GitHub Teams App Migration: Replace Legacy App Before November 16, 2026

What GitHub announced​

In its October 23, 2026 changelog, GitHub says the new GitHub app in Microsoft Teams brings GitHub notifications and GitHub Copilot coding together, helping teams turn repository updates into action. Users can get notifications in channels, group chats, or private chats, then reply with @GitHub to investigate issues, fix bugs, run tests, or create pull requests. According to GitHub, @GitHub uses the linked issue or pull request and conversation context to understand the task.

GitHub's example has three steps:

• Get notified: A GitHub issue notification arrives in a Teams conversation.
• Take action: @mention GitHub to investigate the issue, fix the bug, and create a pull request.
• Review and merge: Your team reviews, tests, and merges the proposed changes.

Step three is easy to skim past, but it matters. Copilot opens the pull request. People still review it, test it and decide whether to merge it. Nothing in the announcement says code gets merged automatically.

Section summary: The notifications app and the Copilot app are now one app. A notification can lead to a Copilot-drafted pull request without leaving Teams, but humans still review and merge it.

Two migration paths with different urgency​

Your next step depends on which app you have installed now.

For the first group, GitHub says that if you already have GitHub notifications installed, update the app to the latest version. Your existing notification capabilities will continue to work. For legacy users, the app will be renamed "GitHub (deprecated)" and retired on November 16, and they should install the consolidated app to keep using Copilot in Teams. After that, mention @GitHub and follow any prompts to connect your GitHub account and select a repository.

Microsoft's admin notice adds detail​

Microsoft also announced the change to tenant admins in Message Center post MC1515929, and that post contains details GitHub's changelog leaves out. On timing, Microsoft says general availability worldwide will begin rolling out in mid-October 2026 and expect to complete by mid-November 2026. In plain terms, the rollout finishes at about the same time the legacy app is retired.

The notice is also clear that updating the notifications app is a manual job: Users of GitHub Notifications: The app must be manually updated to the latest version. Copilot features are not available to everyone, either. Microsoft says the app is being renamed GitHub, with GitHub Copilot capabilities available to users with an eligible GitHub Copilot license.

Microsoft's action items for admins:

• Notify affected users to remove the legacy GitHub app from Teams conversations and add the new GitHub app before November 16, 2026.
• Review your organization's Teams app access policies to ensure the new GitHub app is available to users who need it.
• Ask users to confirm that the new GitHub app delivers notifications for the repositories and event types they follow to the intended Teams conversations.
• Update internal guidance to identify the updated app and distinguish it from GitHub (deprecated).

The item most likely to catch organizations out concerns resource-specific consent (RSC). Microsoft says that if your organization restricts resource-specific consent (RSC), configure the applicable team and chat consent policies to allow the GitHub app's required RSC permissions so GitHub Copilot can use chat and thread history as context. If your tenant restricts RSC and nobody changes the consent policies, Copilot won't get the thread context that the whole workflow depends on. Microsoft's post also states the change includes an admin control that can be managed through Entra ID group membership.

Section summary: If you have the notifications app, update it by hand. If you have the legacy app, replace it before November 16. Admins should check app access policies and, in tenants that restrict it, RSC consent.

Setting it up​

GitHub's documentation lists these prerequisites for the Teams integration:

• A GitHub account and a Teams workspace where you are allowed to install apps.
• Microsoft's Public Developer Preview turned on for the Teams client.
• For Copilot cloud agent: a paid Copilot plan with cloud sandboxes enabled. Cloud sandbox and Copilot cloud agent policies share one configuration, so in organizations and enterprises, including those with managed users, an owner may have to turn both on first.

GitHub labels Copilot in Teams as public preview, subject to change. Microsoft's Message Center post talks about general availability, but that refers to the rollout of the consolidated app. Treat the agent features as preview.

Installing and connecting:

• Open the GitHub listing in the Teams app store and click Add. GitHub's docs say this only has to be done once per team. In a workspace, an admin has to install it before anyone can connect an account.
• Follow the prompts to sign in and approve access.
• In a direct message, a personal app conversation or a channel, type @GitHub and follow the prompts in Teams and in your browser to authorize your GitHub account.
• If asked, set a default repository. Type @GitHub help to see the other commands.

