Copilot in Outlook turns an email thread into a meeting invite that waits for the sender

The task

Many meetings start as a long email exchange. Someone then has to move the conversation into a calendar invitation by hand: pick a title, copy in everyone who was on the thread, write a short agenda from what was discussed and attach or paste the background so that the attendees can prepare. The same person often also drafts agendas for meetings they create from scratch, starting from a title and a list of attendees. The page is written for people who schedule their own meetings in Outlook and do this several times a week.

What they did

The page describes two ways to get a draft. In the first, the user opens an email conversation in the new Outlook and selects Schedule with Copilot in the toolbar, or finds it under the other reply actions. Copilot reads the thread and suggests a meeting title and an agenda. The people on the thread are added as attendees and the thread itself is attached to the invitation. The user accepts the suggestion with Insert or Keep it, which places it in the event form. In the second, the user creates a new meeting with a title and attendees, opens Copilot in the description field and either asks for an automatic agenda, picks a suggested prompt or types the goal and talking points. Copilot can also refer to files from Microsoft's office suite that the user names. Each draft can be kept, discarded or rewritten shorter, longer or in a different tone, and the user can page back and forth between versions before keeping one.

Where the approval sits

Copilot fills in the event form but does not send the invitation. According to the page, the user reviews the invitation, edits the title, agenda or attendee list as needed and selects Send when ready. For agendas, nothing is placed in the meeting until the user chooses Keep it, and Discard removes the draft. The attendee list comes straight from the email thread, so checking who should really be invited remains the sender's job.

Worth knowing

The source is Microsoft's own help page. It explains the feature and reports no results from any team. The thread feature needs a paid Copilot work licence and the new Outlook, and the button may first have to be added to the toolbar. If the thread says little about next steps, Copilot leaves out the agenda, and it also adds no generated content for threads marked as confidential. In that case the draft only carries the original subject line. The page does not say how the suggested meeting time is chosen.

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