatic meeting notes in Teams require transcript to be enabled by organiser. |
| Before-meeting prep in Chat | No | Uses your email, calendar, and previous meeting transcripts for context. |
Enabling transcript — four ways
1
During the meeting (manual)
In the Teams meeting toolbar, select More (…) → Start transcription. All participants are notified. Anyone with a Copilot licence can start transcription.
2
Before the meeting (organiser)
Open the calendar event → Edit → Meeting options → turn on Record automatically and Transcription. Starts the moment the meeting opens.
3
Default for all your meetings
Teams Settings → General → Automatically start transcription. Applies to meetings you organise. Does not affect meetings organised by others.
4
Tenant-level default (admin)
Teams Admin Center → Meetings → Meeting policies → enable Transcription and Copilot for the relevant policy. Contact your Microsoft admin or check your organisation's licence portal to verify your org's setting.
Prompts to use in each phase
Type these in the Copilot side panel during or after the meeting
When to use
- Joined late and missed opening context
- Stepped away and rejoined
- Parallel workstream — need to track without interrupting
Prompts
- Catch me up on what I missed."
- What has been decided so far?"
- What action items have been assigned?"
- What topics are still open?"
Copilot reads from the point transcript started. Content before transcript began is not available.
When to use
- Immediately after a project or governance meeting
- Before sending minutes to the team
- Before distributing actions to owners
Prompts
- List all action items with the owner and any stated due date."
- What decisions were made versus deferred?"
- Draft a follow-up email to all attendees summarising the decisions and next steps."
- What risks or issues were raised that are not yet assigned?"
Use the Copilot side panel in the meeting chat, or reference the meeting via @meeting name in Copilot Chat later.
When to use
- Pre-call brief with a client or stakeholder
- Continuing a project discussion from a previous session
- First meeting with someone in your org
Prompts (in Copilot Chat)
@Previous-session-May-2 What open items were not resolved in our last meeting?"@Sophie Martin What have we been working on together recently?"@Project-brief.pdf Summarise the three key decisions I need to make in today's session."
Before-meeting prep uses Copilot Chat, not the Teams meeting panel. Reference previous meetings and documents with @.
Common failures
!
No transcript — all meeting features unavailable
If transcript was not started, Copilot has no meeting content to work from. The Copilot panel in Teams will prompt you to start transcription, but content before that point is lost.
Fix: Enable transcript by default in your Teams settings. Confirm it's running within the first 30 seconds of any important meeting.
!
Transcript started mid-meeting — partial content only
Copilot only summarises what the transcript captured. If the most important discussion happened before transcript started, it will not appear in the recap or action items.
Fix: Start transcript before the first agenda item begins, not after introductions.
!
Meeting not appearing in @ reference picker
Meetings without a transcript do not appear as referenceable items in Copilot Chat. Only meetings with a transcript (or recap) can be referenced via @.
Fix: Check that transcription was enabled. If the meeting had a transcript, it may take up to 24 hours to appear as a referenceable item.
?
Intelligent Recap without saved transcript (Wave 3, mid-May 2026)
Microsoft is rolling out Intelligent Recap without saving a full transcript — AI summary generated from live speech-to-text, with no transcript stored. Available summary only (no chapters, topics, or mentions). Targeted Release mid-May 2026, GA early June 2026.
Note: Use cases where transcript storage is prohibited (legal, executive, regulated discussions) will benefit from this once it reaches your org.
Rules to follow
- 1Enable transcript by default in your Teams settings. For high-stakes meetings, confirm it's running in the first minute.
- 2Use the Copilot side panel during the meeting. As of February 2026, the in-meeting panel is updating to the unified Copilot Chat experience — it can analyse the live transcript, meeting chat, and calendar content in one interface. After the meeting ends, reference it in Copilot Chat via @.
- 3Reference the meeting in Chat after it ends — type @ and the meeting name to ask follow-up questions hours or days later.
- 4External and guest participants cannot use Copilot in your meeting. Even if you are licensed, external attendees see no Copilot panel. Transcript is still captured — they simply cannot query it during or after. Copilot is available only to internal licensed users.
- 5Verify action items before distributing. Copilot extracts spoken commitments — informal statements may be included. Review before sending to owners.