November 2024

Activate live transcription in Microsoft Teams

How to activate live transcription in Microsoft Teams ✓ step-by-step guide ✓ Benefits ✓ Privacy tips

In today's increasingly digitalized world of work, it can be challenging to understand everything in meetings. Background noises, different accents, and quick ways of speaking make it difficult to co-follow discussions. Especially in international and virtual meetings, comprehensibility is often impaired by technical or language barriers. This is where live transcription in Microsoft Teams comes in: This function converts spoken words into text in real time and displays them as subtitles. This makes communication clearer, more transparent and more inclusive. In this article, we'll explain how to activate live transcription in Microsoft Teams, which requirements you need to consider, and how you can benefit from the AI-driven summary.

Live transcribing teams meetings — the benefits

There are many reasons why you should transcribe a teams meeting live. Here are the key benefits:

  • accessibility
    Live transcriptions make meetings more inclusive by allowing deaf or hard-of-hearing participants and non-native speakers to easily understand conversations.
  • Improved comprehensibility
    Dialects, accents or speaking quickly are no longer a problem — the spoken text is converted in real time so that no one misses important information.
  • Traceability and documentation
    After the meeting, a complete transcript is available, which serves as documentation and allows easy follow-up.
  • Increasing productivity
    Fewer inquiries and repetitions ensure a smooth conversation and more efficient meetings.

Live transcribe teams meeting - requirements and requirements

Before you can activate live transcription in teams, there are a few requirements that you need to consider:

  • Use the latest version of Microsoft Teams: Make sure you're always using the latest version of Teams, as the feature isn't available in older versions.
  • Availability only in the desktop version: Live transcription only works in the desktop version of Teams and not via the browser.
  • Enterprise license required: You need a Microsoft 365 or Office 365 Enterprise license to use the feature.
  • IT administrator must enable the feature: The IT administrator in your organization must activate live transcription in the central settings.

Before you can activate live transcription in a meeting, your IT administrator must activate this feature in the central Microsoft Teams settings. Make sure this is already done, or contact your administrator if the feature isn't activated yet.

Start the team meeting

First, you'll need to start a meeting. It doesn't matter whether it's a scheduled meeting or an impromptu meeting. The feature is available in both cases as long as you meet the necessary requirements.

Select the language of the live transcription

Before you activate transcription, make sure that the lingua, which is spoken in a meeting, also as transcription language is discontinued. Microsoft Teams currently supports up to 41 different languages for transcription. For example, if you're holding a meeting in English, make sure that the transcription is also set to English.

  1. Click on More actions To get into the language settings to get there. From there, do you dial Show live captions
Select the language of the live transcription
  1. Select the language that is spoken.
Select the language of the live transcription
  1. Click on confirming. The transcript is then displayed in the desired language.

Enable teams live transcription

  1. In the meeting controls, click More actions.
  2. Dial Record and transcribe and then Start transcription off.
Enable Microsoft Teams Live Transcription

All participants receive a notification that the meeting is being transcribed. They have the option to hide their identities in subtitles and transcripts. Inappropriate language is automatically censored with an asterisk.

Only the organizer or a moderator has permission to activate this feature.

End Teams Live Transcription

  1. Go to meeting controls and click More actions.
  2. Dial Record and transcribe And then Stop transcription or Stop recording (If a recording is running).

Transcription stops automatically as soon as all participants have left the meeting.

How to download a transcript to Microsoft Teams

After you end a meeting in Microsoft Teams, the transcript is immediately available in the meeting's calendar event. By default, organizers and co-organizers can download the als.docx or VTT file transcript.

In some cases, you can also give other people permission to download a transcript, as long as the guidelines have allowed this by your IT administrator.

Step-by-step guide:

  1. Open the Teams chat and navigate to the last meeting chat.
  2. Select the synopsis off.
  3. Click the drop-down arrow next to the download icon and select the desired file type (such as.docx or VTT).

The transcript is now saved on your device and is available to you at any time.

Important tips and tips for using live transcription in Microsoft Teams

While there are many benefits to live transcription, there are a few key points to keep in mind:

  • Accuracy: The accuracy of the transcription can vary depending on how clearly and slowly you speak, or because of accents.
  • language: Teams offers a choice of 41 supported languages, but depending on the language, transcription may be limited.
  • Data protection and GDPR: Make sure that privacy policies are followed when discussing sensitive or confidential information in a meeting. Teams offers various security features, but it's important that you ensure that all data protection requirements under the GDPR are met.

Conclusion: Activate specialized AI summary in teams

Live transcription in Microsoft Teams can be activated with just a few clicks and offers numerous benefits, such as improving accessibility and ensuring traceability. For basic requirements, the Microsoft Teams AI summary completely sufficient. However, if you advanced features or need more detailed transcriptions, should you have external providers such as Sally AI consider.

Sally AI offers high-quality transcriptions, useful additional functions and easy implementation. It is particularly noteworthy that sally is hosted in Germany and therefore all GDPR data protection requirements fulfilled.

👉 tip: Try Sally for free and discover how it helps you organize meetings more efficiently, manage your notes seamlessly, and make the most of your time. Get the most out of your virtual meetings with Sally!

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