Microsoft recently announced Word for the Web's new transcription feature, and now it's already rolling it out to Teams. While it's not live just yet, Microsoft has plans to make note-taking in Teams a lot easier.

When Will Microsoft Teams Get Automatic Transcriptions?

This news comes to us from OnMSFT, which spotted a message in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. According to OnMSFT, Microsoft will start rolling out the transcription update at the start of September. Everyone should have the feature by the time October starts.

You can confirm this yourself by taking a look at the Microsoft 365 roadmap. A search for "teams transcription" brings up a single entry that states the feature is in development, set for a release in September 2020.

As for the features, it seems similar to the new automatic transcription feature on Microsoft Word. The tool can detect who's speaking, and you can assign a name to each voice. You can view the transcript as it happens in the Teams client, or grab the complete document from the web application once the meeting ends.

Unfortunately, there is a restriction. As of now, you need to set the language of your Teams to English to use it, and you need to speak English during the meeting. However, it's highly likely that Microsoft will add other languages to this feature as it rolls out around the world.

Making It Easier to Remember to Host Virtual Meetings

With Word for the Web now sporting an automatic transcription feature, Microsoft is also implementing it into Teams. We'll keep you updated when this handy tool starts rolling out, so stay tuned for further information.

Of course, transcription is just the tip of the iceberg for what Microsoft has planned for Teams. As we've seen in the past, Microsoft has been hard at work adding plenty of much-needed features to its remote work software.