Using the Facilitator Agent for Teams Meetings and Chat Notes

Want to learn how to enable AI notes in Teams to boost productivity and enhance meeting outcomes? You're in luck. At Microsoft Ignite 2024, the tech giant unveiled a selection of pre-built agents, specifically designed to support teams with a wide range of tasks.

Two of the primary AI agents created for Microsoft Teams are the Interpreter Agent (for speech-to-speech translation) and the Facilitator Agent. The Facilitator agent is a shared assistant who works within team meetings and chats to boost collaboration.

Microsoft says this agent will be able to handle a range of tasks in 2025, such as creating a meeting agenda and moderating discussions. For now, though, its main purpose is to take contextual notes throughout meetings so actual attendees can focus on the discussion.

Here's your complete guide to using the Facilitator agent in Teams meetings and chats.

Before we explore how to enable AI notes in Teams with the facilitator agent, let's take a closer look at this tool and how it works. According to Microsoft, "Facilitator" is a collaborative agent built into the Teams environment that uses Teams data and large language model technology to boost productivity during workplace discussions.

In the future, this agent can manage a range of meeting-focused tasks for employees, like organizing agendas and even potentially assigning tasks to team members. At the moment, though, it's just an intelligent notetaker.

However, unlike Copilot in Teams, which displays notes individually for each user, Facilitator creates a "notes" panel for an entire group. It can identify different speakers and automatically "update" the notes pane as the discussion progresses. If you and your team were exploring various ideas for a project, the notetaker would capture them all. Then, the list would be updated with the final idea everyone agreed on.

For now, the Facilitator does have a few limitations. For instance, it's not available in external chats and meetings. Plus, you can't use retention labels on AI-generated notes. You can't automatically collect notes as cloud attachments for Microsoft Preview eDiscovery. Plus, meeting settings like watermarks and preventing copy and paste aren't supported.

To use the facilitator agent in Microsoft Teams (chat or meetings), you'll need the right licenses. First, you will need a base license for Microsoft 365 - with access to Teams. You'll also need a Microsoft 365 Copilot license (which costs $30 per monthly user).

In addition, since Microsoft's agents are still in the early "preview" stages, you'll need to join the Microsoft Teams Public Preview program.

Once you're part of the program (and you've got the right licenses), an admin will need to enable access to the Facilitator agent. In general, this feature is turned on by default for everyone. However, admins can control who has access to the assistant in the Teams Admin Center.

Simply log into your account, click on Teams apps, then Manage apps and search for Facilitator. Select the agent, and in the actions menu, choose "Allow" or "Block." Admins can choose to allow everyone access to the Facilitator or assign access to a select group of users.

If you only want a handful of team members to use this tool, you'll need to create a new app policy for the agent. Admins can also use app management tools to allow or block access to Facilitator, create policies, and assign users.

If you're using Facilitator for Meeting notes, you'll need to turn on Loop Experiences in Teams. This setting must be enabled so the AI system can listen to conversations and take notes for your entire team.

You can find out how to turn on Loop Components, and Collaborative Meeting Notes within Teams in Microsoft's guide here.

As mentioned above, the Facilitator agent works with both chats (written conversations) and meetings on Microsoft Teams. Once Facilitator is enabled for your team, you can access it in chats from the desktop or mobile version of the app.

The agent will create an up-to-date shared summary of information organized by topic as your discussion happens. It'll also automatically update decisions and action items and give you a list of questions you might still need to resolve.

To view the notes, tap Open AI Notes in the top right edge of a Teams chat in the desktop app, or More Chat Options then AI Notes on the mobile app.

On the desktop app, click on the toggle icon to make sure the Facilitator Agent is switched on. As soon as it is, you should see a little diamond appear on the Notes icon and a confirmation message telling you that AI-generated notes have been switched on.

If you want to save your notes to a document or another file, click the Copy button at the top of the Notes pane. As your discussion progresses, your notes will automatically update if you don't turn the Notes feature off. You can turn the feature off by clicking Open AI Notes again and using the toggle icon to stop note generation.

Enabling AI notes in Teams meetings is also pretty straightforward. The Facilitator works the same way in meetings as in chat sessions, updating notes automatically in a side panel while you talk. Everyone in a meeting can see the notes, edit them, and add extra information collaboratively.

To turn AI notes and the Facilitator agent on before a meeting, go to your Calendar and select New Meeting. Click the toggle next to AI-generated Notes. The icon will change to show that this feature will be enabled for that meeting.

You can also click on the Notes icon within the meeting controls during a meeting. Again, the icon should change, but you won't see your notes immediately. Wait a few minutes, and notes should appear based on what the AI tool has captured and transcribed.

Notably, you'll have to keep transcription turned on throughout the meeting.

To turn your AI-generated notes off again, click Notes in the meeting controls again and toggle the feature off. Remember that turning your notes off will stop the Facilitator agent from taking additional notes. However, it won't delete or remove the notes already taken.

After your meeting ends, you can go to Chat on the left side of Teams, select the meeting for which you generated the notes, and choose Recap to see the notes. A little tab should appear for your notes alongside a complete transcription.

AI-generated notes will automatically be stored in your Microsoft Loop page. Any meeting participant can access and edit them before, during, and after the meeting. Alongside your AI-generated notes, the AI Summary tab on your Loop page will also include all other content captured from the meeting.

Like most of Microsoft's Copilot-powered solutions, the Facilitator agent is designed with security, privacy, and compliance in mind. If you use Microsoft Purview for compliance management, your AI-generated notes will be supported by "auditing events" in your Data Security Posture Management system for AI.

If you want to automatically retain or delete the notes after a certain time, use a Purview Data Lifecycle retention policy in Teams chat. Alternatively, you can create OneDrive account retention policies for AI notes from meetings.

Unfortunately, other Purview solutions aren't yet supported for AI-generated notes. However, if you want more information about managing your notes for compliance purposes, you can check out Microsoft's Purview guide for generative AI apps here.

Now you can enable AI notes in Teams meetings and chat conversations. With Microsoft's new Facilitator agent, time-consuming and frustrating note-taking practices will become a thing of the past. Soon, this agent will also give teams access to more features that help them prepare for meetings, assign action items, and drive projects forward more effectively.

Whether you're just trying to save your teams valuable time or ensure everyone can stay focused during meetings, the Facilitator agent is a fantastic tool. If you already have Microsoft Teams and a Copilot license, you can start testing this feature today.