Microsoft has released another feature to keep pace with the torrid videoconferencing market: live transcription with speaker attribution for English-speaking Teams users.
According to Microsoft, the new service is a written record of the spoken text that occurs during a meeting. Each speaker is identified and captured automatically in near real time. The produced transcription is available both during and after the meeting.
In a blog post, the company said accurate live transcriptions with minimal latency and cost-effectiveness at enterprise scale has been difficult to achieve, but significant strides have been made in that area over the last two years thanks to what Microsoft calls “cutting edge AI.”
The company cautioned that the transcripts are not 100% accurate. If you have ever been frustrated trying to get Siri or Alexa to do something and she can’t understand you, then you know how important clarity and intelligibility are. That’s where pro AV integrators can step in and deliver the high quality audio solutions in meeting rooms that can help make the most out of this feature.
“Live transcription in Teams uses a meeting’s invitation, participant names, attachments, etc. to improve the accuracy and recognize meeting-specific jargon for each transcript automatically, without any human involvement,” the company’s blog says. “This means no one at Microsoft ever sees the meeting’s content, and the models are automatically deleted immediately after each meeting. In addition, Microsoft doesn’t use or store this data for improving its own AI.”
According to Microsoft, the tenant admin needs to turn on the Allow Transcription policy, and the meeting organizer or presenter can start transcription.
Related: How To Win More Meeting Room Jobs? Give Them Better Meeting Room Audio: Episode 34 of AV+
Live transcription is similar to recording a meeting, the company says. Participants are notified that the feature is on and can choose to hide it from their view. They can also choose not to be identified in the transcription.
After the meeting, the transcript is saved and is available for reference and download in Teams for desktop and on the web. It’s also immediately available in the meeting event in the Teams calendar and in the transcript tile in the chat, according to Microsoft.
Live transcription files are stored in the meeting organizer’s Exchange Online account, and only that organizer and tenant admin can delete it.
Meeting recordings saved in OneDrive for Business and SharePoint use live transcripts to display captions in recordings, so users should turn on live transcript to ensure captions appear in recordings.
The feature is available for Teams users in English to Microsoft’s public cloud customers with licenses for Microsoft 365 E3, Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 Business Standard and Microsoft 365 Business Premium SKUs, according to the company.
