Copilot in Teams: Meeting Summaries and Catch-Up

Overview

Government professionals attend an average of 15 to 20 meetings per week. Keeping track of decisions, action items, and discussion points across all of them is nearly impossible without help. Copilot in Teams meetings changes this by providing real-time assistance during meetings, intelligent recaps afterward, and AI-powered summaries for meetings you missed entirely.

This video walks you through using Copilot before, during, and after Teams meetings so you never lose track of what matters.

What You’ll Learn

• Setup: Prerequisites and transcription requirements for Copilot in meetings
• Live Meetings: How to use Copilot in real time during a meeting
• After Meetings: How to access and use intelligent meeting recaps
• Missed Meetings: How to catch up on meetings you didn’t attend

Script

Hook: Stop losing meeting insights

How many meetings did you attend last week? Five? Ten? Fifteen? Now, how many action items from those meetings do you actually remember?

If that question makes you uncomfortable, you’re not alone. Government professionals juggle back-to-back meetings across programs, teams, and agencies—and critical details slip through the cracks every day.

Copilot in Teams captures what you miss. Summaries, decisions, action items—all processed from the meeting transcript so you don’t have to rely on memory alone.

In the next eight minutes, you’ll learn how to use Copilot before, during, and after meetings to make every one of them count.

Prerequisites and setup

Before you can use Copilot in Teams meetings, a few things need to be in place.

First, you need a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. This is the paid license—Copilot in meetings is not available with the free Copilot Chat experience.

Second, the meeting must have transcription enabled. This is the most important requirement. Copilot works by processing the meeting transcript in real time, so without transcription, there’s nothing for Copilot to analyze. Your Teams admin enables the transcription policy in the Teams admin center, and then the meeting organizer can turn on transcription or recording for each meeting.

For government cloud environments, Copilot in Teams meetings is fully supported in GCC, GCC High, and DoD—all with transcription enabled. Check with your IT team to confirm that transcription policies are active in your tenant.

One important note: all attendees are notified when transcription is active. This is by design for transparency and compliance.

Copilot works in scheduled meetings, Meet Now sessions, and channel meetings—so it covers virtually every meeting type you’ll encounter.

Using Copilot during a live meeting

Once you’re in a meeting with transcription running, click the Copilot icon in the meeting toolbar. A sidebar opens on the right side of your screen. Copilot immediately begins processing the transcript in real time.

Here are the most useful prompts to use during a live meeting.

To get a quick summary of what’s been discussed, ask “Summarize what’s been discussed so far.” This is especially helpful if the conversation has been going on for a while and you want to confirm your understanding.

To track open questions, ask “What questions are unresolved?” Copilot identifies items that were raised but not yet answered—perfect for making sure nothing gets dropped before the meeting ends.

To capture commitments, ask “List the action items mentioned so far.” Copilot pulls out who agreed to do what, giving you a running list you can reference.

To understand a specific person’s position, ask “What did Sarah say about the deployment timeline?” Copilot searches the transcript and summarizes that person’s contributions on the topic.

If you join a meeting late, Copilot is invaluable. Ask “What did I miss?” and you’ll get a catch-up summary of everything discussed before you joined. Follow up with “What topics have been covered so far?” to orient yourself.

Everything Copilot shows you in the sidebar is private—only you can see it. Other meeting participants don’t know what you’re asking or what Copilot is showing you. Copy responses into your own notes as the meeting progresses to build your personal record.

Here’s a practical government scenario. You’re in a program review meeting with eight agenda items and representatives from three different offices. As the meeting progresses, ask Copilot to track decisions as they happen. When the conversation moves to the next agenda item, ask “What was the decision on the timeline for Phase 2?” You get an instant, accurate answer without interrupting the flow of the meeting.

Getting meeting summaries after the meeting

After a meeting ends, Copilot generates an intelligent recap that you can access at any time. This recap includes a summary of key discussion topics, action items with assigned owners, key decisions that were made, and follow-up questions that were raised.

To access the recap, go to your Teams calendar and click on the meeting. Select the Recap tab. You’ll see the AI-generated summary organized by topic, along with the full transcript and any shared content. Alternatively, the meeting chat will show a Copilot summary automatically after the meeting ends.

You can ask follow-up questions about any meeting you attended. Open the recap and ask questions like “What were the three main decisions?” or “Summarize the budget discussion” or “What action items were assigned to me?” You can even ask “Were there any disagreements about the timeline?” and Copilot will identify points of contention from the transcript.

These summaries are shareable. Copy the recap into an email for stakeholders who need to know the outcomes but weren’t in the meeting. Post the summary to a Teams channel so the broader team stays informed. This multiplies the value of every meeting—participants get a reliable record and non-participants get the highlights.

Here’s a government-relevant example. After an interagency coordination call with representatives from four agencies, use Copilot to extract each agency’s specific commitments and deadlines. Instead of spending 30 minutes writing up meeting notes, you have an AI-generated summary ready to distribute in minutes.

Catching up on meetings you missed

This is one of the most powerful features for busy government professionals. You can catch up on meetings you didn’t attend—as long as the meeting was transcribed or recorded.

Open the meeting from your Teams calendar, even though you weren’t there. Go to the Recap tab and start asking Copilot questions. Ask “Give me a summary of this meeting” for the high-level overview. Ask “What were the key decisions?” to cut straight to the outcomes. Ask “Were there any action items assigned to my team?” to find out what’s expected of you. Ask “What was discussed about the compliance requirements?” to zero in on a specific topic.

Copilot can also point you to specific moments in the recording. If you ask “When did they discuss the compliance requirements?” Copilot will identify the timestamp so you can jump directly to that part of the recording without watching the entire thing.

Build this into your routine. Check missed meeting recaps as part of your morning workflow. Focus on decisions and action items rather than trying to replay the full meeting. Follow up with colleagues on items that need your input—now you’ll know exactly what to ask about.

Here’s a scenario. You missed a cross-functional security review because it conflicted with another obligation. Instead of asking a colleague for a verbal summary that might miss details, open the meeting recap and ask Copilot for all compliance-related decisions and your team’s specific action items. You’re caught up in three minutes.

Close: make every meeting count

Let’s recap the three ways Copilot transforms your meeting experience. During meetings, you get real-time assistance—summaries, action item tracking, and instant catch-up if you join late. After meetings, you get intelligent recaps with key topics, decisions, and assigned action items organized and ready to share. For missed meetings, you get AI-powered summaries on demand, so you’re never out of the loop.

Here’s what to do next. Confirm that transcription is enabled for your meetings—check with your admin or enable it yourself as a meeting organizer. In your next live meeting, try asking Copilot “What have I missed?” or “List the action items.” After the meeting, open the Recap tab in your Teams calendar and explore the summary.

Copilot doesn’t replace paying attention—but it makes sure nothing falls through the cracks. Start using it in your next meeting.

Sources & References

• Copilot in Teams meetings — Official documentation for Copilot meeting features and transcription requirements
• Get started with Copilot in Teams meetings — Step-by-step getting started guide
• Copilot adoption for GCC — Government cloud adoption resources and availability
• Copilot Teams transcription requirements — Admin policies for transcription and Copilot