Teams Transcriptions

Microsoft has announced the launch of an AI-powered live transcription tool for Teams which provides a written record of the spoken text that occurs during a meeting.

How It Works

The live transcription tool identifies each speaker and automatically captures in real-time what is said by each speaker and makes the transcript available during and after the meeting. It uses AI-based Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology to identify and transcribe what is being said by meeting participants. The technology is able to use a meeting’s invitation, participant names, attachments, and more to improve its accuracy and recognise meeting-specific jargon for each transcript automatically, without any human involvement.

Using Live Transcription

To use the tool, the tenant admin must turn on the ‘Allow Transcription’ policy to enable the meeting organizer/presenter to start a meeting transcription. Participants are notified that live transcription is on and can choose to hide it from their meeting view with a click. If attendees choose not to be identified, they can also turn off speaker attribution in their profile settings. The transcripts are shown to meeting participants in a column down one side of the screen.

Accuracy

Whilst Microsoft is clearly proud of the development of the live transcription tool, the company does point out that it is not guaranteed to be 100 percent accurate and “should not be relied upon in life-altering situation”.

Storage

After each meeting, the saved transcript is made available for reference and download in Teams for desktop and web, in the meeting event in Teams calendar, and through the transcript tile in the chat. The live transcription files are stored in the meeting organizer’s Exchange Online account and only the organiser and tenant admin have permissions to delete it.

Privacy and Security

Microsoft says that no-one at Microsoft can see a meeting’s content, the models are automatically deleted immediately after each meeting, and Microsoft doesn’t use or store this data for improving its own AI.

Availability

The live transcription with speaker attribution tool is available for scheduled Microsoft Teams meetings (in U.S. English) to public cloud customers with licenses for Microsoft 365 E3, Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 Business Standard, and Microsoft 365 Business Premium SKUs.

Zoom

Microsoft’s announcement follows Zoom’s announcement in February that it is “working towards making automatic closed captioning —what we refer to as “Live Transcription”— available to all of our users in the fall of 2021”.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

The introduction of this tool is another move in the market battle between the big remote, collaborative working platform competitors Zoom, Slack, and Microsoft Teams. In this case, although Zoom beat Microsoft with the announcement of a live transcript feature, Microsoft has beat Zoom in actually delivering the feature to users. The live transcript tool is likely to deliver value to business users in terms of helping users to either follow meetings more easily, catch up on meeting content (e.g. if late for the meeting or double-booked), helping multi-tasking (and enabling ‘zoning out’), as well as being an extra accessibility feature.

What Is Clubhouse?

With 'audio-only', social media app Clubhouse starting to hit the news after its launch one year ago, we take a look at exactly what it is and why you might consider using it.

What Is It?

Clubhouse is an invitation-only iPhone app where users can set-up their own (or join other users’) virtual public or private chat rooms. Everything is live and in real-time and only a certain number of people are allowed to speak while others listen and have the opportunity to raise their hand (virtually) to ask to be allowed to speak.

The Hype

Some commentators have pointed out that Clubhouse’s rise has been extremely fast and surrounded by some hype. For example, the app was only launched in April 2020 by Paul Davison and Rohan Seth of Alpha Exploration Co. and by May 2020 was valued at nearly $100 million, a total which had risen to a staggering $1 billion by January 21, 2021! Clubhouse only has around only two million active users but has already proven to be very popular in the US, China, Brazil, and Turkey.

Part of the Hype, which has been increased by the exclusivity of ‘invite only’ (users can only invite two other people) has been boosted by some of the big business names and CEOs who are reported to be using the app (e.g. Elon Musk and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg).

Strengths and Opportunities

Some of the strengths and opportunities of Clubhouse as a user include:

- Users can have the kind of direct access to and an audience with influential people and industry leaders from around the world that it would be very difficult, costly, and time-consuming to get normally.

- The real-time conversations mean that time is saved – issues, ideas and plans can be addressed and discussed instantaneously.

- The app can help save the cost, hassle (and now the risk) of having to travel to meetings and conferences with users being able to get similar or perhaps better results. This is also a way of safely beating global lockdown restrictions.

- Users have a fair amount of control. For example, they can move between groups and discussions, set up their own groups, and talk privately or publicly.

- The discussions and the other users of the app could provide new business ideas and opportunities. For example, users can easily find groups relating to their industry, thereby finding a new, authentic way to boost their brand. Also, conversations can be very interesting and diverse, and journalists have now start hosting their own weekly rooms discussing trends that could represent new publicity opportunities.

- Although now banned in China, the app provides a way to avoid the government restrictions that some states have placed on other social media platforms.

Weaknesses and Threats – Mainly Security and Privacy Concerns

Many of the possible weaknesses and threats are based around security and privacy concerns about the app. Some of the main weaknesses and threats include:

- There does not appear to be end-to-end encryption on Clubhouse (unlike competitors like WhatsApp).

- Some commentators have pointed to the app’s China connection. For example, Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) has recently suggested that user data is routed through Chinese servers and by implication, the Chinese state. This means that data could technically be intercepted, transcribed, and possibly used against people.

- The app has been designed so that all conversations are not recorded/and no playbacks of conversations are made available, and the app's terms and conditions stipulate that there should be no recording or streaming without the explicit permission of the speaker. However, individual users could choose to record the audio as it happens. This could result in recordings being shared without permission, constituting a privacy breach, accidental and/or deliberate disclosure. Making any real privacy promises is, therefore, likely to be very difficult and the onus is on users to be very careful what they discuss using the app.

