Hi, Insiders! I’m Nicole Toussaint, and I’m a Product Manager on the Teams team. I’m excited to share a new way to leverage Microsoft 365 Copilot in Teams group chats to streamline workflows and collaboration.
A new way to collaborate with Copilot in Teams chats
Many conversations with Copilot happen in a private, one-on-one setting. With this new capability, you will now also be able to add Copilot to Teams chats and engage with it in a group setting.
You can add Copilot to an existing Teams chat, or start a new group chat directly from a one-on-one conversation with Microsoft 365 Copilot. Once added to a chat, Copilot can accomplish many tasks, including but not limited to:
- Summarize conversations or answer questions related to chat discussions
- Compile information from a document or file, or pull relevant information from the web
- Create meeting agendas or project outlines
When responding to prompts, Copilot has access to all the information that the person providing the prompt has access to, ensuring that it can utilize a variety of sources when generating responses. Its responses are grounded in data including:
- Documents the prompter has access to
- Chat and channel history
- Web search (if enabled by admins)
How it works
- Open an existing Teams chat.
- Type @ Copilot into the chat, then select Copilot from the pop-up options and click Send to add Copilot to the chat.NOTE: You can also add Copilot to any group chat by selecting Add people, agents, and bots in the upper right-hand corner of the chat, then selecting Add agents and bots. Next to Copilot, select Add.
Once added, Copilot will appear in the participants list and automatically send a welcome message to the chat.
- Ask Copilot questions anytime by typing @ Copilot in the chat. The full response will automatically be shown to all chat members in cases when the response uses the web to answer the query, and all members of the chat have access to the knowledge sources used to generate the answer.
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In cases where Copilot utilizes sources not available to all members of the chat to generate its response, you will receive a response preview only visible to you before it’s shared more broadly. Select Allow to share the preview with the group, or Reject to delete it.
NOTE: If you reject a response, all chat members will receive a message indicating a response could not be shared at this time.
- To delete Copilot from a conversation, navigate to the chat roster, and under Agents and bots, select the X button. NOTE: This will not remove your ability to engage with Copilot in private chats.
Tips and tricks
- To start a group chat from a one-on-one Microsoft 365 Copilot conversation, select the down arrow next to the Start a new chat button in the top right header, then select Start a group chat in Teams. Enter chat members’ names, as well as the number of messages you want to share to the group from your conversation, and then select Create.
- Copilot strives to provide accurate and informative responses based on the data available. Use your own judgment and double-check the facts before making decisions or taking action based on its responses.
Scenarios to try
Try out these prompts to have Copilot answer questions posed by chat participants, locate important information, or create artifacts to aid in group collaboration:
- Generate an agenda for this week using the content from the chat and assign items to each team member based on their roles and responsibilities.
- Summarize this chat over the last week and provide next steps for the upcoming week.
- Summarize today’s news stories and headlines.
- Create an FAQ based on this document [link to document/document name].
Known limitations
- Copilot cannot be added to meeting chats and chats with yourself.
- Copilot cannot be added to the chat roster during chat creation.
- Creating a group chat in Teams from the Microsoft 365 Copilot entry point will always create a new chat.
- You can only share up to 10 messages from Microsoft 365 Copilot to Teams group chats.
- Text-to-image generation is not supported at this time for Copilot in Teams.
- The ability to create a Teams group chat from Microsoft 365 Copilot or delete Copilot from a group chat is not currently enabled on mobile devices.
Privacy
Copilot is built upon and complies with Microsoft’s comprehensive approach to security, compliance, and privacy. For more information, see Data, Privacy, and Security for Microsoft 365 Copilot to learn about the standards Copilot was built upon for work and school users.
Requirements
To create, interact with, and manage Copilot in Teams group chats, you must meet the following requirements:
- Have a Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription assigned to you.
- Be a member of the channel where the agent was created.
- Be allowed by your IT admin to use apps in Teams.
People without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license can still communicate with other users as normal. However, they will not be able to @mention Copilot or ask Copilot questions. These users can still read Copilot responses initiated by other users in the chat.
Availability
To use this new feature, you must be a member of the Teams Public Preview on Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, or the web.
To enable your Teams client for the Public Preview, IT administrators must enable Show preview features in their update policy. You can learn more here.
Feedback
We’d love to hear what you think about this feature! Select the thumbs up or down buttons in your Copilot response, or select Settings and more > Feedback in the top-right corner of the Teams app, and then select either Report a problem, Give a compliment, or Suggest a feature to share your thoughts.
While this feature has mitigations in place to avoid sharing offensive or harmful content, you may still see unexpected results – please provide feedback by clicking thumbs down in the summary and providing additional comments in the feedback form. This helps us to improve and minimize this content in the future and proactively address issues in line with our Responsible AI Principles.
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