Organizations on GitHub Enterprise Cloud with data residency on GHE.com need to install the separate data-residency app from AppSource instead.

How you know it worked: once your account is connected, Teams shows a list of available commands. When you give Copilot a task, it shows the working repository, the issue or pull request link, the model it's using and a status or summary.

Using the agent day to day​

To start a task, type @GitHub and then the task in any Teams chat. You can only do this for repositories where you have write access. To name a repository and base branch explicitly, GitHub's docs give this pattern:

@GitHub Create a pull request to...YOUR_PROMPT repo=OWNER/REPO_NAME branch=BRANCH_NAME

To revise the pull request, mention @GitHub again in the same thread. Copilot takes into account every message since the previous mention. It can also create issues, either one at a time or several at once with parent-child relationships. Typing @GitHub settings in a channel lets you set that channel's default repository. Direct messages can't have one. If a channel has no default, the first repository used there becomes the default.

The notification commands are the same as before:

• @GitHub subscribe OWNER/REPO
• @GitHub unsubscribe OWNER/REPO
• @GitHub subscribe list (add features to see which event types are subscribed)

In the personal app, you leave off the @GitHub prefix, and notifications there aren't grouped into threads.

Security and governance: check these first​

This section is my own analysis based on GitHub's documentation, but these are the questions a security team will ask.

• Copilot reads the whole thread. GitHub warns that in a channel or group thread, Copilot uses the entire thread as context and stores that context in the artifacts it creates. If an earlier message in a long incident thread contained a credential or customer data, it could end up in a pull request description. If you want Copilot to see less, send it a direct message or start a new thread.
• Who the work is attributed to. In a direct message, Copilot acts with your linked GitHub permissions. In shared conversations, it creates pull requests under the app's identity.
• An extra approval. Because pull requests created in shared conversations aren't attributed to a person, repository rulesets that already require at least one approval will require one more. GitHub says this is on by default. Plan reviewer capacity with that in mind.
• Who can start a session. Only users with write access can have Copilot make changes, though anyone in the conversation can add input. Workspace guests and outside collaborators on the repository can't start or steer a session.
• Permissions requested. The base app asks for read access to issues, metadata, pull requests, discussions, projects and code, plus write access to actions, issues and pull requests. Copilot cloud agent adds write access to repository contents and read/write access to workflows.

The bigger picture​

Copilot in Teams isn't new. GitHub first let Teams users create pull requests with Copilot in September 2025, and in its October 15 changelog it announced multi-repository support for Slack and Teams. What's new is that notifications and Copilot now live in one app. That should make the setup less confusing, since organizations no longer have two apps with similar names, one of them called "GitHub". It also puts an AI agent that can write code into the channels where engineers already discuss incidents, which is a governance question as much as a convenience.

Is it worth it? For small fixes, such as a typo, a broken test or a well-described bug, it probably saves real time. For complicated changes, the review step and the extra approval are what keep it safe. Either way, if you still have the legacy app, it is retired on November 16, 2026.

Update: GitHub announces general availability in Teams (October 31, 2026)​

GitHub announced on October 30 that its Teams app is generally available. That supersedes the earlier description of Copilot in Teams as a public preview, although GitHub’s existing setup documentation may not yet reflect the change.

The announcement also introduces GitHub Canvas, where users can review Copilot’s plan, file changes and pull request without leaving Teams. Issues and pull requests created from Teams now include attribution showing who started the work and a link back to the Teams conversation.

GitHub says the app supports configuring tools and connected services through MCP. Users can also select a Copilot model for a task, ask in natural language to set or switch repositories, and use a guided browser-based onboarding flow to sign in and grant access to organizations and repositories.

For administrators, the new attribution gives reviewers a way to trace work back to its initiator and conversation. The announcement does not say that shared-conversation pull requests are now created under a user’s identity or that existing approval requirements have changed.