Build a meeting-prep agent for a recurring 1:1 or standup

Auto-generate talking points, agenda items, and context summaries before every recurring meeting — without manually pulling anything.

Stage: Agent Builder · For: Manager, End user · Level: Intermediate · Time: 20 min

When to use this

You run a weekly 1:1, team standup, or project sync. Every week you spend 10-15 minutes before the meeting pulling context: what did we discuss last time, what's still open, what's happened since we last met, what should be on the agenda?

A meeting-prep agent does that pull for you. You open it before the meeting, ask for a brief, and get a structured prep doc in 30 seconds — grounded on recent emails, Teams threads, and any notes from previous meetings.

What you'll need

• M365 Copilot license with access to Agent Builder
• A recurring meeting with a clear scope (a specific person, team, or project)
• A folder or SharePoint page where you keep past meeting notes (optional but improves output significantly)

Step by step

1. Define the meeting scope

The agent will be scoped to a specific meeting type. Start with one — your most frequent recurring 1:1 or the standup that takes the most prep. You can build variants for other meetings once the first one works.

2. Create the agent

Open Agent Builder and create a new agent. Name it by the meeting: "Weekly 1:1 Prep — [Person's Name]" or "Team Standup Brief".

In the Instructions field:

You are a meeting prep assistant for my recurring [meeting type] with [person / team].

When asked to prep for the meeting, do the following:
1. Summarize what's happened since the last meeting — pull from recent emails, Teams messages, and any shared documents
2. List any open items or action items from the last meeting that haven't been resolved
3. Suggest 3-5 agenda topics based on what's current and what's unresolved
4. Flag anything that might need a decision or where there's a blocker

Format the output as a short brief I can read in 2 minutes before the meeting starts.
Keep each section to 3-5 bullet points maximum.

3. Add the knowledge source

Connect the agent to: - The SharePoint folder or OneNote section where you keep meeting notes - Any project tracking documents relevant to this recurring meeting

If you don't have a notes folder yet, now is a good time to start one — even a single OneNote page per meeting accumulates context quickly.

4. Add a starter prompt

Add one starter prompt that triggers the prep:

• "Prep me for this week's meeting"

This makes it one click to get the brief when you open the agent.

5. Test before the next meeting

Run the starter prompt before your next meeting. Check:

• Are the "what happened since last time" bullets accurate?
• Are the open items real (not things that were resolved)?
• Are the agenda suggestions actually relevant?

Refine the instructions if any of these are off.

6. Use it in the meeting too

During the meeting, you can ask the agent live:

• "What did we decide about [topic] last time?"
• "Draft an action item for [person] to [task] by [date]."
• "Summarize this meeting so far."

7. Post-meeting: capture and close

After the meeting, paste your notes into the agent and ask:

Based on these notes, draft a meeting recap with:
- Decisions made
- Action items with owners and dates
- Topics deferred to next week

Save the recap to your notes folder — it becomes the source for next week's prep.

Screenshots

We deliberately don't ship screenshots that go stale — the Microsoft Copilot UI changes often. Follow the numbered steps above, which we keep current. Maintainers can regenerate fresh captures with the Playwright tool in tooling/screenshots/.

Make it better

• Team standup variant: change the instructions to pull from Planner tasks and active project docs instead of 1:1 email context.
• Skip-level prep: build a variant specifically for quarterly skip-levels — it can pull highlights from the previous quarter's notes.
• Share with your 1:1 partner: if both people run the same agent, you each come to the meeting with the same context already loaded — no "so where were we" warmup.
• Calendar integration: before the meeting, ask the agent: "What's the context on each person attending today's standup?" — it pulls recent activity for each team member.

Watch out for

• Stale "open items." If your notes folder isn't updated, the agent re-surfaces items that were already resolved. Capture the recap each week so the next prep is accurate.
• Thin context, thin brief. With no notes source connected, the brief leans only on recent email and gets generic. Point it at a real notes folder.
• Treating the brief as the meeting. It's a 2-minute prep, not a substitute for the conversation — skim it, don't read it aloud.

Where this leads (the ramp)

Right now you still have to open the agent and ask for the brief. The next rung is having it run itself — Copilot Studio adds triggers so the prep lands in your inbox before the meeting, no click required.

Next: Copilot Studio: trigger an agent automatically

Related

• Know when to graduate from Agent Builder to Copilot Studio
• Stage 4 · Agent Builder

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