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Set up Facilitator in Microsoft Teams

  • Article
  • Applies to: Microsoft Teams

Important

The following Facilitator capabilities are currently in public preview:

  • AI-generated notes for chats and meetings
  • Moderation for meetings
  • Questions and answers for meetings

Features in preview might not be complete and could undergo changes before becoming available in the public release. They're provided for evaluation and exploration purposes only.

For more information about Teams features in public preview, see Microsoft Teams Public preview.

Facilitator is a collaborative communication agent available to your users in Teams conversations. It combines the power of large language models (LLMs) and Teams data to help users be productive during collaboration.

Use Facilitator in peer-to-peer:

How Facilitator behaves in Teams

Facilitator behaves differently than Copilot in Teams.

A user's prompts to Copilot in Teams and Copilot's responses are private to that individual user. Copilot in Teams also has its own set of features and use cases.

However, Facilitator acts like an assistant sitting in your users' chats and meetings. If a user prompts Facilitator, all users can view that communication, just like if the user was talking with another person in the chat. Facilitator then displays its response within the group's conversation for everyone to see.

Facilitator also continuously updates as the conversation progresses. For example, Facilitator displays the options the team is considering and then replaces those options with a single choice once the group decides.

Users are shown a notice when their prompts are private or shared with others.

Security, Compliance, and Privacy

Facilitator, Copilot, and Microsoft 365 are built on Microsoft's comprehensive approach to security, compliance, and privacy. When you use Microsoft Purview for your security and compliance management, Facilitator is supported in the following ways:

AI-generated notes for chats and meetings, and moderation and questions and answers for meetings are supported by auditing events that surface in Data Security Posture Management for AI and can be used by eDiscovery with a KQL query.

To automatically retain or delete Facilitator AI-generated notes in chat and Facilitator interactions in meetings, use a Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management retention policy with the Teams chats location. Because Facilitator data in meetings is stored in OneDrive, AI-generated notes in meetings can be automatically retained or deleted with a retention policy or retention labels with the OneDrive accounts location.

Other Microsoft Purview solutions either aren't applicable for Facilitator or aren't yet supported.

For more information about the security and privacy standards used to develop Microsoft 365 Copilot and AI agents like Facilitator, see the following articles:

Facilitator licensing and permission requirements

The following list contains the prerequisites for users to be able to access Facilitator features in Teams chats and meetings. Users must meet all of the following requirements:

Licensing requirements

  • An eligible Microsoft 365 base license.
  • Have an eligible Microsoft Teams license.
    • Teams licenses might be included in your Microsoft 365 subscription. If you have Microsoft 365 (no Teams) licenses, you need to purchase separate Teams licenses.
  • Have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.

User requirements

Facilitator data storage

Facilitator data in meetings is stored as a .loop file in a OneDrive folder titled Meetings of the user who initiated Facilitator in Teams. This data is treated as meeting transcript data. To learn more about how this data is handled, see Summary of governance, lifecycle, and compliance capabilities for Loop experiences.

Facilitator data in chats is stored as messaging data in each users' Exchange mailbox. This data is treated like all other Teams chat data.

Allow Facilitator for chats and meetings

As an admin, you control whether Facilitator is available to your entire organization or to a certain group of users.

Facilitator is allowed by default. However, if all apps are blocked for your organization, Facilitator is also blocked.

To allow or block Facilitator for users, complete the following steps:

1. Allow Facilitator in the Teams admin center

  1. Sign in to the Teams admin center with your Teams admin credentials.
  2. In the left rail navigation, select Teams apps > Manage apps.
  3. In the apps list's search box, search for Facilitator.
  4. Select Facilitator from the app list.
  5. In the actions menu, select Allow or Block.
  6. In the pop-up, select the Allow or Block button.

You can also use app centric management to allow and block, create policies, and assign users.

For more information about managing apps in Teams, see Manage apps.

2. Allow Facilitator for a group of users

To allow Facilitator for users, a new app policy needs to be created and then assigned to users.

Follow the instructions at Use app permission policies to control user access to apps to create a new app policy for Facilitator.

You can then assign the policy to your entire tenant or to a select group of users. Follow the instructions at Add or modify app availability for users to assign the policy to users using app-centric management.

3. Turn on Loop experiences in Teams for Facilitator in meetings

Loop experiences in Teams need to be turned on in order for Facilitator to be used in meetings.

To turn on Loop experiences in Teams, follow the instructions at Settings management for Loop functionality in Teams.

Manage users' access to Facilitator skills

If there are certain Facilitator skills you would like to manage for your users, review the following details.

Turn off AI-generated notes for chats

AI-generated notes for chats are turned on by default.

You can turn off Facilitator's ability to take notes in chats by completing the following steps.

  1. Sign in to the Teams admin center with your Teams admin credentials.
  2. In the left-side menu, expand the Messaging section and select Messaging settings.
  3. On the Messaging settings page, find the Messaging notes toggle.
  4. Change the toggle to the Off position to turn off AI-generated notes for chats.
  5. Select the Save button.

You can also use PowerShell to manage the MessagingNotes setting with the Set-CsTeamsMessagingConfiguration cmdlet. For information about using PowerShell to manage users' Teams experience, see Assign policies to users and groups.

Turn off AI-generated notes for meetings

Loop experiences in Teams control AI-generated notes for meetings, which are enabled by default.

You can manage this control using the IsCollabMeetingNotesFluidEnabled setting in PowerShell. This setting applies to your entire tenant and can't be configured at the user level. This means that if you disable this setting, AI-generated notes for meetings is turned off for all users in your organization.

For instructions on managing this setting, see Settings management for Loop functionality in Teams.

Facilitator limitations

Facilitator currently has the following limitations:

  • Only licensed users can initiate Facilitator.
    • Unlicensed users can't prompt Facilitator, but they can see others' prompts to Facilitator and Facilitator's responses.
    • Unlicensed users can't see Facilitator's notes in chats, but they can see Facilitator's notes in meetings.
  • If a licensed user doesn't have the full chat history, they can't @mention Facilitator.
  • Currently, Facilitator isn't supported in external chats and meetings.
  • Retention labels aren't supported for cloud attachments in AI-generated notes.
  • Facilitator only supports the languages listed at Supported languages for Microsoft Copilot.

Facilitator for meetings limitations

  • Facilitator's AI-generated notes for meetings aren't automatically collected as cloud attachments in Microsoft Preview eDiscovery because it isn't currently supported.
  • When a user turns on AI-generated notes during a meeting, they're prompted to select the language participants are speaking during the meeting. The language selected must match the spoken language during the meeting, or notes aren't generated.
  • Currently, AI-generated notes for meetings only support meetings where a single language is spoken. If multiple languages are spoken during the meeting, notes are only taken for the portions of the meeting that are spoken in the selected meeting language.
  • Meeting settings like Prevent copy and paste and Watermarks aren't applied to Facilitator's responses or AI-generated notes in meetings.
  • AI-generated notes for meetings don't inherit the meeting's sensitivity label; however, a sensitivity label can be applied to the notes' Loop component in the Loop app or OneDrive. If a sensitivity label is applied to the notes outside of Teams, the note's file can't be accessed in Teams.