Scheduled Prompts: The Copilot Feature That Briefs You Before You Open Your Inbox
TL;DR
- Scheduled Prompts let Microsoft Copilot run any prompt on a recurring cadence and deliver the results to you automatically.
- A daily triage prompt can summarize unreplied email, rank each thread by importance, and pre-draft responses before the workday starts.
- Scheduled Prompts are created from the Copilot app in Teams or Office.com: write a prompt, hover over it, and select Schedule this prompt.
- Behind the scenes, Scheduled Prompts run on the Workflows app in Teams, built on the Power Platform, which also offers prebuilt daily and weekly prep workflows.
- Drafts that are 80% right still remove 80% of the typing, and batching email into two review blocks beats reacting to every ping.
Most people open Outlook and react. The day happens to them: meeting invites, follow-ups, "quick questions," and half the morning is gone before any real work starts.
Scheduled Prompts, a quietly shipped feature inside Microsoft Copilot, flip that dynamic. They let Copilot brief you proactively, generating summaries, action lists, and pre-drafted replies on a schedule you set. Run any prompt on a recurring cadence and the results show up waiting for you. After a month of using them daily, we think this is the closest thing Microsoft 365 has to an executive assistant, and it takes about two minutes to set up.
How do you create a Scheduled Prompt?
Open the Copilot app in Microsoft Teams or go to Office.com (which redirects into the new Copilot chat experience). From there:
- Create a new prompt.
- Write what you want Copilot to do, for example:
"Summarize my unread emails from the past week, focusing on ones I haven't replied to. Rank them by importance (1-5) and draft replies for anything rated above 3."
- After you submit the prompt, hover over it and select "Schedule this prompt."
- Choose the time and frequency, for example every weekday at 8:30 AM.
- Optionally, check the box to get notified by email when the prompt runs.
That is it. Your AI assistant now has a morning routine.
All scheduled prompts live in the Copilot panel under the Scheduled Prompts tab, where you can run them on demand, pause them, or delete them at any time.
Three Scheduled Prompts worth stealing
1. The morning email triage
A prompt we run every day:
"Summarize emails from the past day that haven't received a reply. Rank importance 1-5. Draft an initial response for anything above 3."
Copilot scans the inbox, identifies pending conversations, ranks them by priority, and produces a short draft reply for each one.
Are the drafts perfect? Not always. But even at 80% right, that is 80% less typing and a lot more focus time. The bigger win is batching: instead of reacting to every ping, you review these summaries twice a day and handle email in focused blocks.
2. The Friday week-ahead prep
Every Friday at 9 AM, a second prompt preps the coming week. Simple but effective:
"Review next week's meetings, summarize key topics, and highlight any conflicts or action items still pending from this week."
Copilot delivers a short summary listing the meetings, attached files, and any related notes or threads it finds across Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive. It is the difference between walking into Monday blind and walking in briefed.
3. Brand monitoring and research on autopilot
Scheduled Prompts are not just personal productivity. They can work for the business too:
"Search trusted web sources and social media websites to find any mention of CloudCapsule or cloudcapsule.io. Summarize the list of mentions. Do not include information directly from the source site. Search across Reddit and Discord."
We run a weekly version of this to monitor product mentions across the web. It is not perfect, and it sometimes surfaces outdated posts, but it gives a quick pulse check on how the product is being discussed online without anyone manually trawling Reddit.
What runs Scheduled Prompts under the hood?
Behind the scenes, Scheduled Prompts are powered by the Workflows app in Teams, built on the Power Platform.
Microsoft has also added a growing catalog of prebuilt workflows, including:
- Help me prepare for my day
- Help me prepare for my week
These automatically summarize your meetings, surface important emails, and send daily or weekly recaps straight to Teams or your inbox. A "Prepare for Next Week" workflow, for example, runs every Friday and generates a summary of upcoming meetings, important messages, and recent documents, delivered as a chat from Copilot.
Start with two prompts
If you want Copilot to actually work for you, stop treating it like a toy and start treating it like an assistant. The challenge for this week: create two scheduled prompts, one daily and one weekly, and watch what happens to your mornings.
Frequently asked questions
Where do you manage Scheduled Prompts after creating them?
In the Copilot panel under the Scheduled Prompts tab. From there you can run any prompt on demand, pause it, or delete it at any time.
Can Scheduled Prompts search outside your tenant?
Yes. A prompt can search trusted web sources, including sites like Reddit and Discord, which makes recurring brand monitoring or research digests possible. Expect some stale results; it is a pulse check, not an analytics platform.
Do Scheduled Prompts require a Microsoft 365 Copilot license?
Yes, Scheduled Prompts are part of the Microsoft 365 Copilot experience in Teams and Office.com, which requires a Copilot license as of November 2025.
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Written by
Nick Ross
CEO · Microsoft MVP · Founder, T-Minus 365
Nick is not just a CEO, he's a respected thought leader and influencer in the MSP space. Tens of thousands of MSPs learn through his YouTube channel, T-Minus365. Nick has been honored as a three-time Microsoft MVP for his educational content; his expertise and influence are the backbone of our mission, ensuring that you are in the best hands when it comes to security.
Nick joined Pax8 in 2017, where he would ultimately oversee product management for PSA and Microsoft integrations. Following his tenure at Pax8, Nick has continued to demonstrate his leadership prowess as an executive at various MSPs, culminating in his most recent role at Sourcepass.
Nick holds a Bachelor's Degree in Business Management from Florida State University, as well as a Minor Degree in Entrepreneurship. In his free time, Nick is an avid hiker, reader, and fitness-junkie.
