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.
What is the Facilitator Agent? A Quick Overview
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.
How to Enable AI Notes in Teams: Prerequisites
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.
How to Enable AI Notes in Teams: AI Notes in Chats
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.
