Writing meeting minutes from the Teams transcript

1Four moves between the meeting and the minutes

Two service tiers coexist in Microsoft Teams. The first is included in your standard subscription: it transcribes live with speaker names and timestamps. You launch transcription through More actions > Record and transcribe > Start transcription, after confirming the spoken language.

The raw transcript file is stored in the organiser's OneDrive, downloadable as .docx or .vtt. The second tier corresponds to intelligent recap (automated AI notes and chapters), which requires Teams Premium or the paid Microsoft 365 Copilot licence.

Your tool is therefore Copilot Chat, which reasons on what you give it and nothing more. The .docx is the right format, documented by Microsoft and easy to proofread in Word. The file is kept in your OneDrive. You can delete it at any time, and it is never used to train the models.

Three traps come before the prompt. The transcript captures everything, asides and personal data included: remove them. Names of people and products are often garbled: correct them, or give Copilot the mapping. The transcript expires after 120 days by default: store the approved minutes somewhere else.

The prompt follows the rule for attached files, with one extra requirement. Every decision points to the timestamp of the passage that supports it. The minutes become checkable in a minute, and invented decisions stand out.

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2A disagreement that stays a disagreement

A project manager has transcribed a one-hour progress meeting, then downloaded the .docx. She corrected two supplier names and deleted five minutes of small talk about a colleague's holiday. She now attaches the file to Copilot Chat.

Turn 1 (Minutes framing and timestamp-based traceability).

I am attaching the Teams transcript of the progress meeting of 8 September (file transcript.docx: timestamp, speaker name, what was said). Write minutes for the participants and for their manager, who did not attend the meeting. Required structure: 1. Purpose and attendees; 2. Topics covered, one paragraph per topic in meeting order; 3. Decisions taken, with the person who made the call; 4. Points disagreed on or postponed, with each person's position; 5. Open questions. Rely only on the attached file. If an expected piece of information is not in it, write "not found in the transcript". For every decision, give the timestamp of the passage that supports it. 500 words maximum, neutral tone, in English.

Observed response: The launch postponement appears in section 4 as an unsettled debate between two people, detailing their respective arguments. Section 3 holds two formal decisions, each with a verified timestamp. An open budget question is marked "not found in the transcript".

Turn 2 (Operational decision and action matrix extraction).

From the same transcript, produce a five-column table: Action; Owner (name as it appears in the transcript); Due date; Timestamp; Status (decided, proposed, to be confirmed). If the owner or the due date is not stated explicitly, write "to be specified". End with a section "What I could not find" giving the question to ask to fill each gap.

Observed response: A rigorous matrix where ambiguous responsibilities are flagged as "to be specified", preventing invented deadlines.

Turn 3 (Executive follow-up email generation).

A third prompt draws the 200-word follow-up email from those two answers. It carries a short subject line, then "In short", "Decisions" and "Actions and due dates". It ends with an invitation to flag any error within two days.

What changes. The disagreement stays a disagreement. Every decision can be found in the transcript at the stated time. And the gaps become questions for the next meeting.

3Build a doctored transcript and question it

To practice without needing to record a real meeting, here is a fictional Teams transcript excerpt (fictional project "Portal Revamp", company NovaTech), with timestamps and speakers. You can copy this raw text or save it into a Word document project_transcript.docx:

[00:01:15] Camille: Good morning everyone. On today's agenda: choice of authentication solution and deployment schedule.
[00:02:40] Marc: Regarding authentication, we have approved moving to secure SSO protocol. That is decided.
[00:04:10] Sophie: Excellent. For the switchover date, I propose October 15th.
[00:05:00] Marc: October 15th is too tight with the security audits. I prefer late November.
[00:06:20] Camille: Given the disagreement on timing, we are postponing this decision to the steering committee on September 25th.
[00:07:45] Sophie: Understood. On my end, I will prepare the user permission matrix by Friday 5:00 PM.
[00:08:50] Marc: And the technical architecture documentation will also need an update.
[00:09:30] Camille: Thank you all, meeting adjourned.

Note: the meeting contains one confirmed decision (SSO at 00:02:40), one disagreement with postponed decision (schedule at 00:06:20), one action with owner and deadline (Sophie, Friday 5 PM), and one action without explicit owner or deadline (architecture documentation by Marc at 00:08:50).

Attach this file (or paste this text) to Copilot Chat. Here is the starting prompt, to be improved:

"Summarise this meeting and list the actions."

Add the file name and its description, the five-section structure, the "not found" instruction, the timestamp per decision and the length limit. The composer below guides you on the Sources and Verification fields.

Self-assessment grid: (a) the postponed decision appears as postponed, not as taken; (b) the action with no due date carries "to be specified"; (c) the timestamp of the decision taken does match the passage in your .docx.

Open the prompt composer