Copilot in Outlook: Meeting Preparation Is About to Get Smarter

Currently, the “Prepare for meetings with Copilot” feature requires at least three participants. Starting mid-October, this is changing. Copilot will soon support all meetings, including 1:1s. The rollout will begin in mid-October and is expected to complete by November 2025 according to the message center. With this update, you’ll also see new real-time insights in the Outlook meeting event form, summarizing relevant context, tasks, documents, and other resources. Plus, you’ll be able to chat with Copilot to confirm action items or better understand meeting goals. The more context Copilot has, the better it works. Meeting series with related emails, shared documents, Teams chats, and previous Copilot transcriptions deliver the richest experience. If your organization limits Copilot to in-meeting use only and deletes content afterward, you’ll miss out on much of this value. Here is a relevant " how to " guide for users.

Teams meeting experience is getting a long awaited feature

Yesterday a message regarding Teams meeting experience landed in the Admin Message Center. Teams is getting three new features this month.

One of them have been demonstrated for a long time, but it is finally coming to a client near you: Custom Backgrounds is supposed to be rolling out mid April.

I am guessing this has been one of the most requested features at user voice, and with the WFH situation many of us are in, this is most welcome in order to "hide" distractions in the back. And no, that's not my living-room you see in the picture.

The other two features are also most welcome, and will increase the meeting experience for users.

By adding a "Meet now" button in channels, it will be easier than ever to launch an ad-hoc channel meeting. And by changing/enhancing the landing page for a Teams meeting invitation a user is taken to upon clicking an invite, it is more clear to the end user what options the users have to join the meeting.

There are no admin controls related to these feature at the time, but you may want to update your training and inform your users about the new features.