Copilot Chat Comes to Teams: What You Need to Know

Copilot Chat is coming to Teams like it has recently come to other main Microsoft 365 apps. You'll be able to see Copilot Chat in Meetings, Calls, Channels, and, if you want to, you'll be able to chat with Copilot alongside a chat with your human colleagues too.

This coming consistency, so that pretty much everywhere you open Copilot in a chat pane you'll get the same experience is really welcome. This has been an aspect of the product that has been confusing since day one and just being able to say that what appears in a chat pane is "Copilot Chat" makes this much more understandable.

The one concern I do have is that elsewhere this transition has altered how unique app-based capabilities are accessed. For example, in PowerPoint, with the "upgrade" to Copilot Chat, many interactions that were possible with your own slide deck from chat now required specific contextual controls. Whereas in Outlook, the revision to add Copilot Chat seems to have led to a Copilot that is better integrated and more useful than ever before.

There is one big difference in this Teams rollout though. And that's for Teams, the update calls out "licensed users" of Microsoft 365 Copilot getting this new Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat view. Ignoring the fact that this is a totally confusing and contradictory use of terms relating to two distinct license tiers, the clear takeaway is that unlike in other M365 apps, this will be for users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.

I do think that delivering the same chat experience wherever you choose to access it is the right choice for Copilot, the "it does that there, and this here" aspect of user adoption has been confusing for all parties. However, there clearly remains some broader confusion around how free or paid Copilot access should interact with apps which also needs to be resolved.

See MC1156360 in message center for more information.

How have you found the rollout of Copilot Chat to apps so far, and are you looking forward to it arriving in Teams? What experience should free tier users have in the apps versus those with a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot license?

First posted on Linkedin on 09/21/2025 -> View Linkedin post here