How we’re recapping our meetings with AI and Microsoft Teams Premium at Microsoft

Traditionally, missing a meeting—or even just a part of one—could mean being left behind while the rest of the team pressed forward. Referring to prior meetings was tedious, requiring employees to sift through hours of recorded dialogue to find specific reference points.

Microsoft Teams has changed that with its AI-powered Intelligent Recap feature in Microsoft Teams Premium. And with the addition of powerful new features like Audio Recap, Interpreter agent, and Facilitator, Microsoft Teams continues to innovate and provide different ways for users to catch up on and review their meetings, whether they were able to attend live or not.

Employees across Microsoft are using these features to work asynchronously and be much more productive than ever before. They’re also taking advantage of the latest developments in AI agents to push the envelope and do even more with Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot.

“We’re really solving for people’s time,” says Sara Bush, a principal PM manager in Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization. “We’re simplifying and democratizing communication, so our employees can get the information in the best way for them. This is showing the power of AI and Copilot.”

Intelligent Recap: A game changer

Microsoft Teams offers a meeting recap feature that generates a full meeting transcript. The technology behind Intelligent Recap in Teams Premium takes this feature even further.

In addition to producing a full transcript, Intelligent Recap uses AI to generate a detailed summary of a Teams meeting, identifying key discussion points and potential action items. It also has special organizational properties, breaking the meeting into chapters and allowing users to view the meeting recording in color-coded segments that can be sorted by speaker or topic.

“Intelligent Recap has been a game changer for our employees, in terms of being able to get the notes, catch up on what they missed, and work asynchronously. It’s one of the most highly used features in Microsoft Teams.”

Chanda Jensen, senior product manager, Microsoft Digital

That information, along with details about events that happened within the meeting, such as when participants shared their screen or when your name was mentioned, is made available to all meeting participants in your organization within a few minutes of the meeting’s conclusion. The recap can also be shared directly with anyone via email using the “Share to Outlook” functionality, which is helpful for external attendees.

“Intelligent Recap has been a game changer for our employees, in terms of being able to get the notes, catch up on what they missed, and w ork asynchronously,” says Chanda Jensen, a senior product manager in Microsoft Digital. “It’s one of the most highly used features in Microsoft Teams.”

Intelligent Recap is now also available for webinars, town halls, and calls for users that have the Teams Premium license, Jensen says. This gives these users more options for catching up on important information when they are not able to attend in real time.

Intelligent Recaps a hit with employees

The response to Intelligent Recaps has been enthusiastic here at Microsoft.

“This is one of the most impactful features I have seen introduced with hybrid work,” says Tyler Russell, a senior engineering architect on the Azure Databases SQL Customer Success Engineering team. “The Intelligent Recap functionality improves my productivity significantly, and I have started recording more meetings because of it.”

For those involved in long meetings or who have significant meeting conflicts, Intelligent Recap is proving especially useful.

“I was recently involved in a half-day, extensive leadership meeting,” says Mike Friday, a general manager for the Customer Experience team at Microsoft. “Having the Intelligent Recap feature enabled me to quickly catch up with my team through AI-generated notes.”

Overcoming language barriers with Interpreter agent and multilingual recaps

What if you are invited to attend a Teams meeting or event that is being presented in a different language? At Microsoft, our employees are now taking advantage of AI-derived features like the Interpreter agent to make meetings more inclusive.

Interpreter allows participants to speak and hear the meeting in their preferred language with the help of an AI-based interpreter. Using real-time speech-to-speech (STS) translation developed with Microsoft Azure AI services, the Interpreter agent enables Teams users to overcome language hurdles and be more comfortable participating in meetings that aren’t offered in their first language.

“The Interpreter agent is going to shape the way we communicate at Microsoft,” Jensen says. “It’s connecting colleagues, partners, and customers worldwide, so that everyone is able to speak in their preferred language. It’s a critical part of how we communicate as a global organization.”

Jensen adds that Intelligent Recaps are also now multilingual, making it a more versatile feature.

