Use Teams Copilot to Catch Up and Track Action Items

What This Does

Teams Copilot transcribes your meetings in real time and lets you ask questions about what was said — who committed to what, what decisions were made, and what you missed if you joined late. For a program analyst attending 8+ hours of meetings per week, this turns meeting follow-up from a 30-minute task into a 5-minute one.

Before You Start

• Your organization has Microsoft 365 with Copilot enabled and Teams meeting transcription turned on
• You are in a Teams meeting (Copilot only works in Teams meetings, not phone calls or channel posts)
• The meeting organizer has enabled transcription/recording (required for Copilot to have content to analyze)
• You understand your agency's policy on meeting recording and transcription — not all meetings are appropriate to record

Steps

1. Start or join a Teams meeting with transcription enabled

When you start or join a Teams meeting, click the "..." (More actions) button in the meeting controls at the top of the screen. Select Start transcription. Teams will notify all participants that transcription has started (required by law in some jurisdictions).

What you should see: A "Transcription is on" notification appears for all participants. A transcription panel may open on the right.

Important: Check your agency policy. Some agencies restrict transcription for meetings involving FOUO information, pre-decisional discussions, or certain classified and sensitive topics.

2. During the meeting — open Copilot

Click the Copilot button (sparkle icon) in the meeting controls. A Copilot panel opens on the right side of the Teams window.

You can ask questions during the meeting:

• "What have we agreed to so far?"
• "What action items have been mentioned?"
• "Summarize what [name] said about the budget issue."

3. After the meeting — use Copilot to summarize and extract action items

After the meeting ends, open the meeting in Teams (find it in your Calendar or in the meeting chat). Click on the meeting → open the Recap tab → click Copilot.

Ask Copilot about the recording:

• "What were the key decisions made in this meeting?"
• "List all action items and who they were assigned to."
• "What did we decide about the grant reporting deadline?"
• "Write a summary of this meeting I can send to participants as a follow-up email."

What you should see: Copilot returns a text response based on the meeting transcript, with timestamps you can click to jump to that moment in the recording.

4. Export the summary and action items

Copy the Copilot-generated summary and action item list. Paste into an email to meeting participants, into your SharePoint meeting notes page, or into your action item tracker. Edit to add any context that wasn't captured verbally (e.g., attachments discussed, decisions made in the chat).

5. Use "catch me up" when joining late

If you join a meeting already in progress, the Copilot panel shows a "Catch me up" prompt. Click it and Copilot will summarize everything discussed before you joined.

Real Example

Scenario: You just finished a 90-minute inter-agency coordination call about a grant program. Five different agencies attended, multiple action items were discussed, and you need to send a follow-up email with decisions and next steps.

What you type in Copilot (after the meeting): "List all action items from this meeting with the person responsible and any deadlines mentioned."

What you get: A numbered list of action items, each attributed to a specific person by name, with any timeline commitments captured from the transcript. You copy this list into your follow-up email, add the meeting date and distribution list, and send in under 5 minutes.

Tips

• Always tell participants at the start that you're using transcription — even if the notification appears, it's courteous and builds trust
• For sensitive or pre-decisional meetings, skip transcription and use Copilot only on appropriate calls
• "Who said they would..." questions work well — Copilot can attribute specific commitments to named participants
• The recap is available for 60 days after the meeting in most M365 configurations — useful for reviewing past meeting commitments when disputes arise about who agreed to what

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