Microsoft Teams has become the place Australian businesses go to communicate digitally. Chats, video calls, webinars, conferences, collaboration – it does it all, and it does it well. No wonder over a million companies across the world use it.
But as hybrid work became the new standard, we got overloaded with Teams information. Buried in pings and meetings and the documenting of all the important communications taking place. Teams, with all its benefits, became a time hog.
AI has changed the game, though, and turned Teams into an AI-powered work hub. Copilot and agentic AI are evolving the platform into a proactive team member. One that speeds up workflows and enhances internal and external communication and collaboration.
Let’s take a look at how it’s doing this.
The AI Layer in Teams
There are actually three AI layers in Teams:
- Native Teams AI: This includes the AI features now built into Teams. We’ll get into ‘Intelligent Recap’ and other features further down.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot: This is the AI engine that works across all the Microsoft 365 applications. It connects conversations to data stored across your tenant.
- AI Agents: These can work inside your chat channels, configured to handle specific tasks like onboarding or data analysis.
Microsoft Teams AI Features
Microsoft Teams AI FeaturesSo, what’s included in this growing suite of AI capabilities? Here are the standout features.
Intelligent Recap
If you miss a meeting entirely or aren’t coping with the information overload from a recent meeting, Intelligent Recap will catch everything you didn’t. You get a detailed, structured summary of a meeting, with key discussion points identified and topics requiring action highlighted.
You can jump to where your name was mentioned and easily locate other contributors while skipping over the parts that don’t apply.
For those who are really time-poor, and the full transcript feels overwhelming, there’s Audio Recap. This handy tool provides a crisp and listenable audio summary of the meeting you can take in on the fly.
Facilitator: Real-Time Intelligence
The recap features have you covered post-meeting, but AI is just as transformative during the call. Facilitator helps make collaboration more effective when you’re in a meeting through actions like the following:
- Highlighting when discussions drift from the agenda
- Surfacing unanswered questions
- Identifying decisions that require clarification
- Encouraging balanced participation.
When you’re in the meeting chat, Facilitator can help create, update, or query for tasks related to that meeting. These tasks will then sync to an associated meeting plan in Planner. This helps improve post-meeting collaboration too.
Translator Agent
Language doesn’t need to be a barrier if you have global clients or branches in international locations. The Translator Agent provides multilingual captions and even real-time voice translation. Extremely handy if you’re based in Australia but work with businesses across the Asia-Pacific region.
Copilot is Your In-Meeting Assistant
Copilot is the link between your conversations in Teams and the other apps in your 365 tenant. This is where the whole ecosystem really shines: Copilot is basically your personal assistant. It acts as a bridge between discussion and execution.
You could ask it to create a five-slide PowerPoint presentation on the strategy discussed in a leadership meeting. Draft follow-up emails to clients. With Copilot, good ideas don’t get lost in the chat thread.
The Benefits for Management and Staff
AI in Microsoft Teams isn’t just about a bunch of cool features. Streamlining your communication and collaboration has far-reaching benefits for productivity. 69% of respondents to a recent survey acknowledged that AI meeting tools save time, primarily through reducing manual note-taking.
By automating recaps and follow-ups, you’re giving your staff back hours each week. There’s less rework around meetings too – decisions are accurately captured by AI, so there’s less confusion later.
Inside a meeting, users can focus on the discussion rather than typing notes. It becomes more purposeful. Distributed and hybrid teams are also better supported – nobody is excluded because they missed a meeting. Everyone has access to the same information.
Security and Governance
At Smile IT, we know the biggest hesitation around AI is: “Is my data safe?” It’s an extremely important question to ask, too.
The beauty of the AI in Teams is that it operates within your M365 Tenant Boundary. Your data is only used within your organisation – not to train a public AI model. Permissions are respected, and there is an audit trail that logs every AI interaction. This ensures your compliance and governance standards are met.
Who Needs Microsoft Teams?
Every business can benefit from the communication powerhouse Microsoft Teams has become. We feel that certain sectors will see an immediate leap, though:
- Professional Services: Accountants, lawyers and health professionals can provide online services with in-depth meeting documentation.
- Sales Teams: Meeting notes can be synced into CRM systems.
- Mining and Remote Operations: Bridge the gap between the head office and workers out in the field.
Moving to Microsoft 365 the Right Way
To enjoy the benefits of all the layers of AI in Microsoft Teams, your business needs to be leveraging the productivity power of the Microsoft 365 stack. That isn’t a plug-and-play solution – you need the right licensing, security configurations and data management to get the most value out of it.
Smile IT is here to help you do that. We’ll partner with you to ensure a strategically successful move to Microsoft 365. A move that unlocks Microsoft Teams and all the AI-driven benefits it brings.
Get in touch today.
When he’s not writing tech articles or turning IT startups into established and consistent managed service providers, Peter Drummond can be found kitesurfing on the Gold Coast or hanging out with his family!