This new feature in Teams could save you lots of time

Microsoft Teams is the Redmond tech giant's premier online communication and collaboration software, and one that regularly receives new upgrades designed to make the lives of enterprise customers even easier. Now, Microsoft is introducing an agentic experience that is built to save you lots of time during and after meetings.

Microsoft has revealed Facilitator, a new Teams agent that integrates directly into Teams meeting experiences to take care of a lot of arguably menial work so that you can focus on more important stuff.

Some of Facilitator's capabilities include tracking topics with visual timeline markers, taking collaborative, real-time notes, answering questions, tracking tasks, drafting documents, and capturing ad hoc discussion items. Microsoft allows turning on Facilitator before or during a meeting, except for meetings started from a chat, Teams call, or channel call.

Customers can enable Facilitator from Teams or Outlook. For the former, navigate to Calendar > New Event > Turn on (will be visible next to the message saying "Facilitator is off for this meeting"). When it comes to the latter, head over to Calendar > New Meeting > More commands (...) > Teams Meeting > Set up your Teams meeting > toggle Facilitator.

Facilitator in Teams can be useful in a number of scenarios, including time-boxed meetings, collaborative brainstorming sessions, project check-ins, ad hoc discussions, stakeholder reviews, and large hybrid meetings. You can even engage the agent directly using the @Facilitator tag. The agent will also share proactive reminders about tasks during meetings, and does not require transcription or recording services, which potentially alleviates a major concern for privacy-conscious customers. That said, IT admins do have some relevant privacy controls that they can leverage in this regard, read more about them here.

Facilitator in Teams is generally available for all Microsoft 365 Copilot customers, but the abilities to track tasks and create documents are currently in public preview only.