A business man in a grey suit sitting next to a robot. (Generated by Copilot)

“Today I’m in the office to catch up with my team. I love the flexibility of working from home but I also missed the time spent with my team in person, the coffee walks, the cheery lunches and of course the ad-hoc corridor conversations. I’m on my way to a meeting room, I booked this room because it’s easier to get working, it’s a Microsoft Teams room. I’ll be back!

Ok meeting all done – it was a mix of people in the office and others connecting remotely. We closed off a lot of outstanding items but also set new actions for the team. My work has also just started using this new AI thing – Copilot – which saves me so much time! I used to have to take notes and produce the meeting summaries myself, now most of the work is done for me.

Except I totally forgot, the AI generated summary doesn’t know the difference between everyone in the room. Now the 6 of us in the meeting room are all showing under the meeting room name. Ok well I think I remember who needs to do what, I better get cracking on rewriting the meeting summary. It would be great if Copilot worked better with the meeting room like it does on virtual calls!”

This is just one example but it’s a real challenge for any business that has deployed #Microsoft365Copilot or even #TeamsPremium. Whether it’s summarising meetings or catching up on missed ones, #IntelligentRecap is the “low hanging fruit” of productivity gains for users of these services. Even with a native #MicrosoftTeamsRooms deployment, #Copilot still needs the special sauce to give users the best possible experience.

Overnight Microsoft published Get More out of Hybrid Meetings with Teams Rooms and Copilot, detailing how the two solutions work so well together. The below quotes have all come from this great article – well worth a read!

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.

The Copilot experience in #MicrosoftTeams is seamless when everyone is connecting remotely, individuals are transcribed correctly, actions allocated etc however there’s a real gap in hybrid meetings when all in-person attendees are attributed to the meeting room name. The solution? Just like #Intelliframe, there’s two clear options here.

The ideal is to ensure meeting rooms are equipped with #IntelligentSpeakers.

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.

As of February 2024 there is already a range of #CertifiedforMicrosoftTeams intelligent speakers available. This includes devices that can be easily added to an existing Microsoft Teams Rooms on Windows deployment as well as intelligent speakers in an integrated camera-bar form factor.

These devices from Yealink, EPOS and Sennheiser are all certified for Microsoft Teams as intelligent speakers and can be easily added to an existing room to enable speaker recognition and attribution.

Jabra and Lenovo have taken a different approach, including a certified intelligent speaker in their integrated camera and speaker bar solutions. While it’s often harder replace cameras in existing meeting rooms, these products are also certified as #IntelligentCameras, enabling the best Intelliframe experience for remote attendees. (See the full list of certified devices)

Intelligent speakers are the special sauce, the hardware decision in a meeting space that ensures users can get the most out of Copilot in a Microsoft Teams Room. While it’s great to know that speaker recognition is coming to existing devices as announced at Ignite, just like #CloudIntelliframe, there are some drawbacks to pushing this feature to the cloud.

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.

When it comes to transcription, high accuracy or low “word error rate” is key. While we want to ensure everyone can get the most out of Copilot in the meeting room, there is a clear advantage to deploying intelligent speakers into meeting spaces. That being said, it’s going to be huge once speaker recognition lands on existing devices, opening the door to “Copilot in the meeting room” for everyone!

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.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. There is something truly magic about Copilot that everyone deserves a chance to discover for themselves. Native Microsoft Teams Rooms with intelligent speakers ensure you don’t accidentally create Copilot “blind-spots” in your meeting rooms. It’s a simple but easily overlooked consideration.

As Copilot evolves, hardware partners innovate and companies modernise their meeting spaces, I’m excited to see the new ways our partners and customers take advantage of the magic of Copilot and Microsoft Teams Rooms.

#microsoftadvocate #hybridmeetings #aipowered #hybridwork

This blog is part of Microsoft Copilot Week! Find more similar blogs on our Microsoft Copilot Landing page here.

About the author:

With almost 20 years experience in the Australian IT channel across sales and marketing, my time at Microsoft have been the most impactful. I have worked on the OEM side of the business focused on the partner channel and most recently, on Microsoft’s Teams Rooms OEM hardware partners for the Asia region. It’s one thing to sell something because that’s your job, it’s another to have deeper conversations around inclusion, employee culture & hybrid work, and only then explore the solutions Microsoft and our partners have to offer. I absolutely love what I do and I enjoy the meaningful impact I have on others.

Reference:

Edgerton, L. (2024) Copilot & Microsoft Teams Rooms – The Secret Sauce. Available at: Copilot & Microsoft Teams Rooms – The Secret Sauce | LinkedIn [Accessed on 23/04/2024]