Many organizations are asking how to get the most out of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to drive team productivity and make smarter and quicker business decisions. Microsoft Copilot has been embraced by early adopters for its ability to get clarity, update teams faster, and generate new ideas. This has been game-changing for individuals at work. But for teams, the conversations that happen in meetings are the building blocks to strategy, action items, and decisions. How do you capture the key insights and outcomes from your team discussions, and follow up on them efficiently?
The answer is simple: enabling Copilot in every space with Teams Rooms. The heaviest Copilot usage to date has been people using Copilot in Teams. * When asked how it has impacted their daily workflow, 70 percent reported they are more productive, 84 percent found it easier to take action after a meeting, and 79 percent say it reduced their administrative workload. Copilot in Teams lets you ask specific questions, seek clarifications, summarize perspectives expressed during meetings, and quickly organize meeting actions – all powered by responses sourced from meeting transcripts.
To fully leverage the potential of Copilot in Teams for hybrid meetings, it’s essential that every participant, no matter their location, maintains their distinct identity during these meetings. This is precisely where Teams Rooms devices play a pivotal role.
Maintain your identity in meetings
The most essential input for Copilot in Teams is the identity of each speaker. Copilot needs a meeting transcript, with attribution for every speaker, to deliver meeting summaries, insights, and action items. In a hybrid meeting, without speaker recognition, the video and audio feed for people in the room would be attributed to the space (e.g., Conference Room 1), not the individuals speaking, making it difficult to query individuals’ contributions, summarize everyone’s perspectives, and tackle those to-do items.
Teams Rooms devices use advanced technology called speaker recognition to analyze the distinct vocal characteristics of each speaker, such as pitch, tone, and speaking style, to create a voiceprint for each participant, akin to a fingerprint for their voice.
With speaker recognition, Teams Rooms can identify speakers during live transcription in shared meeting rooms, ensuring clear and precise voice capture for every participant. This allows you to effortlessly track who said what during the meeting through intelligent meeting recap and Copilot.
To enable speaker recognition for your employees, you can set up a voice profile in minutes using the Teams Desktop app. Each person gets a unique voice signature, stored securely in your organization’s tenant in Microsoft Cloud to assure that every contribution is accurately captured in every meeting, enabling Copilot and intelligent meeting recap – and helping you drive your work forward.
Optimizing Transcription Precision with Intelligent Speakers
Speaker recognition is currently enabled by intelligent speakers certified for Teams. Intelligent speakers are designed with multiple microphones to provide high-quality audio, maximizing accuracy in recognition and transcription and boasting an industry-leading reduction of what referred to as “word error rate.” Intelligent speakers identify speakers during live transcription in shared meeting rooms, ensuring clear and precise voice capture for every participant.
That said, we get it – intelligent speakers are not in every Teams Room. That is why we announced at Ignite this year that speaker recognition will soon extend to existing hardware. While we’re delighted to extend the capability of speaker recognition to more rooms, it’s important to note that the quality may not match that of an intelligent speaker device. So, it’s essential to evaluate the advantages of incorporating an intelligent speaker, particularly in crucial spaces where attaining the highest quality transcription and attribution is vital year that speaker recognition will soon extend beyond intelligent speakers.
Get smarter insights, tasks, and decisions from your meetings
For many customers, the struggle lies in capturing key meeting insights, tracking decisions, and managing action items efficiently, all while ensuring efficient use of time and resources. Copilot, when paired with Teams Rooms devices, enables you to ask natural language questions about hybrid meeting details and participants, and receive instant answers and insights.
Imagine you’re in a hybrid meeting, a mix of in-person and remote participants. It’s crucial to stay on top of the discussion and make sure everyone is on the same page. You simply prompt Copilot in Teams to “summarize the key takeaways from our discussion today.” Copilot, powered by Teams Rooms devices, promptly compiles the highlights, maintaining each speaker’s identity even when they’re in the meeting room, ensuring a seamless experience for all participants, whether in-person or remote.
AI has impact beyond Copilot, ensuring everyone is seen, heard, and recognized
Attending hybrid meetings and being able to clearly see everyone in the room more clearly and intelligently can be a challenge, especially when there are multiple participants in the same physical space. How do you make sure that the remote participants can see the faces and expressions of the in-room participants, and that the camera continues to frame them as they move around the room?
When someone in the physical room speaks, IntelliFrame, using its intelligent camera technology, brings them into focus for online attendees, capturing every expression and gesture. It’s like having a savvy camera assistant that focuses on each speaker. Working seamlessly with Yealink’s SmartVision 60 and integrated with speaker recognition and Copilot, it creates a more immersive, interactive meeting experience for everyone, regardless of their location. This approach not only enhances engagement but also fosters a more cohesive team environment. In addition, creating recognition profiles for IntelliFrame enhances meetings by enabling the camera to identify and label meeting participants. Combined with speaker recognition and Copilot, IntelliFrame can help create a more seamless and productive meeting experience for all participants.
Future-proof your meetings: Teams Rooms and Copilot
Copilot and Teams Rooms are the dynamic duo for hybrid meetings, bringing AI-powered features and effortless collaboration to tackle the challenges and unlock the benefits of hybrid setups. Whether clarifying who’s speaking, extracting smart meeting insights, ensuring inclusivity, or providing clear visibility of participants, Copilot and Teams Rooms provide richer meeting experiences to improve your team’s collaboration, engagement, and productivity. Even if you don’t have Copilot yet, you can begin with Teams Rooms devices. It’s the first step in enhancing your hybrid work environments and preparing for integrating with Copilot in the future. Start by upgrading your meeting spaces with Teams Rooms technology, and you’ll be ready to seamlessly transition to the full capabilities of Copilot and set the stage for a smarter, more connected meeting experience.
* What Can Copilot’s Earliest Users Teach Us About Generative AI at Work? Work Trend Index Special Report by Microsoft WorkLab, November 15, 2023.
