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PARTLY

As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly record and transcribe a Microsoft Teams meeting.

This still needs a person who signs their name to it.

Can you do it?

5 minutesto a draft.

1 hourto something you’d act on.

Cost, all in£0

Skill neededchat-fluent

Who has to check ityou

What the alternative costsThe listed AI alternatives include Fathom, Fireflies.ai, Otter.ai and tl;dv, all described as meeting recording or notetaking tools.

If this goes wrong, a missed decision, incorrect attribution or unauthorised recording can create disputes and privacy problems at work.

What to actually do

  1. Hand it to a person

    The route this page recommends

    A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

  2. Use a tool built for this

    Second choice
  3. Do it yourself

    The distant third

    A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

    How to actually do it

    1. Open the Teams meeting invitation and confirm that you are allowed to record or transcribe it under your organisation's policy.
    2. Tell every participant that the meeting will be recorded and transcribed, explain the purpose and storage location, and obtain any consent your organisation requires before starting.
    3. Start the Teams recording and transcription from the meeting controls, or open the authorised meeting-notetaker tool connected to Teams and confirm that it is capturing the correct meeting.
    4. After the meeting, open the recording and transcript, then save or copy both into a secure work location with access limited to the people who need them.
    5. Paste the meeting details and transcript into the prompt, and ask the chatbot to produce minutes with decisions, actions, owners, deadlines and quoted evidence.
    6. Play back the recording while checking every name, decision, action, deadline, number and disputed point against the transcript and drafted minutes.
    7. Correct the minutes, remove unnecessary personal information, confirm that the recipients are authorised, and send the checked version through your normal work channel.

    Prompt

    You are helping me turn an authorised Microsoft Teams meeting recording and transcript into accurate meeting minutes. Use only the transcript and the meeting details I provide. Do not invent, infer or fill gaps. Mark unclear words as [unclear] and uncertain speaker names as [speaker uncertain]. Separate confirmed decisions, action points, open questions and discussion. For every action point, include the owner and deadline only when they are explicitly stated. Quote the relevant transcript wording for each decision and action so I can check it against the recording. Flag names, dates, figures, commitments and disagreements that need manual checking. Do not include private or irrelevant personal information. Meeting details: [meeting title, date, attendees and purpose]. Transcript: [paste transcript]. Produce concise minutes in British English, with a final section called 'Checks required before sharing'.

    Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.

What it gets wrong

  • It cannot obtain valid consent from participants or decide whether your organisation's recording and retention rules permit the meeting to be captured.
  • It mishears names, acronyms, overlapping speech and figures, especially when audio quality is poor or several people speak at once.
  • It cannot reliably decide whether a tentative comment was a firm decision or whether an action was actually accepted.
  • It cannot take responsibility for the accuracy, confidentiality or consequences of minutes shared with your team.

What caps this at PARTLY: consent and privacy, verification cost and real time truth.

How we scored this

Five axes, each scored nought to two by hand: ten means AI carries the task cleanly, and the thresholds that turn a total into YES, PARTLY or NO are published in the methodology. Each axis name links to its definition.

AxisScore (0–2)
Output2
Inputs1
Verification1
Liability1
Effort delta2
Total7 / 10

FAQ

Can Microsoft Teams automatically transcribe a meeting?
Teams can record and transcribe meetings when the feature is available to your account and enabled by the organiser or organisation. Check the transcript against the recording before treating it as an official record.
Is it legal to record a Teams meeting in the UK?
It depends on the purpose, your organisation's policy, the information being discussed and how participants are informed. Tell participants before recording and follow your employer's privacy, retention and access rules.
Can AI write minutes from a Teams recording?
Yes, AI can turn an authorised recording or transcript into draft minutes, including decisions and action points. It cannot reliably tell a firm decision from tentative discussion, so check the draft against the audio before sharing it.
What is the best AI tool for recording Teams meetings?
Fathom is a suitable purpose-built option in the listed tools because it is described as a free-first AI notetaker for Zoom, Meet and Teams. Fireflies.ai, Otter.ai and tl;dv are other listed meeting recording and transcription tools, but you still need to check your organisation's approval and data-handling rules.

Nearby answers

Assessed by gpt-5.6-luna (gpt-5.6-luna) on 2026-08-13, second-checked by an independent model. Wrong somewhere? Email [email protected] and it gets re-checked.

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