Transcribing in face to face meetings

Hi @Paterson, Colin, 

Thank you for your update. According your concern, if only one person joins the Teams meeting from a single device and the other people in the room do not join the meeting individually, Teams can still create a transcript of the conversation. However, in that face to face setup, standard Teams transcription is not expected to reliably distinguish both local speakers as separate participants. Microsoft documents live transcription as capturing what is said in the meeting, while in room speaker identification is associated with separate speaker recognition scenarios rather than standard transcription alone.

To clarify, if only one person joins the Teams meeting from a single device, this avoids the situation where multiple audio devices are active in the same room, which Microsoft says can cause screeching, echo, or other audio quality issues.

Regarding Copilot and other AI, enabling that meeting option and assigning a Microsoft 365 Copilot license can improve the ability to generate meeting minutes and summaries.

I hope the information was helpful. If this answered your question, I would sincerely appreciate it if you could mark the response as accepted. Doing so helps make the solution easier to find for other community members who may be looking for similar guidance.

Your support also helps make the forum more useful and collaborative for everyone.

Thank you again for your time and for being part of the community.

Hi @Paterson, Colin, 

Thank you for your clarification.

If only one person joins the Teams meeting from a single device, and the other people in the room do not join the meeting individually, Teams can still create a transcript of the conversation. However, in this type of face to face setup, Teams transcription is not expected to reliably distinguish each local speaker as a separate participant. Microsoft documents live transcription as capturing what is said in the meeting, while separate in room speaker identification is associated with specific speaker recognition scenarios rather than standard transcription alone.

This means the transcript can still be useful for capturing the discussion, but it may not clearly identify which person in the room said each part of the conversation.

After the meeting ends, you can still use the transcript to create meeting minutes as a manual workaround. The transcript is available in the meeting chat and recap, and you can copy it into Copilot to generate a structured summary or meeting notes.

So while this setup may not provide reliable speaker differentiation, it can still help capture the conversation and support the creation of meeting minutes afterward.

I hope you found the answer helpful, and I would greatly appreciate it if you could mark it as accepted. This helps highlight the solution for others who may be searching for similar information in the community. Your contribution not only supports fellow users in finding the right guidance more quickly, but also helps build a more resourceful and collaborative space for everyone.  

Thank you for your kindness and contributions to the forum.

Hi @Paterson, Colin, 

Thank you for your response. 

If the meeting policy option to allow Copilot and other AI is currently disabled, Facilitator will not be available for use in meetings.

As an alternative, you can still use meeting transcription during the meeting, provided transcription is allowed by your organization’s policies. This will give you a written record of what was said, including speaker attribution.

After the meeting, you can then manually copy the transcript into Copilot (for example, in Word or Copilot Chat) and ask it to help generate meeting minutes or a summary. Please note that this is a manual workaround, as Copilot will not automatically generate notes or insights when Copilot and other AI are disabled at the meeting level.

Below is an example prompt you can use with Copilot:

Please create structured meeting minutes from the transcript below. Include the following sections:

1. Meeting summary
2. Key discussion points
3. Decisions made
4. Action items with owners if mentioned
5. Open questions or follow ups Transcript [Paste the Teams meeting transcript here]

For the most seamless experience with real time notes and meeting insights, enabling Copilot and other AI and using Facilitator remains the recommended option.

Please follow this instruction to see if it works as expected. If you have any further questions or need additional assistance, please feel free to reach out and let me know. I'll be happy to help.

Looking forward to your response. Wishing you a great day ahead.

Thanks for the information. My work settings doesn't allow me to select the option "allow copilot and other AI" as locked by my work admin. Before I go down the route to ask my work admin can you suggest any other options to make this work?

Hi @Paterson, Colin, 

Good day, hope you are doing well. 

I can understand the convenience of having notes automatically transcribed and I truly appreciate your time sharing your concern regarding Teams transcription. According to your concern, if your goal is to capture the conversation during a face to face meeting, Teams can help in 2 different methods, including meeting transcription and Facilitator agent.  

The main difference is that transcription gives you a real time text record of what was said, including speaker names and timestamps, while Facilitator goes further by creating AI generated notes, summarizing key decisions and open questions, and helping organize follow up items from the discussion.  

Because your goal is to stop taking notes manually, I would recommend using Facilitator instead of relying on transcription alone. Facilitator is designed to capture, transcribe, and organize meeting notes, and Microsoft also supports using it on mobile for in person meetings with speaker distinction and recap style notes. 

To do this, please follow these steps to allow Facilitator when scheduling the meeting: 

1. Select Calendar in Teams > New .  
2. Turn on the Teams meeting toggle.  
3. Select Options > Copilot and other AI  . 
4. Make sure Allow Copilot and Facilitator is set to Only during the meeting or During and after the meeting. 
5. Turn the Facilitator toggle on. 

6. Select Apply. 

Please also note that Facilitator requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot license in order to be added to a meeting or turned on during a meeting. 

For more information, please refer to this document Facilitator in Microsoft Teams meetings - Microsoft Support 

I hope this information is helpful. Please follow the steps above and let me know if it works for you. If not, we can continue working together to resolve the issue.  

Thank you for your patience and understanding. If you have any questions or need additional assistance, please don’t hesitate to reach out so I can continue to support you. If you found the response useful, please consider marking it as accepted, as this may help other community members who are looking for similar guidance.  

I look forward to continuing the conversation.

If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment". 

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.