In yesterday’s blog, I looked at how Microsoft Teams can become the central hub for managing your project, conversations, meetings, tasks, and decisions all in one place. Today, I want to zoom in on something every project has (but few handle well): risks and issues.
Most projects don’t fail because risks weren’t raised. They fail because risks were buried in chat, lost in meeting notes, or never tracked properly once identified.


This is where Teams, Microsoft Lists, and Copilot work beautifully together.

Why Risks and Issues Deserve Their Own Home

If risks and issues live:

  • in emails,
  • in someone’s notebook,
  • or as a bullet point on a slide once a month,

If you don’t have a register — you have a hope-and-pray strategy. A good risk and issue register should be:

  • Easy to update
  • Visible to the project team
  • Simple enough that people actually use it

You don’t need heavyweight PM software to achieve this.ing dashboard in the PMO team.

Start with a Dedicated Channel

Within your project Team, create a clear channel — for example:

05 – Risks & Issues (05 – Risks & Issues (the list can also live in the 09 Project Control and Meetings Channel)

This becomes the single place where:

  • Risks are raised and reviewed
  • Issues are logged and tracked
  • Discussions stay visible and searchable
  • Meetings and updates happen in context

Structure matters. When people know where risks belong, they’re far more likely to raise them early.

Use Microsoft Lists as Your Risk & Issue Register

Inside the channel, add a Microsoft List. This becomes your live register — simple, visible, and easy to maintain.

A good starting structure includes:

  • Title
  • Type (Risk or Issue)
  • Description
  • Impact
  • Likelihood (for risks)
  • Owner
  • Status
  • Mitigation or Resolution
  • Raised Date

Nothing fancy. Just enough structure to drive clarity and accountability. Because the list lives inside Teams, it stays close to the work — not hidden in another system people forget to check.

Let Copilot Help You Maintain It (Not Replace Thinking)

This is where Copilot adds real value. Instead of manually trawling through conversations and meetings, you can ask Copilot to:

  • Summarise recent discussions that relate to risks or blockers
  • Identify patterns — for example, recurring delivery delays or dependency issues
  • Draft risk descriptions or mitigation options based on context already in the channel
  • Create a quick summary for your project status or Steerco update

Copilot doesn’t decide what’s a risk — you still do. But it saves time turning scattered signals into something structured and usable.

Meeting Recaps Feed the Register

If your risk or issue is discussed in a channel-based meeting, you already have an advantage:

  • The meeting recap
  • The transcript
  • The decisions
  • The actions

All live right there. Instead of asking, “Did we log that risk?”, you can use Copilot to help extract the outcome and update the list while the context is still fresh.

That’s how registers stay relevant, not as an admin exercise, but as part of how the team works.

Reporting Without Reinventing the Wheel

Because your risks and issues are already in a List, reporting becomes simple:

  • Filter by status or owner
  • Group by risk vs issue
  • Use Copilot to summarise what’s changed since last week
  • Pull the list into a Steerco channel or dashboard if needed

No more rebuilding the same slide every month from scratch. Start using the “live” data for the reporting.

The Bigger Picture

Good project control isn’t about more documents — it’s about better visibility. When your risks and issues:

  • Live inside Teams
  • Are structured just enough
  • Are supported by Copilot summaries
  • And are discussed openly in context

They stop being scary surprises and start becoming manageable conversations. And that’s where good project teams separate themselves from the rest.

Microsoft Resources:

Other Copilot related blogs I’ve written:

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