Tag: Teams Premium

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Rolling out in Outlook: “Follow a meeting” and keep up to date.

Update: Follow is a new meeting response (RSVP) option that is now rolling out in Teams and Outlook (new and on the web) that goes beyond the traditional Accept, Tentative and Decline choices. This is designed to help people who typically have a high number of meeting requests and those that typically have conflicting meetings each day with lots of “un-decided” or “maybe” meetings.

New: “Follow” a meeting (Outlook)

I personally think this is a really powerful feature and it’s one of the features I have been most excited about since I first saw the Copilot teaser videos last March. When we respond as “maybe”, organisers are left confused as to who is joining their meetings or not making it hard to plan. For everyone else also trying to get your time, it’s hard to see what you meeting you are attending when you have lots of non-RSVP’d or “maybe” meetings.

With this feature, invitees will be able to inform meeting organisers that they are unable to attend the meeting but notifies them that they want to “stay informed” by following. This is major update to the yes (accept), maybe (tentative), and no (decline) responses we have traditional responses like Accept, Tentative, and Decline.

Note: Follow a Meeting will initially be available only for Outlook on the Web, the "new" Outlook and within Teams. It will roll out to other platforms including mobile "later".

How “following a meeting” works

One this feature is available; you’ll see a new meeting response option in meeting invites (and for existing meeting series). There are three stages to this.

  • You choose to follow a meeting you can’t / won’t attend. You see a new meeting RSVP option called Follow and choose this rather than “maybe / tentative”.
  • Informing Organisers – when you receive a meeting invite you are not able to attend but need to keep up to speed on, you will be able to respond with the new “Follow” option. They are also prompted to “record the meeting” in Teams when there are people following a meeting.
Image (c) Microsoft
  • Free up your Time: When you “Follow” a meeting, Outlook updates the entry in your calendar, marking it as free – allowing you (and others) to see the correct entry in your diary without seeing handfuls of meeting clashes or tentative responses. This means you can better prioritise your time, while still retaining access to the meeting(s) you follow.
  • Stay Informed: When you choose to “Follow” a meeting, the meeting organiser receives a notification asking them to record the Teams meeting. When the meeting is over, you (and anyone else following the meeting) automatically receive the “post-meeting recap”.
NOTE: Initially, "Follow" responses are only available in new Outlook for Windows and Outlook on the web. If the meeting organiser is using either of these versions of Outlook, they will see your Follow response. Anyone using the classic Outlook client in Windows, Outlook for Mac, or Outlook on Mobile, will see the "Follow" response as Tentative.

If you have a Copilot license, you will also be able to use Copilot to recap the meeting you missed, asked questions and more.

The process above is illustrated in diagram below (courtesy of Microsoft).

Follow a Meeting – Illustrated!

Image (c) Microsoft

When will the Follow a Meeting feature be released?

Microsoft has started to roll this out today (May 7th 2024) and expect to complete by late May/June 2024 with General Availability to everyone by late June / July.

Be warned though… as this rolls out, the meeting use of this feature is not consistent or present in all your tools. For example, its currently (8th May 2024), only available on Outlook on the Web and the new Outlook Desktop Client. Not on mobile client, “old Outlook” or Teams.

You can read more by referring to the official Microsoft 365 Roadmap here.

Microsoft have support page about the new feature here.

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Microsoft Teams can now proactively monitor meeting quality.

Microsoft have annouced that users with Teams Premium licenses can now be proactively monitored with IT being alerted to users that are experiencing poor meeting experiences in Teams.

Users under monitoring must have a Teams Premium license to enable proactive monitoring notifications. Room devices with Pro licenses are also supported.

How it works?

IT or help desk can now set up rule-based alerts to notify them of significant quality issues that users might be experiencing in Teams meetings such as such as audio, video or app sharing problems which helps them raise tickets and troubleshoot issues quickly. The alerts are delivered by a chat bot into a team site for example and can also be picked up and routed though a power automate flow to the IT ticketing system for example.

Image (c) Microsoft

Benefits to IT and Helpdesk

Real-Time telemetry, has been available in the Teams Admin Center for a while, but required manual reviewing and repetitive admin involvement to detect anomalies and pinpoint specific issues. Previously IT needed to search for a user, check their call history, find ongoing meetings, or live events in which their users were involved, and then locate the necessary telemetry information to spot exact issues.

Benefits for users

For users with Teams Premium licenses or those joining Teams meetings from devices with Teams Room Pro licenses, Real-time telemetry data will allow IT to proactively be aware and troubleshoot transient issues that users might face with meeting quality without manually sifting through logs or waiting for the user to complain.

