Microsoft Adds New Copilot and AI Features to Teams Meetings and Teams Rooms

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Key Takeaways:

  • Microsoft has released new AI capabilities for Copilot in Teams to enhance hybrid meetings, promising significant productivity improvements and time savings.
  • The list of new features includes insights from meeting transcripts and chats, intelligent call recaps, and improved meeting experiences in Teams Rooms.
  • Microsoft also announces enhancements for Teams Phones service, including call management features and partnerships with more telecom providers.

Microsoft has announced a slew of new AI capabilities coming to Copilot in Teams to make hybrid meetings even better. Microsoft’s latest research study indicates that the Copilot AI assistant boosts users’ productivity by up to 70 percent and helps to save over 10 hours per month.

Copilot update brings automated insights and details summary to Teams meetings

For starters, Microsoft is updating Copilot in meetings to provide users with insights and details from the meeting transcript and chat. Users will need to open the AI assistant in the meeting chat to get an overview of what was discussed during the Teams meeting. Moreover, the Copilot in Teams chat compose box will allow users to generate new messages based on the context in the Microsoft Teams chat.

Microsoft Adds New AI Features to Teams Meetings and Teams Rooms
Copilot in meetings

Teams Premium users getting intelligent VoIP and PSTN call recap feature in Q2 2024

Microsoft also announced that the intelligent call recap feature will become generally available in Microsoft Teams in Q2 2024. The feature leverages AI to offer insights and recaps of VoIP and PSTN calls in Microsoft Teams. However, this capability is only available for Microsoft Teams Premium customers.

Microsoft Teams Rooms get new meeting experiences

Microsoft has also announced several new capabilities for Teams Rooms, with a specific focus on hybrid work. The Intelliframe feature is now enabled by default on Teams Rooms devices. This new AI-powered experience makes it easier for remote attendees to view in-room participants. Later this year, Microsoft will add automatic camera switching support for IntelliFrame on Teams Rooms devices. The feature will automatically optimize the video feed of each participant present in the meeting room.

Additionally, Microsoft is improving speaker recognition capabilities with Copilot-generated meeting insights and improved transcript accuracy. They will be available in public preview for Teams Rooms on Windows devices next month. The AI-based voice isolation capability should help to minimize background noise during Microsoft Teams meetings.

Last year, Microsoft announced a new integration of Windows Autopilot and Auto-login of Teams Rooms on Windows. This feature is designed to significantly reduce the time required for administrators to deploy Teams Rooms on Windows. It allows devices to seamlessly sign in to the account connected with the Autopilot device. Microsoft plans to introduce support for Autopilot for Teams Rooms in public preview in the next few weeks.

Deploying devices with Windows Autopilot

Microsoft also announced a couple of updates to improve the Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) ecosystem. The Shared Display mode is now generally available, allowing users to connect their laptops to audio and video sources. Later this year, BYOD meeting rooms are getting support for intelligent speakers, which allows in-person meeting attendees to attribute speech to individual participants. Moreover, BYOD IT Management will help IT admins quickly discover and gain insights about BYOD peripherals in April.

New features coming to Microsoft Teams Phones

Microsoft is improving its Teams Phone service level agreement to guarantee 99.999% uptime on April 1. Microsoft Teams Phone will also add support for call transfer, forwarding, and incoming calls directly from auto attendants or call queues. This capability should be useful in case of network outages. Microsoft announced that AT&T, Odido, Virgin Media O2, Vodafone UK, and other partners will begin selling Teams Phone Mobile in the coming months.

Lastly, Microsoft’s new Queues app creates a collaborative workspace for supervisors and employees involved in handling customer calls. The Queues app is available in private preview, and it will hit general availability in Q2 2024. The Copilot for Service tool will soon let agents use the AI assistant to summarize cases, ask questions about cases and contacts, and perform other actions during meetings.