Use Microsoft Teams Copilot for Meeting Recaps

What This Does

Teams Copilot transcribes your meetings in real time and then lets you ask questions about what was discussed — even if you missed part of the call. After the meeting, it generates a summary with key points, action items, and speaker contributions. For project managers who run back-to-back Teams calls, this replaces manual note-taking entirely.

Before You Start

• Your organization has Microsoft 365 Copilot enabled (M365 Business Standard or higher + Copilot license)
• You are using Teams version 1.6 or later (check: Help → About → version)
• You are the meeting organizer or have been granted organizer-level permissions
• Participants should be notified that Copilot will transcribe the meeting (it shows a notification automatically)

Steps

1. Start the Teams meeting and enable Copilot

Join or start your Teams meeting. In the meeting controls toolbar at the top, click the More button (three dots). Select Turn on live transcription — this activates the transcription that Copilot uses. Then click the Copilot button (it may appear as a small icon in the meeting toolbar or under More options).

What you should see: A notification to all participants: "Transcription has started." A Copilot panel may open on the right side of your meeting window.

2. Ask Copilot questions during the meeting

While the meeting is in progress, open the Copilot pane on the right side of the Teams window. Type questions in real time:

• "What has been discussed so far?"
• "What action items have been mentioned?"
• "What did [name] say about the timeline?"

Copilot reads the live transcript and answers immediately. Useful when you need to catch up after joining late or after a technical issue.

3. End the meeting and access the recap

After you end the meeting, go to your Teams calendar and click on the meeting. Open the Recap tab. You'll find:

• A full AI-generated meeting summary
• Action items extracted from the conversation
• A complete transcript searchable by speaker
• The meeting recording (if recording was enabled)

What you should see: A structured summary broken into topics discussed, with action items listed with suggested owners.

Troubleshooting: If the Recap tab doesn't appear, transcription may not have been enabled during the call. Copilot cannot generate a recap from a meeting that wasn't transcribed. For future meetings, enable transcription as step one when you join.

4. Share the recap with your team

In the Recap tab, click Share recap. You can share it to a Teams channel, copy a link, or export the summary as text. Most project managers copy the action items section and paste it into their project management tool or the project Teams channel.

Real Example

Scenario: You ran a 1-hour project scope review meeting with your team and the client. The client raised questions about deliverable ownership that weren't on the agenda. You need to document what was decided before a follow-up call tomorrow.

What you do: After the meeting, open the Recap tab. Read the AI summary (30 seconds). Check the action items.

What you get: Summary: "The team reviewed the Phase 2 scope. The client confirmed they will own user acceptance testing internally. Three action items were assigned: Marcus to update the RACI by Thursday, the PM to revise the SOW section 3.2 for client review, and the client to confirm testing resource names by Friday."

Action items: Listed with owners and implicit deadlines based on what was said.

Time saved: 60 minutes of post-meeting documentation reduced to 5 minutes of review and cleanup.

Tips

• Use it to catch what you missed: If you were pulled into another call mid-meeting, ask Copilot in the Recap: "What did I miss after 2:30pm?" — it answers based on the transcript.
• Search the transcript by name: In the Recap tab, type a participant's name in the transcript search to find everything that person said — useful when you need to document what a stakeholder committed to.
• Create action items from the recap: Copy action items from the recap directly into your project tool. In Jira or Asana, create a task per item — this is a 5-minute step that prevents things from falling through the cracks.

Tool interfaces change — if a button has moved, look for similar AI/magic/smart options in the same menu area.