GitHub’s updated app for Microsoft Teams lets users ask GitHub Copilot to investigate repository updates and prepare code changes directly from notification threads. Users reply to an update, mention @GitHub and describe the work, giving Copilot the linked issue or pull request and the thread’s conversation as context. GitHub says Copilot can reproduce bugs, execute tests, make fixes and submit proposed changes through a pull request that people review.
Using Copilot requires a paid GitHub Copilot plan, with cloud sandboxes enabled. Organization and enterprise users may also need an administrator to enable both Copilot cloud agent and cloud sandboxes before they can delegate work through Teams. Repository notifications, by comparison, work without a GitHub Copilot license, so receiving updates and requesting coding work have different access requirements.
Existing users of GitHub notifications can get the new capabilities by updating that app, with their notification functions continuing to work. Users of the legacy GitHub app need to install the consolidated app to keep accessing Copilot through Teams; the older app is due to retire on November 16 and will take the name “GitHub (deprecated)”. In the consolidated app, mentioning @GitHub starts any required prompts for connecting a GitHub account and choosing a repository.
Updates from repositories can reach Teams channels, group conversations or private chats. In GitHub’s bug-report example, a team asks Copilot to investigate from the issue notification, then reviews the resulting pull request, requests revisions, tests changes and makes the merge decision. GitHub says the same approach can handle feature development, additional tests and documentation changes, using the existing discussion to avoid rebuilding the task description.
GitHub says Microsoft product and engineering teams already use the Teams app to turn GitHub issues into code. Earlier this month, GitHub also made Agentic autofix generally available for code scanning alerts, with fixes checked through CodeQL before a pull request reaches reviewers.
Microsoft previously introduced Code, which uses technology shared with GitHub Copilot to let people describe dashboards, widgets and internal cloud applications in natural language. That earlier offering runs in a sandbox and can operate within a company’s own tenant.
