What is Microsoft Teams Facilitator? - How to Use It and Admin Controls
You may have noticed a new participant in your Microsoft Teams meetings lately, one that does not speak up on audio but quietly helps keep the conversation organized and the outcomes clear. That participant is Facilitator.
Jump To:
- What is Microsoft Teams Facilitator?
- How to use Teams Facilitator for meetings
- How to control Teams Facilitator as a Microsoft 365 admin
- Why does Teams Facilitator join meetings after disabled?
- Microsoft Teams Facilitator FAQ
What is Microsoft Teams Facilitator?
Microsoft Teams Facilitator is an AI meeting agent designed to help meetings run better. In meetings, Facilitator can generate real-time notes that participants can co-author, summarize key decisions and open questions, and respond to questions in the meeting chat. It can also detect or request an agenda, help track time against agenda items, run timers, and help capture tasks that can sync into a meeting plan.
Licensing and prerequisites
A few quick prerequisites to set expectations:
- A Microsoft 365 Copilot license is required to add Facilitator to a meeting or turn it on during a meeting.
- Facilitator is designed for scheduled meetings. It is not available for certain meeting types like ad hoc calls and some channel scenarios, depending on the experience available in your tenant.
- Loop experiences need to be enabled for your tenant
- If you want to use Facilitator after the meeting to answer questions about what happened, transcription needs to be available and turned on based on your organization’s meeting policy configuration.
How to use Teams Facilitator for meetings
1) Turn it on when you schedule the meeting
- In Teams, go to Calendar and select New event.
- Add your attendees.
- Enable the Teams Meeting toggle and the Facilitator option should appear (or open Meeting options, then the Copilot and AI related settings).
- Turn the Facilitator option on and send the invite.
If you are scheduling a recurring series, decide upfront whether you want Facilitator for the entire series. It is much easier than trying to unwind it later.
2) Turn it on during the meeting (organizers and presenters)
If it was not enabled in the invite:
- Join the meeting.
- Select More actions in the meeting controls.
- Choose Turn on Facilitator.
- If prompted, select the meeting language.
Once enabled, it typically takes a few minutes before you start seeing useful structured output, especially if the conversation is just getting started.
3) Give it an agenda so it can help with pacing
Facilitator is most helpful when it has an agenda with time boxes.
- Post an agenda in the meeting details or notes.
- Or add one in chat by addressing it directly, for example:
- “@Facilitator, agenda: intros 5 minutes, topic A 15 minutes, decisions 10 minutes, next steps 5 minutes.”
With an agenda, it can help you stay on track and create cleaner meeting artifacts.
4) Use it in meeting chat for quick clarity
In the meeting chat, you can talk to the Facilitator app by typing @Facilitator and then ask it to:
- Summarize what was discussed so far
- List decisions and open questions
- Help identify action items
- Clarify what the group agreed to, especially near the end of the meeting
This is especially useful when you join late or when the meeting gets lively and you want to make sure the key points are captured.
5) Review outcomes after the meeting
After the meeting, open the meeting chat and look for recap and notes. Facilitator’s output is meant to be refined, so treat the notes like a strong first draft, then adjust wording, owners, and dates so your team walks away aligned.
How to control Teams Facilitator as a Microsoft 365 admin
As an M365 tenant admin, you have some options to control the use of Teams Facilitator:
- allowing or blocking it tenant-wide
- piloting it for a subset of users
- aligning meeting policies (like transcription) so the experience behaves the way you expect
Roles needed to perform these admin steps
To manage Facilitator in the Teams admin center and to create or assign app permission policies, the most common required role is:
- Teams Administrator (or higher)
In some organizations, broader consent and tenant-level governance actions are restricted to:
- Global Administrator (or higher)
If you delegate Teams operations, a Teams Administrator is typically the right balance for day to day control.
Allow or block the Facilitator app in Teams admin center
- Go to the Teams admin center.
- Navigate to Teams apps → Manage apps.
- Search for Facilitator and select it.
- Click the Users and groups tab
- Now click the Edit availability button.
- From the "Available to" drop down, choose the appropriate setting for your tenant.
Tip: If your tenant is set to block all apps by default, Facilitator will be blocked until explicitly allowed.
Facilitator also depends on Loop being enabled
If Facilitator is allowed in Teams, your users are licensed, but it still feels like something is missing, this is usually the next place I check: Loop experiences in Teams.
