Copilot in Teams: Chat Summaries and Search

Overview

Government professionals rely on Teams chat for quick coordination, decisions, and information sharing. But when a group chat accumulates dozens or hundreds of messages while you are in meetings, on travel, or focused on other work, catching up becomes a time-consuming chore. Scrolling through long threads to find that one decision or deadline wastes valuable minutes every day.

Copilot in Teams chat changes this by letting you summarize conversations, search for specific information, and catch up on what you missed—all through simple prompts.

What You’ll Learn

• Access: Where to find Copilot in Teams chat and what you need
• Summarize: How to get quick summaries of long chat threads
• Search: How to find specific information buried in conversations
• Catch Up: How to get up to speed on chats you missed

Script

Hook: Stop scrolling through endless chats

How much time do you spend scrolling through Teams chats looking for that one piece of information someone shared last Tuesday? Or trying to catch up on a group chat that exploded with 80 messages while you were in back-to-back meetings?

If you are a government professional juggling multiple teams, programs, and coordination threads, this is a daily reality. Critical details get buried in chat history and finding them takes far too long.

Copilot in Teams chat can summarize entire conversations, find specific details, and get you caught up in seconds instead of minutes. In the next six minutes, you will learn how to make it work for you.

Prerequisites and where to find Copilot in chat

Before you start, you need a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. This is the paid Copilot license—chat summarization is not available with the free Copilot Chat experience.

Copilot works in both one-on-one and group chats. To access it, open any chat conversation and click the Copilot icon in the chat header area at the top of the conversation. A Copilot panel opens where you can type prompts and ask questions about the conversation.

For government cloud environments, Copilot in Teams chat is supported in GCC, GCC High, and DoD. Check with your IT team to confirm your tenant has the feature enabled.

One important detail: Copilot only processes messages you already have access to. It respects your existing permissions, so it will not surface content from chats or channels you are not a member of. This is a critical compliance consideration for government environments.

Summarizing chat threads

This is the most common use case and the biggest time-saver. Open a chat conversation, click the Copilot icon, and ask “Summarize this conversation.”

Copilot reads through the full thread and returns a structured summary. It identifies the key topics discussed, any decisions that were made, and action items that came up. Instead of reading through every message yourself, you get the highlights in a few seconds.

You can also specify a time range. Ask “Summarize the last 7 days” or “What was discussed this week?” to narrow the scope. This is especially useful for long-running group chats where you only need the recent activity.

The feature works in both short and long conversations, but it delivers the most value in threads with 50 or more messages—exactly the ones you would dread scrolling through manually.

Here is a practical government scenario. Your cross-team chat about an upcoming policy update has accumulated 80 messages over the past week. Multiple people weighed in with questions, suggestions, and decisions. Instead of reading every message, ask Copilot to summarize. You get the key decisions and open items in seconds, and you know exactly where things stand.

Finding specific information in chats

Beyond summaries, Copilot excels at answering specific questions about your chat history. Instead of using the search bar and hoping for the right keyword match, ask Copilot directly.

Try prompts like “What did Maria say about the deadline?” or “When was the budget number shared?” or “What files were shared in this chat?” or “What decisions were made about the vendor selection?” Copilot searches the conversation history and returns the relevant excerpts with context.

This is faster and more accurate than manual scrolling because Copilot understands the context of the conversation, not just keywords. It can connect related messages and give you a coherent answer even when the information was spread across multiple messages from different people.

The feature works across the full chat history available to you. So if someone shared a specific piece of guidance three weeks ago, Copilot can find it.

Here is a government example. You need the specific compliance guidance your team lead shared about a new FedRAMP requirement two weeks ago. You remember it was in your project team chat, but the chat has hundreds of messages since then. Ask Copilot “What did our team lead say about FedRAMP compliance?” and you get the answer in seconds instead of spending ten minutes scrolling.

Catching up on chats you missed

This feature is invaluable for busy government professionals who step away from active chats regularly. After being away—whether for meetings, PTO, or focused work—open a busy chat and ask “What did I miss?” or “Catch me up on this conversation.”

Copilot summarizes everything that happened since you last participated. It highlights key topics, decisions, and action items so you can quickly assess what needs your attention.

Follow up with targeted questions like “Were any decisions made while I was out?” or “Did anyone mention my name?” or “What action items came up?” These help you zero in on what actually requires your response versus what was just conversation.

Build this into your routine. Each morning, open your most active group chats and ask Copilot for a catch-up summary. Focus on decisions and action items first, then skim the full conversation only if something needs deeper context.

Here is a real-world scenario. You return from a two-day training event to find 150 messages in your project team chat. Instead of spending 20 minutes reading through everything, you ask Copilot for a summary and any action items assigned to you. You are caught up in 60 seconds and can immediately focus on what needs your attention.

Close: Take control of your chat experience

Let us recap the three ways Copilot transforms your Teams chat experience. First, summarize—get the highlights from long conversations with a single prompt. Second, search—find specific information without scrolling through message history. Third, catch up—know what you missed in seconds after being away.

Here is what to do next. Open your busiest group chat right now and ask Copilot to summarize the last week. Then try asking a specific question about something you know was discussed recently. Finally, make chat summaries part of your morning routine for your most active conversations.

Copilot turns your chat history from noise into knowledge. Start using it today.

Sources & References

• Use Copilot in Microsoft Teams chat and channels — Step-by-step guide for using Copilot features in Teams chat
• Copilot in Teams meetings — Official documentation for Copilot in Teams including chat features
• Copilot adoption for GCC — Government cloud adoption resources and feature availability
• Microsoft 365 Copilot overview — Overview of Copilot capabilities across Microsoft 365 applications