Turn a Recorded Workshop into a Decisions and Action Items Summary with Copilot in Teams

What This Does

Copilot in Teams reads the transcript of a recorded workshop and produces a recap: a summary, key discussion points, decisions, and action items, without you rewatching the recording or scrolling through a raw transcript. For a discovery or design workshop that ran an hour or more, this turns the wait for a written recap into a five-minute review.

Before You Start

• The workshop was transcribed in Teams, not just recorded. Transcription must be turned on separately from recording, either before the meeting in Meeting options or from the in-meeting controls once it starts.
• Your account has the Microsoft 365 Copilot license, and your organization's Teams admin has allowed Copilot in meetings. Neither is guaranteed by a standard Microsoft 365 subscription (available on some Microsoft 365 business plans; check with your firm's IT or Microsoft's pricing page).
• The workshop happened inside the tenant governing this engagement, whether that is the client's Teams tenant or your firm's. Copilot can only summarize a meeting it has access to, and the recap should stay wherever the client's data policy says workshop content belongs.

Steps

1. Turn on transcription before the workshop starts

Check Meeting options ahead of time and enable transcription, or start it from the meeting controls once the call is underway. Recording without transcription will not give Copilot anything to summarize.

2. Run the workshop as usual

Nothing changes about how you facilitate. Let the conversation happen naturally. Copilot works from the transcript afterward rather than needing anything special during the call itself.

3. Open the Recap tab after the workshop ends

Find the meeting in your Teams calendar or in the meeting chat and select the Recap tab. The AI-generated summary, key points, and any detected action items appear there automatically once processing finishes.

4. Ask Copilot follow-up questions

From the Recap tab, ask Copilot something more specific than the automatic summary covers, such as which decisions were made about a particular sub-process, or what open questions came up that still need an answer.

5. Verify before you distribute

Read the recap against what you remember being decided, especially anything with a firm commitment attached. Correct any action item where Copilot assigned the wrong owner or missed a deadline mentioned in passing. Then send the corrected version to the workshop participants.

Real Example

Scenario: A two-hour Order Management fit-to-standard workshop for a NetSuite implementation covered quoting, order entry, and returns, and three separate teams need to know what was decided about each.

What you ask Copilot in the Recap tab: "Summarize the decisions made about the returns process specifically, and list every open action item related to it with who owns it."

What you get: A focused summary of the returns-specific discussion, separate from the broader workshop recap, with each action item tagged to the person who volunteered for it during the call.

Tips

• Ask for a recap broken out by sub-process right after a workshop that covered several of them. A single undifferentiated summary is harder for three different teams to act on.
• Treat the automatic action item list as a first pass. Workshop conversations drift, and Copilot can miss a commitment made informally near the end of the call.
• Save time by asking follow-up questions in the Recap tab instead of re-reading the full transcript when you only need one detail.

Tool interfaces change. If a button has moved, look for similar AI/Copilot options near the meeting recap or calendar.