Microsoft is very explicit that Loop experiences in Teams must be turned on for Facilitator to be used in meetings.
This makes sense once you know where the “notes” live. Facilitator meeting content is stored as a .loop file in the organizer’s OneDrive (in a folder named Meetings), and Microsoft treats that data as meeting transcript data.
How Loop is controlled
Loop is governed by SharePoint tenant properties that you manage via SharePoint PowerShell (this is separate from the Cloud Policy toggles used for other Loop integrations).
The two key settings are:
IsLoopEnabledcontrols Loop component creation and integration in Teams.IsCollabMeetingNotesFluidEnabledcontrols collaborative meeting notes, which is also the control Microsoft calls out for AI-generated notes behavior.
Both settings apply to the entire tenant and cannot be configured per user.
Check and configure Loop with PowerShell
You will need the SharePoint Online Management Shell module (Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell) and a connection to your SharePoint Online admin endpoint.
# Install or update the SharePoint Online Management Shell module
Install-Module -Name Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell
Update-Module -Name Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell
# Connect (use your tenant admin URL)
Connect-SPOService -Url https://-admin.sharepoint.com
Get-SPOTenant | Select IsLoopEnabled, IsCollabMeetingNotesFluidEnabled
If you need to enable Loop for your tenant, you can use the following
Set-SPOTenant -IsLoopEnabled $true
Set-SPOTenant -IsCollabMeetingNotesFluidEnabled $true
Check transcription in the Teams admin center (meetings)
Facilitator becomes more valuable when meeting transcription and recap experiences are available. Review your meeting policies so you are intentional about:
- Go to the Teams admin center.
- Navigate to Meetings → Meeting policies.
- Open the policy that applies (often Global (Org-wide default) unless you’ve assigned a custom policy).
- Under Recording & transcription, toggle Transcription (or Allow transcription) On or Off, then Save.
Why does Teams Facilitator join meetings after disabled?
This one is worth calling out because it surprises users and admins.
Previously scheduled meetings can retain Facilitator even after it is disabled!
If Facilitator was enabled for a user, and that user scheduled a meeting or recurring series with Facilitator turned on, then later you disable Facilitator for that user or for the tenant, the meetings that were already created can still show Facilitator active during the meeting.
This happens because Teams meeting settings are effectively cached at meeting creation time in the meeting object. Changing app availability later does not always remove Facilitator from meetings that were already scheduled.
What this means in practice
- Disabling the Facilitator app is reliable for preventing new meetings from being created with Facilitator.
- It may not fully remove Facilitator from existing scheduled meetings or recurring series that already had it enabled.
How to remove Facilitator from an existing meeting or recurring series
Option 1: Cancel and reschedule (most reliable)
- Cancel the single meeting or the entire series.
- Recreate it without Facilitator enabled.
Option 2: Temporary re-enable, remove, then disable again
If canceling is not feasible:
- Re-enable the Facilitator app (scoped just to that user).
- Have the organizer edit the meeting or series in Teams.
- The organizer should now be able to turn Facilitator off for that meeting or series.
- After it is turned off in the meeting, disable Facilitator again for the user or tenant.
- Facilitator should no longer appear in that meeting going forward.
Admin tip: If you run a pilot, add this to your rollback checklist so you are not chasing “ghost” Facilitator behavior in meetings that were created earlier.
Microsoft Teams Facilitator FAQ
Do all attendees need a Copilot license to benefit from Facilitator?
Not necessarily. A Copilot license is required to add Facilitator to a meeting or turn it on during one, but once it is active, the meeting’s internal participants can typically see the outcomes it generates in notes and chat. Licensing and visibility nuances can vary by tenant configuration, so validate in your pilot.
Where do Facilitator notes live?
They are stored as loop meeting notes, which means participants can refine them before, during, and after the meeting.
Can I enable Facilitator for only a pilot group?
Yes. Use a Teams app permission policy to allow Facilitator only for a specific set of users, then expand once you are comfortable.
If I disable Facilitator, why does it still appear in a meeting that was already scheduled?
Because the meeting can retain cached settings from the time it was created. For existing meetings, remove Facilitator by editing the meeting while it is enabled for the organizer, or cancel and reschedule.
What is the quickest way to block Facilitator tenant-wide?
In Teams admin center: Teams apps → Manage apps → search for Facilitator and select it → Users and Groups → Edit Availability → set to No One.