- Recently, it was reported that a Clubhouse user (now banned) found a way to stream multiple rooms from their own feed to a website in what has been downplayed as a data ‘spill’. After realising that it was possible to be in multiple rooms at once, the rogue user reportedly connected a Clubhouse API to his website, thereby sharing his login remotely with anyone who wanted to listen to audio chats from the app.

- The app is audio-only. Although this does provide the benefit of a podcast feel, other apps allow more media such as text, pictures, and videos.

- Having the app on a work device could expose the network to another security threat.

- There is concern over the requirement on sign-up that users must upload their device address books, thereby sharing other peoples’ contact details without consent.

- The app’s apparent privacy weaknesses may mean that it isn’t taking account of data protection laws like GDPR. For example, the app has already fallen foul of German data protection authorities for possible breaches of GDPR.

- Discussing work/business matters on the app could technically constitute breaching an employment contract and company policies (privacy).

Looking Ahead

Clubhouse has risen fast with the help of some hype and is currently burning brightly which has led some commentators to suggest that it has the appearance of something that may be short-lived. Others, however, have suggested that it looks a little like the pattern that Zoom took when it started out. Clearly, the app offers many unique opportunities for business users in terms of access to other important contacts and finding new opportunities.

There are clearly many security and privacy concerns for the app to address before it gets better press, although it is still early days for Clubhouse, and the company says it is reviewing cyber-security.

The popularity of the app means that it now faces the threat of big social media players quickly launching their own versions (e.g. Twitter's 'Spaces’).

For users, it may simply be a case of weighing up the known risks against the possible benefits, accepting that this is simply an exclusive space to meet and chat but that it comes with potential privacy and security risks at this stage in the app’s life.

Microsoft’s ‘Teams Connect’ Challenges Slack

New features for Microsoft’s Teams include cross-organisation channel sharing called ‘Teams Connect’ that has been likened to a very similar feature in Slack.

Announced at Ignite

At Microsoft’s ‘Ignite’ annual conference, held online this year, Microsoft announced a number of new collaborative working features for its Teams platform.

Microsoft Teams Connect

One key new feature (available now in private preview, with full rollout later this year) is Microsoft Teams Connect, which allows users to share channels with anyone, internal or external to an organisation. The shared channel appears within a user’s primary Microsoft Teams tenant next to other teams and channels, thereby giving easy access. The shared space enables users to chat, meet, collaborate on apps, share, and co-author documents in real-time in addition to giving admins access to granular controls, thereby enabling them to control how external users access data and information.

Like Slack Connect

Tech commentators have noted the similarity of this new feature to competitor Slack’s Connect feature which was introduced in June 2020. Slack’s version also offers a secure environment/channel where an organisation can connect with up to 20 external partners, clients, vendors, and others.

Other New Features

Also announced at Ignite were a number of other new features for Teams including:

- Interactive webinars. These can be held with up 1,000 attendees from inside or outside the organisation. The 1,000 can be “seamlessly” extended to a 10,000 or 20,000-person view-only broadcast if necessary. The webinars include “custom registration, rich presentation options, host controls such as the ability to disable attendee chat and video, and post-event reporting”.

- Microsoft PowerPoint Live in Microsoft Teams. Presenters can lead more engaging meetings and feel more confident due to being able to see notes, slides, meeting chat, and participants all in a single view. Also, attendees can personalise and have more control over their experience by privately navigating the content at their own pace or using the screen reader to make content accessible.

- Presenter mode. This feature allows presenters to customise how their video feed and content appear to the audience. For example, ‘Standout’ mode displays the speaker’s video feed in front of the shared content, Reporter mode displays content above the speaker’s shoulder (like a news broadcast) and ‘Side-by-side’ mode puts the presenter’s video feed alongside their content.

Hardware Too

In addition to the new software features, Microsoft has announced that it will also soon be launching Teams-focused hardware including Teams Intelligent Speakers. Microsoft says that these can identify and differentiate between the voices of up to 10 people talking in a Microsoft Teams Room and have been created in partnership with EPOS and Yealink, and allow attendees to use the transcription to follow along or capture actions, by knowing what was said in the room, by whom.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Remote working resulting from the pandemic lockdowns has seen the war between remote, collaborative working platform competitors Zoom, Slack, and Microsoft Teams intensify, with all platforms trying to match their competitors’ features while introducing some new ones of their own. The pandemic brought huge popularity to Zoom. For example, in September last year where it raised its annual revenue forecast by more than 30 per cent as, in addition to receiving a huge boost in user numbers, it converted much of its vast free user base to paid subscriptions.

Slack reported having a massive 12 million daily active users back in October 2020, a number which had been increased by 2 million since January 2019 and has been rising through the pandemic. Slack is known for its stickiness, strong user engagement, and for being a very useful chat app, but its challenge has been convincing big businesses that it is adding enough value and features to justify it being a worthy, paid-for alternative to Microsoft’s Teams.

The Microsoft brand and the proliferation of Windows has given Teams huge user numbers and as far back as pre-pandemic December 2019 it reported having 20 million daily active users. When the first lockdown hit in March 2020, Teams reported such a boost in user numbers that is saw a massive 12 million user boost in one week as a result of the switch to remote working. The latest introduction of features is the next competitive step in Microsoft’s ongoing battle for users and market leadership with the big remote, collaborative work platform competitors. Making sure that the platform at least has the features that competing platforms have and the capacity and the flexibility to keep introducing more convenient and relevant features in line with changing customer needs and designing platform features that become so embedded in customer workflows are things that Teams is looking for to keep gaining numbers and deter switching. For business users, Microsoft is a trusted brand but the war with Zoom and Slack is set to continue.