Great news: Microsoft Teams is getting even better!
What may already be your favorite office productivity and collaboration tool is getting some new AI-powered features that could really make a difference in your workflows. Here’s what you need to know so you can get the maximum productivity out of this powerful tool you’re already using.
Copilot Meeting Transcripts
First up is a feature that you may have seen elsewhere, but now it’s built straight into Teams: AI-powered meeting transcripts.
Teams users can now use Copilot to automatically transcribe the conversation that’s happening in any Teams meeting. This could be a video chat, an audio call, an all-hands meeting, or just about anything else you can do in Microsoft Teams.
Admittedly, this capability has been around for a little while in other tools. There were even workarounds that would let you use other software services to do this in Teams, but what’s great here is tighter integration with Microsoft. In short, you get a better product without ever leaving Teams or having to configure third-party software or integrations.
Not to mention, Copilot doesn’t stop with dumb transcripts: there’s more here to explore.
AI-Powered Conversation Insights
Having access to a highly accurate automatic transcription of a meeting is already really helpful, but Microsoft has gone one step further, enabling AI-powered conversation insights. Copilot can now interpret that entire meeting conversation, including live chat messages that were typed in during the meeting, and produce a summary that includes the most valuable insights from the conversation.
We’ve all been in meetings that moved too quickly for anyone to summarize meeting minutes or capture all the nuance of everything that was discussed. And if you’re like us, you’ve probably been in a meeting or 500 that weren’t high profile enough to get a dedicated note-taker. Now you can get just about the same result in every single meeting – all thanks to Copilot and AI.
Other Recap and Reword Updates
There are a handful of other AI wording, transcription, and summary tools showing up in Teams, too. You can now edit a message that you sent in chat and ask Copilot to reword or rephrase what you’ve said. We don’t see this being as beneficial as the others, but it’s still cool to see.
If you use the app for normal phone calls, such as over a VoIP system, you can now get similar AI recaps of those phone calls. There’s one catch on this particular feature: you will need to be a Teams Premium subscriber for phone call recaps.
IntelliFrame Upgrades for Video Calls
In this latest update to its flagship collaboration and conferencing app, Microsoft made a setting called IntelliFrame the default for all video calls. This is a major improvement to quality of life for organizations that do a lot of video calls. Essentially, this feature uses AI to understand what’s happening in the video feed of every meeting participant. It also understands who is talking or presenting at any given moment. IntelliFrame intelligently spotlights the right people at the right time, and it improves the quality of their video where possible.
For organizations with the right types of video cameras, this setting will also automatically pan and zoom and frame speakers to get the best views, including of hand gestures. It even works for physical conference rooms with multiple people, automatically finding and framing the one currently speaking. No more video conferences with people way too far away or way too close to the camera.
That’s it for this week’s update. If you’re not using Microsoft Teams yet, we highly recommend giving it a try. And if you are, let us know how we can help improve your approach to using the Microsoft 365 suite.