GitHub Copilot Is Now in Microsoft Teams: Migrate by Nov 16

GitHub’s legacy Teams app retires in seven days. If your engineering team routes GitHub notifications through Microsoft Teams, you have until November 16 to swap apps — and while the deadline sounds like housekeeping, the real reason to care is the coding agent that comes with the replacement.

One App Replaces Two

Until now, GitHub lived in Microsoft Teams as two disconnected pieces: a notifications app that pushed issues and PR updates into channels, and a separate GitHub Copilot integration for coding work. GitHub merged both into a single app — also called GitHub — that reached general availability in late October 2026. The old app will be renamed GitHub (deprecated) on November 16 and retired shortly after. Teams that do nothing lose their GitHub notifications entirely.

One important warning from GitHub’s migration guide: renaming the existing app is not a substitute for replacing it. You need to uninstall the legacy app and install the new one separately. Both exist in the Teams app catalog right now with identical icons — verify you are adding the one without the deprecated label.

What the Coding Agent Actually Does

The notifications migration is routine. The Copilot integration is not. Here is what the new workflow looks like in practice:

1. A bug report or failing CI notification arrives in a Teams channel.
2. A developer @mentions GitHub in the thread and describes what to fix.
3. GitHub Copilot spins up a cloud sandbox, investigates the issue, runs the tests, implements a fix, and opens a pull request.
4. A GitHub Canvas panel opens inside Teams, showing the task plan, file diffs, and the PR — no context switch to GitHub.com required.
5. Anyone with write access to the repository can add context, adjust the plan, or request changes from inside the same thread.

This is not Copilot autocomplete. It is a full coding agent session triggered from a chat message, running on GitHub’s cloud infrastructure, reviewable without leaving Teams. For teams already living in Teams for standups and incident response, it closes the gap between “someone reported a bug” and “here is the fix for review.”

Who Gets It and What Admins Must Enable

The coding agent capability is not on by default. It requires:

• A paid GitHub Copilot plan — Business ($19/user/month) or Enterprise ($39/user/month)
• Cloud sandboxes enabled at the organization or enterprise level
• Copilot cloud agent policy enabled for the organization
• Write access to the repository for the developer triggering the session

Cloud sandboxes ship disabled by default for every organization, including existing ones. An org owner must explicitly turn them on. Sandbox compute is billed separately from AI credits starting this month — set a budget before enabling it, or the first month’s bill will be a surprise. GitHub’s official integration guide covers the full policy setup steps.

If your organization restricts resource-specific consent (RSC) in Teams, you will also need to update your chat and thread consent policies before Copilot can read the conversation context it needs to function. The Microsoft Admin Message MC1515929 has the specifics for IT administrators tracking this rollout.

Migration Checklist

For end users:

1. Remove the legacy GitHub app from your Teams conversations.
2. Search for and install the new GitHub app (not the deprecated version).
3. Connect your GitHub account when prompted.
4. Select a default repository.

For admins (to unlock Copilot agent features):

1. Enable the Copilot cloud agent policy for the organization.
2. Enable the cloud sandboxes policy for the organization.
3. Review and update RSC consent policies if applicable.
4. Set a cloud sandbox compute budget for cost control.
5. Send internal guidance distinguishing the new app from the deprecated one — the icons look identical.

Why This Matters Beyond the Deadline

This week OpenAI cut off Cursor’s model access, Meta acquired Conductor to orchestrate multi-agent coding sessions, and Goldman Sachs restricted AI coding tools to engineers only. GitHub is making the opposite bet: embed the agent deeper into where developers already work. Whether that proves more productive than gating access is a real question, but the direction is clear.

The November 16 deadline is not a reason to panic. It is a reason to run the five-minute migration now — and then actually try the Copilot agent workflow before your team dismisses it as a notification repackaging. The notification part is the footnote. The coding agent is the story.