If you searched for “how to integrate Bing Chat in Teams,” you need to know one important thing first. Microsoft rebranded Bing Chat as Microsoft Copilot a while back. What was formerly known as Bing Chat is now Microsoft Copilot, an AI chatbot integrated across a wide range of Microsoft services. So when people talk about adding Bing Chat to Teams in 2026, they mean integrating Microsoft Copilot into Microsoft Teams. The underlying AI is the same. The name changed.
This guide shows you exactly how to do that, step by step, whether you’re an individual user or an IT admin rolling it out across an organization.
Before You Start: What You Need
You cannot just flip a switch. There are licensing requirements to understand.
Two Access Tiers
Microsoft 365 Copilot is available with two different license options: Copilot Chat, which is included in your Microsoft 365 subscription at no additional charge, and the Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on license, which unlocks embedded Copilot features in Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams.
Here is a quick comparison:
| Feature | Copilot Chat (Free with M365) | Microsoft 365 Copilot (Paid Add-on) |
|---|---|---|
| Chat with AI in Teams | Yes (limited) | Yes (full) |
| Summarize meetings | No | Yes |
| Summarize chat threads | No | Yes |
| Grounded in your work data | No | Yes |
| Web-based AI chat | Yes | Yes |
| Meeting recap and action items | No | Yes |
| Price | Included | Add-on (see below) |
Licensing Requirements for Full Integration
Before users can use Microsoft 365 Copilot, they must have one of the qualifying subscriptions, such as Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Business Standard, Business Premium, or A3/A5 plans. Once the organization has one of these subscriptions, they can purchase a Microsoft 365 Copilot license as an add-on.
Starting March 2026, the Microsoft 365 Copilot elevated license costs $276 per user annually, down from $420. The change is limited to pricing; licensing requirements and tool functionality remain the same.
You also need:
- A Microsoft Entra ID account for each user, and the user’s primary mailbox must be hosted on Exchange Online.
- Microsoft Teams installed and configured on your tenant
- A modern browser with third-party cookies enabled for web-based scenarios
Method 1: Add Copilot as an App in Teams (Quickest Way)
This works for both free Copilot Chat users and paid Microsoft 365 Copilot license holders. It takes under two minutes.
Step-by-Step
- Open Microsoft Teams on desktop or browser
- Click Apps in the left-hand navigation panel
- In the search bar, type Copilot
- Select the Copilot tile from the results
- Click Add
- Copilot will now appear as an icon in the left-hand menu of Teams
Once added, you can click the Copilot icon at any time and start a conversation directly. Think of it like having a chat window open with an AI assistant that lives inside Teams permanently.
Method 2: Use Copilot Inside Teams Chats
This is where it gets genuinely useful for day-to-day work. Copilot in Microsoft Teams chat and channels helps you get up to speed on conversations by quickly reviewing the main points, action items, and decisions without having to scroll through long threads.
How to Open Copilot in a Chat
- Go to Chat on the left side of Teams
- Open any existing chat conversation
- Look for the Copilot icon in the upper-right corner of the chat
- Click Open Copilot
- A side panel opens where you can type prompts
What You Can Ask
- “Summarize what I’ve missed”
- “What were the key decisions from last week?”
- “List all action items from this conversation”
- “Who is responsible for the project deadline?”
Copilot references information from the message thread in which it is opened, with a 30-day history as the default time frame unless you specify otherwise.
Tip: Be specific with your time frame. Asking “What decisions were made in March 2026?” gives you more precise results than a broad open-ended question.
Method 3: Use Copilot in Teams Channels
Channels are where teams discuss projects, share updates, and collaborate. Copilot can read and summarize those long threads instantly.
Steps
- Go to Teams in the left navigation
- Select a specific channel inside a team
- Open a thread with replies by clicking the reply count link
- Click Open Copilot in the upper-right corner of the thread view
- Ask Copilot to summarize or extract key points
A thread needs at least 1,000 characters of text before you can generate a thread summary. Short threads won’t trigger this feature, so it works best for busy, active channels.
Method 4: Add Copilot to a Group Chat
This is a newer and powerful feature. Instead of consulting Copilot privately, you can add it into a group conversation so everyone interacts with it together.
With Teams Mode, you can add Copilot as a member of a group chat, where everyone can talk to Copilot together. You can add Copilot to an existing chat or start a new group chat directly from a one-to-one Microsoft 365 Copilot conversation.
Two Ways to Add Copilot to a Group Chat
Option A:
- Open the group chat
- Select Add agents and bots from the top of the chat window
- Select Copilot from the app panel
- Once added, Copilot will appear in the participants list and send a welcome message to the chat
Option B:
- Simply @mention Copilot in the chat. It will join and send a welcome message automatically.
How Responses Work in Group Chats
When users ask Copilot a question, the full response will automatically be shown to all chat members when the response uses the web to answer the query, or when all users in the chat have access to the knowledge sources used to generate the answer. In cases where Copilot uses sources not available to all members, the person who asked the question will receive a preview of the response first.