How to enable proactive monitoring

This functionality is configured within the Teams Admin Center using rule-based notifications. Microsoft’s instructions are:

  • Configure the “Audio/Video/App sharing quality for in-progress meeting” rule in the Teams Admin Center under Notifications & Alerts > Rules.
  • Specify the list of users to monitor.
  • Adjust default monitoring parameters based on which audio, video or app sharing quality is monitored.
  • Configure a Teams channel or webhook where you want these notifications to be delivered.
  • Save the rule.

For more information see the formal Microsoft documentation here.

For more info on Teams Premium see here.

Image and design by Microsoft Designer and Bing Image Creator.

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How to use Intelligent Meeting recap in Teams

Microsoft Teams Meeting recap is now live for both Teams Standard and Teams Premium users. For users with Teams Premium licenses, they also get access to the AI powered “Intelligent recap” feature. In this blog I will cover.

  • What is Intelligent Recap
  • What is Teams Premium
  • How does Intelligent recap work in Teams
  • How do you summarize a team meeting transcript
  • How much does Intelligent recap cost?

What is Intelligent recap

Intelligent Recap is a Teams Premium (a service that provides an enhanced Teams experience, including many advanced features including several that use artificial intelligence to provide time saving tasks for meeting organisers and attendees.

Intelligent recap provides AI powered insights, automatically takes notes, recommended tasks, and highlights, as well as creating speaker-indexed video and transcriptions of the recording. It is available to use now for Teams Premium users.

According to research by Microsoft and feedback from their customers, this tool should save people a lot of time since who, more than 55% of people claim that actions and notes are often unclear or inconsistent following a meeting.

What is Teams Premium

Microsoft Teams Premium was released early this year and amongst other premium features, it brings new artificial intelligence powered tools to Teams designed to improve your productivity. The biggest AI feature within Teams Premium is intelligent recap, which after being in preview for while is now generally available.

Intelligent Meeting Recap in Teams Premium

How does Intelligent recap work in Teams

To be able to recap a meeting the meeting organiser (or permitted attendee) will need to ensure they choose (or set to automatic) to record and transcribe the meeting. You also need to have a Teams Premium license.

Intelligent recap is designed to help attendees to catch up on a meeting by reviewing the content, video, key content, and discussion points and to review suggested actions. It also useful for people that were invited to the meeting but were unable to attend and to ensure that everyone has notes from the meeting and are clear on the actions (which it suggests based on the meeting).

Intelligent recap uses Microsoft’s Generative AI to generate meeting notes, recommended tasks, and personalised highlights, which it takes from the transcription it creates.

Intelligent recap also creates personalised timeline markers that are only visible to a specific user. These highlight when someone is specifically mentioned by name, when something is shared by that person and when someone leaves the meeting. This is useful, if, for example, you had to leave an over running meeting because, you can then easily use the recap to catch up on what you missed at the end – particularly if you are given an action.

Intelligent recap also creates speaker timeline markers which make it quick and easy to jump to the most important (or specific parts) of a meeting. They speaker markers show when different people spoke and are organised based on who spoke the most, which is again useful to see the dynamic of a meeting.

Chapters, (which have been delayed but are coming soon), will divide meetings into sections and attempt to organise them by topic – this is currently in testing.

Meeting Recap in Teams “Standard”

It is worth noting that the standard version of Teams does have a meeting recap feature – but lacks the AI powered intelligent notes described above. Instead, the “Recap” tab of a Teams meeting provides links to the meeting transcript, recording, and any notes that were taken manually. You are also able to watch the meeting recording directly within Teams without needing to go to another app or web page. This will also support the new collaborative meeting notes feature when it rolls out in the next month

How do you summarize a Team meeting transcript

To summarise a Teams meeting transcript, you need to make sure the meeting is recorded and transcribed, and you need to have a Teams Premium license assigned.

There are no manual steps needed to summarise the meeting, since the Intelligent Recap feature will work automatically after the meeting ends and after it has processed and analysed the recording and transcription.

One the meeting has finished; you will see a recap tab within the meeting window.

In the Recap panel, you can watch the recorded meeting and access key information such as the agenda, meeting notes, shared content etc. You can also quickly see and navigate to where specific people spoke or where you were mentioned in the meeting for your mentions. You can do that by clicking on the @ over the video window.

The Recap panel is simple to use and very intuitive. From here you can access any notes manually taken during the meeting as well as access the AI notes generated by Teams.

Scrolling down further, shows the AI generated actions that Teams detected or has suggested if not explicitly stated. In my experience these are quite accurate, but it does mistakes – expect it improve over time with more user feedback!

How much does Intelligent recap cost

Intelligent meeting recap is part of Microsoft Teams Premium. Depending on your region and licensing agreement, pricing may vary but RRP is currently on promo for £5.80 pupm. It is due to increase to around £7.

Thanks for reading – as always welcome your comments and feedback.

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