15 October 2026 · 5 min read
How to transcribe a Microsoft Teams meeting (with or without a bot)
Microsoft Teams meetings are quickly forgotten: a week later nobody remembers who agreed to do what. A transcript and minutes with decisions and action items fix that. Here are three ways to get them, including when another company hosts the meeting.
Option 1: Teams' own transcription
Teams can transcribe a meeting if your organization has it turned on and your licence includes it: in the meeting, open “More” → “Record and transcribe” → “Start transcription”. When it ends, the transcript is in the meeting chat.
Its limits: it depends on what your admin allows, it usually only works in your own organization's meetings, and AI-generated recaps need extra Microsoft licences. If a client hosts the meeting, you usually can't turn it on.
Option 2: an assistant that joins the meeting
A meeting assistant joins the call as one more guest, records it and leaves you the minutes when it ends. With SwiftBOL you paste the Teams meeting link into “Meeting assistant” and click “Send the bot”. The assistant waits in the lobby: someone has to admit it, and when it joins it posts in the chat that it is recording.
It also works in other companies' meetings and with Teams for personal use (teams.live.com links), and it needs no access to your Microsoft account. If your meetings are in Google Calendar, it can join each one on its own.
Option 3: record without a bot
If you'd rather nobody else joins, record the meeting from your computer. In SwiftBOL, with Chrome or Edge, click “Record a video call from another tab”. If you use Teams in the browser, pick its tab and tick “Also share tab audio”; if you use the desktop app, pick “Entire screen” and “Share system audio”.
When you stop recording you get the same result as with the assistant.
What you get at the end
Within minutes: a summary, the decisions, the action items with owners and the full transcript, where you can search any sentence or ask questions (“what deadline did we give the client?”). Plus a follow-up email ready to send and, if you want, the summary sent to Slack, HubSpot or Salesforce.
SwiftBOL's Free plan includes 1 hour of assistant a month to try it in a real meeting, no card.
Before you record, tell people
However you record, tell participants at the start and respect anyone who says no. In the European Union the GDPR requires telling people who processes the data and why. SwiftBOL's assistant also says so in writing in the meeting chat as soon as it joins.
Try it with your own audio
SwiftBOL turns your meetings and calls into minutes with decisions and action items in minutes. The Free plan includes 120 minutes of audio a month, no credit card required.