How does Copilot work in Microsoft Teams?

Copilot in Microsoft Teams has moved on a lot since it first launched. It's no longer just a meeting note-taker. It can follow a conversation as it happens, keep track of actions across meetings and chats, and hand routine follow-up to agents.

Here's how it works today, what the free version covers and what's worth thinking about before you roll it out.

Copilot Chat and Microsoft 365 Copilot are not the same thing

Most Microsoft 365 business users now have Copilot Chat in Teams at no extra cost. It's a secure AI assistant that can draft, summarise and answer questions using the web and anything you paste into it.

The features most people picture when they think of Copilot in Teams, such as meeting recaps and chat summaries drawn from your own organisation's content, need a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence. Knowing where one ends and the other begins saves a lot of confusion, and often a lot of wasted licences.

In meetings

During the meeting. You can ask Copilot what's been agreed so far, where people disagree or what questions haven't been answered yet. If you join late, it can catch you up without anyone stopping to recap.

Keeping things on track. The Facilitator agent can take shared notes, keep an eye on the agenda and timings, and capture actions as they come up, so nobody has to be the designated note-taker.

Afterwards. Intelligent recap gives you a summary, actions with owners and the moments that matter, so the follow-up email more or less writes itself.

In chats and channels

In a chat, you can ask Copilot for the highlights from the last day, week or month, what a particular person said, or which files and links were shared. In channels, it does the same across long threads and lists decisions and open items.

For busy managers, this is often where Copilot pays for itself first. Catching up on three days of channel activity takes a couple of minutes rather than half a morning.

Where agents come in

The bigger change in 2026 is that agents can now live inside Teams. Using Copilot Studio, you can build an agent that answers HR or IT questions in a channel, logs actions from a meeting into your project tool, or starts an approval in Power Automate.

The best place to start is one repetitive job your team already does in Teams every week. Our AI agents service covers how to scope, build and govern them.

Get your data ready first

Copilot can only see what the user can already see. If your SharePoint sites and Teams files are overshared, Copilot will surface content that people shouldn't be reading. A short data readiness review tidies up permissions and sensitivity labels before you switch anything on.

Moving your phone lines to Teams

The UK's analogue phone network is due to close by January 2027. If you haven't moved yet, Teams Phone lets you make and take business calls from your desktop or mobile, and Copilot can summarise calls in the same way it does meetings. Doing it now avoids a last-minute scramble.

If you'd like help working out which licences you actually need, or getting Copilot working well in Teams, take a look at our Microsoft Copilot consultancy or get in touch.