“Let’s say the meeting is in English, but you set the Interpreter to Spanish,” Jensen says. “Not only will Interpreter translate for you during the meeting, but because you’ve set your preferred language to Spanish, the Intelligent Recap will also be entirely in Spanish. It’s amazing.”

{Read more about how we’re using the Interpreter feature in Microsoft Teams.}

Catching up on the go with Audio Recaps

With our busy workdays and lives, we don’t always have time to sit and read documents and meeting summaries. When it comes to your meeting’s recap, Microsoft Teams can now generate an Audio Recap that provides a podcast-style summary that you can listen to wherever you go.

“Audio Recaps allow you to be mobile—you can take it with you,” says Lesley Montgomery, a principal product manager in Microsoft Digital. “It gives you flexibility to consume the recap information in the way you’d like. And if you’re traveling, you don’t have to worry about someone reading over your shoulder.”

The feature uses AI to generate a podcast-style presentation, making the recap more engaging. It can also combine multiple meetings in one recap, making it easier to catch up or review a day or even a week of meetings in one go.

“I just did an Audio Recap of some of my meetings this week. It was so good that I took the transcript and easily made it into a PowerPoint deck, all using AI.”

Sara Bush, principal PM manager, Microsoft Digital

“You can choose to recap a series of meetings or just one, and you can also indicate the style you like—an executive summary, a casual tone, or newscast-style,” Montgomery says. “You can also select one ‘host’ or multiple voices, to make it more engaging.”

Sara Bush explains how Audio Recaps can be “taken to the next level” when combined with the power of AI tools like Copilot.

“I just did an Audio Recap of some of my meetings this week,” she says. “It was so good that I took the transcript and easily made it into a PowerPoint deck, all using AI. That just shows you the brilliance of Audio Recap.”

Keeping your meetings on track with Facilitator

Gone are the days when you needed to appoint a notetaker for your meeting, or have someone keep an eye on the agenda and the time to make sure everything got covered. Our employees are now using Facilitator in Microsoft Teams Premium for those tasks, freeing them up to better focus on the actual meeting content.

“It’s one of those rare features that comes along and immediately increases our productivity,” Jensen says. “Facilitator takes notes for everyone, which allows me to sit back, listen, and be more engaged.”

“Another enhanced feature we’re adding is the ability to do a ‘quorum check’ to remind you if any required attendees are not present, and ask if you want them to be nudged about it.”

Lesley Montgomery, principal product manager, Microsoft Digital

Once you invite Facilitator to your meeting, it can create an agenda (if needed), start a timer, and begin taking notes.

Coming enhancements include noting people who are at-mentioned multiple times and even suggesting and/or scheduling another meeting if not all the agenda items get covered.

“Another enhanced feature we’re adding is the ability to do a ‘quorum check’ to remind you if any required attendees are not present, and ask if you want them to be nudged about it,” Montgomery says. “Facilitator will also collect any questions that have not been answered and make sure they are noted for follow-up.”

{Learn more about how Facilitator keeps our meetings on track at Microsoft.}

Putting it all together with AI agents

As we move into the “agentic” future at Microsoft, our employees are discovering all kinds of ways that AI-driven tools can help them have a greater impact in their work. It’s amazing to see how much these technologies are changing how we work.

“We have Facilitator now in Teams, and there’s also a Project Manager Agent in Planner that allows you to take meeting content and automatically generate a board in Microsoft Planner,” Bush says. “So, it has a multiplier effect—it’s unbelievably powerful.”

Bush also describes the experience of moving seamlessly from Teams-generated content to Microsoft Outlook, with AI agents pitching in to help her inform her team in a fraction of the time it used to take.

“I needed to let my leadership team know about this agent that we’re building. My first thought was, ‘I need to talk to two people on my team and ask for a high-level summary.’ And then I realized I don’t have to,” Bush says. “I went to Copilot, and it immediately came up with the summary at the level I was looking for. It said, ‘Do you want me to turn this into an email?’ It created the email in about three minutes; I reviewed it to personalize it and make sure it was correct and then, boom! I sent it off to my leadership team. It just blows me away.”