Microsoft Outlook users will soon be able to choose to ‘follow’ a Teams meeting in response to meeting invitations.
Currently, invitees have a limited range of responses, such as ‘Accept’, ‘Decline’, or ‘Maybe’.
The new Follow option will allow users the added possibility of simultaneously rejecting a meeting invitation while also expressing their desire to stay informed, meaning they will automatically receive post-meeting recaps.
The tech giant has published an explanation of how to follow meetings in Outlook via its online Support pages:
“If you're unable to attend a meeting, you can select Follow as your response to help you stay informed of the meeting events.
"Following a meeting reminds the organiser to record the meeting and alert you to any follow-up items.
“For meeting organisers, you'll receive email responses letting you know which of your attendees responded with Follow.”
According to the Microsoft 365 roadmap, the feature will be made generally available this month across both web and desktop.
How to Follow Meetings
For attendees to follow meetings, they will. Simply have to select the Follow option, which will be beside the Yes and No responses in meeting invitations.
Attendees will only see the Follow button if the meeting in question if the organiser has sent response requests and when the meeting has two or more participants.
When an attendee has chosen to follow a meeting, they will have access to that particular meeting’s recordings and transcripts.
The attendee will also have access to the meeting and chat if they wish to take part, however their calendar will reflect that they are free at that time.
It is worth being aware, therefore that unless you manually change your calendar to show yourself as ‘busy’ when you follow a meeting, you could easily end up scheduling another meeting for the same time that would then take away the possibility of joining the followed meeting live.
