Microsoft recently unveiled a new feature for Microsoft Teams Public Preview users – Collaborative Meeting Notes. This new capability aims to optimize meeting efficiency by facilitating a collaborative space for attendees to create agendas, jot down notes, and delineate action items.
This innovative feature harnesses the power of Loop components within Microsoft Teams, allowing users to collaborate right within a chat message. As a result, meeting notes remain updated across all devices in real-time, ensuring everyone stays informed. Moreover, tasks assigned through Collaborative Notes are automatically synchronized with To Do and Planner, thus offering a more effective means of task management and workflow optimization.
Functionality and Workflow
The implementation of Collaborative Meeting Notes begins with scheduling a meeting in Teams and including an agenda. During the meeting creation process, an option to “Add an agenda everyone can edit” allows the addition of a recurring, standing agenda to all instances of the meeting.
As the meeting unfolds, attendees can click on the “Notes” button in the toolbar to access the Meeting Notes pane. This provides a real-time platform to create and review agendas, take notes, and track tasks. In case of an assignment during the meeting, an email notification is sent out and the task is automatically synchronized with Planner and To Do.
Follow-Up and Task Tracking
Post-meeting, Collaborative Notes, being Loop components, can be shared effortlessly across Microsoft 365, including in Team chats and Outlook. The feature ensures that notes remain synchronized as changes are made across different apps. The upcoming integration of Loop components with OneNote will allow for an even more seamless transfer of Collaborative Notes into OneNote notebooks.
To view the notes, users can click on the respective filename in Teams or search for the pertinent meeting name in Microsoft 365. Additionally, tasks assigned can be viewed in the Tasks app in Teams, as well as in Planner and To Do.
Known Limitations and Issues
While the feature brings a host of benefits, it comes with certain limitations and known issues. For instance, external and guest participants can’t access meeting notes either before or during the meeting. Certain error messages can appear when joining a meeting with over 100 attendees or when attending more than 300 meetings that include tasks.
Mobile clients currently lack support for this feature, although it is slated to be introduced soon. Furthermore, Collaborative Notes cannot be added to meetings scheduled by owners using on-premise Exchange servers at the time of scheduling.
Availability
To access this feature, users must be a part of the Teams Public Preview and use the Teams client on Windows, macOS, or web (Edge, Chrome). IT admins can enable the Teams client for the Public Preview by setting an update policy that activates the “Show preview features” option.
The default setting for Teams Public Preview builds enables Loop components. However, IT admins have the option to disable them if needed.
