Facilitator Agent Extracts Value from Teams Chat

In an article last month, I discussed why Microsoft 365 Copilot works better for some people than it does for others. The article is based on a blog by Abram Jackson, a program manager working on Microsoft 365 Copilot, and one of the points he makes is that AI fails when it doesn’t have the right data to process. This is why Copilot is so good at summarizing a bounded set of data such as a Teams meeting transcript or email thread and less good at other tasks.

Which brings me to a new bounded AI use in the Teams Facilitator “collaborative communication” agent (see message center notification MC1017117, last updated 10 March 2025, Microsoft 365 roadmap item 476811). The agent has been available in targeted release and is heading for general availability in April 2025. Facilitator is available for meetings and chats, but here I focus on chats because this is an area where AI hasn’t ventured before. According to Microsoft, “the Facilitator creates and maintains an up-to-date summary of important information as the conversation happens, including key decisions, actions items, and open questions to resolve.”

The administrator documentation and user documentation and doesn’t need to be repeating here. Essentially, you’ll need a Microsoft 365 Copilot license to use Facilitator (otherwise known as AI Notes). Note generation is supported for English now with support for more languages in the pipeline.

Control over  who can use Facilitator is exerted by allowing people access to the Facilitator app in the Teams admin center. Microsoft says that after general availability, the app is enabled by default and can be used in chats by enabling the AI Notes option (click the icon to the right of the Copilot icon). Let’s see what happens.

Using AI Notes in a Chat

When a chat starts, it’s an empty thread and there’s nothing for AI to process. In fact, AI cannot process information until it has sufficient data to understand what’s happening. This is what’s happening in Figure 1. Facilitator is enabled for the chat but only three messages are in the thread and that’s not enough.

This isn’t a problem because the intention behind Facilitator is that it will help chat participants understand what’s been discussed in a thread. It’s easy to understand the conversation after three messages. It’s much more difficult to do so after a hundred messages in a fast-moving debate. The same situation occurs for Microsoft 365 Copilot in a Teams meeting where a certain amount of data must accumulate in the meeting transcript before Copilot becomes active.

As the chat develops, Facilitator begins to generate notes (Figure 2) to capture the major points raised in the chat, any decisions made, and any questions that remain unanswered. Facilitator updates the notes displayed in the pane periodically and highlights new information that a chat participant hasn’t seen. Like other Copilot implementations, reference numbers allow users to access the source for a note.

At the end of the chat, any of the chat participants can ask Facilitator a question by using an @Faciliator mention and entering the question (Figure 3).

Alternatively, a participant with access to the AI Notes can copy the notes and paste them into the chat. This is a good way to share AI Notes with chat participants who don’t have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license as those people cannot enable and view AI Notes for the chat.

External Participants Turn Off Facilitator

The Facilitator agent can’t be used in chats that involve external participants (guest users or external federated chats). This is likely because no mechanism is available in a chat to allow people to grant consent for their messages to be processed by an agent. When people join a meeting, they have the chance to grant consent for transcription, and it’s the transcript that’s used by Microsoft 365 Copilot to summarize the meeting or answer questions about the proceedings.

Facilitator is a Nice Tool to Have

I like Facilitator very much. It’s an example of focused application of AI LLMs to reason over a bounded set of data to generate results that works well in practice. Facilitator is not enough to justify the full price of a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, but it is step in the right direction and is a sign that we’re moving away from what some call the “party tricks” of Copilot to the implementation of some really useful tools.

Insight like this doesn’t come easily. You’ve got to know the technology and understand how to look behind the scenes. Benefit from the knowledge and experience of the Office 365 for IT Pros team by subscribing to the best eBook covering Office 365 and the wider Microsoft 365 ecosystem.