Wondering how to use intelligent recap in Teams? You're not alone; Intelligent Recap is among the most impressive and useful Copilot features available to Teams users. It's probably one reason why Microsoft Teams Premium (the add-on plan for Microsoft Teams) has surpassed 3 million users.

Intelligent Recap goes beyond the functionality offered by the Microsoft Teams standard "recap" function. It allows users to add markers to summaries and recordings, generate meeting notes, and even create tasks based on conversations.

Plus, Intelligent Recap isn't just available for Teams meetings. You can also put Copilot to work in your VoIP and PSTN calls within Teams. Here's everything you need to know about using intelligent Recap to upgrade your meetings, conversations, and asynchronous collaboration.

Intelligent Recap in Teams is a Copilot-powered feature for Microsoft Teams Premium users. It's part of a combination of advanced AI tools and capabilities that Teams Premium subscribers can access, alongside things like real-time translation and Copilot for team coordination in Microsoft Places.

While Microsoft already offers a "recap" feature for standard Teams users, it has fewer features. For instance, you can access transcripts, recordings, and manual notes created by your team. You can also watch meeting recordings within Teams and access content shared in a meeting.

Intelligent Recap brings AI into the mix, drawing on Microsoft's Copilot capabilities. This feature was originally introduced by Microsoft in May 2023. However, Microsoft has made several upgrades to it since then. As of 2024, you can access intelligent transcriptions in multiple languages and even use Intelligent Recap in your Microsoft Teams Phone calls.

Even Microsoft's own team is taking advantage of this functionality. According to a recent blog post from the tech giant. Microsoft staff use intelligent recap to catch up with meetings, streamline asynchronous collaboration, and reduce note-taking.

Microsoft Teams intelligent recap uses AI (specifically Microsoft Copilot), to automatically provide users with a comprehensive overview of a meeting or call. It appears in the "Recap" tab on Teams calendar and chat, giving users access to automatically generated notes, personalized highlights, transcriptions, and recommended tasks.

Users must enable recording on their meetings and calls to access Intelligent Recap. However, you can still watch the recording and keep track of the notes while you're in a meeting.

After the meeting ends, Intelligent Recap will identify the people in the meeting (based on spoken names) and the general topics of the conversation. Based on what was discussed, it also creates recommended action items for your teams and suggests "chapters" to organize the recording.

All of that information is combined with information about meeting events. For instance, you'll be able to track when users share their screen in a meeting or @mention someone.

Using intelligent recap in Teams is pretty straightforward, although there are a few pre-requisites to consider. First, you'll need a Microsoft Teams Premium license. This is the "add-on" license for Microsoft Teams that gives users access to additional features like Intelligent Recap.

Notably, since it's an "add-on" license, it needs to be purchased alongside a standard Microsoft 365 license, which includes Microsoft Teams. If you don't have Teams Premium, you can still use Intelligent Recap if you have the "Copilot for Microsoft 365" license.

The Teams Premium pricing is available for $7 per user per month, while Copilot for Microsoft 365 costs $30 per month. Once you have the appropriate licenses, an administrator must assign them to users. They can do this by visiting the Microsoft 365 admin center and signing in using admin credentials. From there:

Once your licenses are assigned, go back to the Teams admin center dashboard, click on Teams Apps, and then on Meeting Policies.

Select the policy you want to edit, and under the Content Sharing section, enable "transcription" and "cloud recording" and save the changes. As soon as users log into Microsoft Teams, they should be able to see the "Recap" tab in their meetings and calls.

Once users have the right licenses assigned to them and you've enabled cloud recording and transcription as an admin, everyone should be able to experiment with Intelligent Recap. Here are some of the standout features your users should be able to access:

Timeline markers give more depth and context to your meeting recording to help users find content and segments that matter most to them. There are a few different types of markers enabled by intelligent recap in Teams, such as:

Copilot in Microsoft Teams can instantly transcribe your meetings and conversations and even translate content automatically on Teams Premium. Clicking on the Recap tab in a meeting will show you all of your recordings, transcriptions, and other data collected during a meeting.

While standard transcripts, recordings, and files are available for all Microsoft Teams users in the "Recap" section, Teams Premium and Intelligent Recap give you more features. For instance, Copilot will automatically take notes for you throughout the meeting, which is located in the "AI notes" section. Notably, this feature is only available for sessions that last at least five minutes.

You can also use Copilot to divide your meeting or call by chapters or specific topics. This is an experimental feature that's still being rolled out. However, it should help you find specific content by organizing conversations into sections based on keywords from the meeting transcript.

Finally, Copilot can also generate follow-up tasks. Based on the main action items you discussed in a meeting, Copilot will suggest tasks you may want to assign to specific meeting attendees. For instance, it might suggest scheduling a new meeting or following up with a customer.

You can edit these tasks before assigning them to team members and add extra files or details to a message. This allows users to make their meetings more "actionable" without relying on separate project management tools.

Ultimately, Intelligent Recap is an easy-to-use, convenient, and beneficial tool in Microsoft Teams. It's ideal for companies that want to ensure they can bridge the gaps between hybrid employees and keep everyone on the same page.

In the world of asynchronous work, Intelligent Recap eliminates the need to ensure everyone is simultaneously available for a meeting. Staff members who turn up to a meeting late, leave early, or can't attend can still get a complete rundown of everything that happened in a conversation.

Plus, employees in a meeting or call can waste less time taking notes and keeping track of important topics. They can fully engage with the actual conversation, leaving Microsoft Copilot to handle all of the "grunt work" behind the scenes.

If you want to upgrade your meeting strategy or enhance asynchronous collaboration, you can access Intelligent Recap in Microsoft Teams today (provided you have the right license).