This privacy-aware behavior is important. Copilot won’t accidentally expose files or emails that some team members shouldn’t see.
Method 5: Use Copilot During and After Meetings
This is the most impactful use case for most teams. Copilot can attend your meeting and produce a full recap with zero effort from you.
During a Meeting
- Join or start a Teams meeting
- Click More options (…) in the meeting controls
- Select Copilot from the menu
- The Copilot panel opens on the right
You can ask real-time questions like:
- “What has been discussed so far?”
- “Has anyone mentioned a deadline?”
- “What are the open questions?”
After a Meeting
When your meeting is transcribed, Copilot references information from the meeting transcript in its responses. If your meeting wasn’t transcribed, Copilot will reference information from the meeting chat conversation instead.
To get the best post-meeting summaries: always enable transcription before the meeting starts. Go to meeting settings and turn on Record and Transcribe. Without this, Copilot can only work from chat messages, which are far less complete.
Admin Setup: Deploying Copilot Across Your Organization
If you’re an IT admin rolling this out to a team or whole company, here’s what to do.
Step 1: Verify Licensing
Go to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center and check which licenses your users have. Copilot Chat is available to users with eligible Microsoft 365 licenses including Business Basic, Business Standard, Business Premium, and A1/A3/A5 plans. For the full Copilot experience in Teams, you need to purchase the Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on.
Step 2: Assign Licenses to Users
- Sign into the Microsoft 365 Admin Center
- Go to Users > Active Users
- Select the users who need Copilot access
- Click Manage product licenses
- Assign the Microsoft 365 Copilot license
- Save changes
Step 3: Enable Copilot in Teams Admin Center
- Go to the Teams Admin Center at admin.teams.microsoft.com
- Navigate to Teams apps > Manage apps
- Search for Copilot
- Ensure the app status is set to Allowed
Step 4: Pin Copilot for All Users
You can pre-pin the Copilot app so it appears in everyone’s left sidebar automatically.
- In Teams Admin Center, go to Teams apps > Setup policies
- Select the policy applied to your users (or create a new one)
- Under Pinned apps, click Add apps
- Search for Copilot and add it
- Save the policy
Admins can pin Copilot Chat in users’ Microsoft 365 apps so it’s easy to find, consistently available, and used as the organization’s secure AI tool.
Step 5: Configure Web Search Access (Optional)
When web search is enabled, Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat may fetch information from the Bing search service when information from the web helps to provide a better, more grounded response. IT admins can control access to web search using the Allow web search in Copilot policy, available in the Cloud Policy service for Microsoft 365.
For organizations with strict data policies, you may want to restrict this.
What Copilot Can and Cannot Do in Teams
What It Can Do
- Summarize long chat threads in seconds
- Recap meetings with action items and decisions
- Answer questions about past conversations
- Draft messages and follow-up emails
- Work as a shared assistant in group chats
- Pull context from your calendar, files, and emails (with full license)
What It Cannot Do
Copilot cannot summarize images, loop components, or files shared in the chat thread. It works on text-based messages and transcriptions only. It also cannot access conversations older than 30 days by default.
Data Privacy and Security
This is a common concern. Microsoft Copilot Chat combines generative AI with commercial data protection. User and business data is protected and will not leak outside your organization, prompts and responses are not saved, no one at Microsoft can view them, and chat data is not used to train the underlying language model.
Data grounding comes from Microsoft Graph, meaning the model only accesses data available to the signed-in user, including emails, meetings, chats, or SharePoint files, without training on user content.
Your data stays within your tenant boundary. This is a significant advantage over using generic AI tools that don’t have enterprise data protection built in.
Practical Tips for Getting More Out of Copilot in Teams
Be specific in prompts. “Summarize the last 3 days of messages about the product launch” works far better than “summarize this chat.”
Enable transcription in every meeting. This is the single biggest factor in how good meeting summaries are.
Use it for onboarding. New team members can ask Copilot to summarize the last month of channel activity and get up to speed without reading hundreds of messages.
Use it before big meetings. Ask Copilot what was discussed in previous conversations on the same topic so you walk into meetings prepared.
Combine with group chats. Add Copilot to a project chat and let the whole team ask it questions. It becomes a shared knowledge layer for the project.
Summary
Integrating Bing Chat (now Microsoft Copilot) into Microsoft Teams in 2026 comes down to a few clear paths. For individuals, it’s as simple as adding the Copilot app from the Teams app store and starting to use it in chats and channels. For organizations, IT admins need to confirm licensing, assign the Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on, and configure setup policies to deploy it at scale. The free Copilot Chat tier gives you access to AI chat within Teams at no extra cost, while the paid add-on unlocks meeting summaries, deep thread analysis, and full integration with your organization’s data. The privacy protections are solid, your data stays within your tenant, and the practical value, especially for meeting recaps and catching up on long threads, is immediate and real.
For official Microsoft documentation on deploying Copilot in your organization, visit Microsoft Learn’s Copilot setup guide.
