Scenario 19: Keeping workshops and brainstorming on schedule

Who and in what situation

Sibel, a process improvement specialist at a healthcare group in İstanbul, runs idea workshops with departments. She wants ideas to be tracked against the agenda without getting lost, time allocations to be visible, and open questions to be collected.

How it is done today

Sibel pastes the agenda into the meeting chat and keeps time on her phone. Because ideas are scattered across different messages, she manually sorts out which proposals were discussed and which remain open questions at the end of the meeting.

How to do it with AI

1. In Teams, go to Calendar > New meeting > Options > Copilot and other AI, turn on Allow Copilot and Facilitator, and enable the Facilitator toggle. [51]
2. Write the agenda in the meeting description or the Loop meeting notes component, including topics and time allocations. Facilitator can move it to the meeting chat. [51]
3. In the meeting, select More actions > Turn on Facilitator. If needed, use @Facilitator in the chat to request a new agenda item or a timer. [51]
4. During the workshop, ask about open questions, decisions, and the pros and cons of ideas in the chat; at the end of the meeting, manually review and correct the Notes and AI summary sections. [51]

Example prompt

@Facilitator, follow the agenda for {workshop objective}. For each idea, distinguish the proposal, its rationale, the open question, and the next discussion step. When time is up, close the topic and flag the remaining open question; do not write down decisions that were not made in the conversation.

Evidence and real-world example

No independently published workshop case study was found; the Microsoft Facilitator documentation confirms real-time notes, agenda tracking, answers to open questions, and timer functions. [51]

Points to consider

Adding or turning on Facilitator requires a Copilot license; the documentation states that some features are in public preview. [51] Transcription is required for post-meeting queries. [51] For a sensitive workshop, you can consider the option to use Copilot only during the meeting instead of recording, but remember that prompts and responses may be subject to Purview policy. [45]

Sources for this scenario

45. Use Copilot without transcribing or recording a Teams meeting or call (support.microsoft.com)
51. Facilitator in Microsoft Teams meetings (support.microsoft.com)