You know the feeling: a meeting ends and you still remember exactly what was discussed. But two hours later? The details blur. Who was supposed to write the proposal again? What did we decide on that last point?
For many of us, taking meeting minutes is a chore we could do without. Either you take notes during the meeting and miss half the conversation, or you try to reconstruct the minutes afterwards from memory. Both cost time and energy you could spend better elsewhere.
Microsoft Teams offers an AI-powered feature called Intelligent Recap that takes exactly this work off your hands. Since the new updates in early 2026, it has become considerably more capable.
What exactly is Intelligent Recap?
Intelligent Recap is an AI feature in Microsoft Teams that automatically creates a structured summary after a recorded meeting.
The AI analyses the transcript and gives you:
- A summary of the most important discussion points
- Identified action items and who is responsible for them
- Chapter markers in the video so you can jump straight to the relevant passages
- A full speaker report showing who spoke how much
New in 2026 is the video recap: the AI automatically turns the recording into a short video highlight reel with spoken commentary. Anyone who could not attend the meeting gets up to speed in a few minutes.
What do you need for it?
Intelligent Recap is available with a Teams Premium licence or a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence. If you are not sure which licence you have, you can check in the Microsoft 365 admin centre under Subscriptions or ask your IT administrator.
Step 1: Turn on recording in your meeting
For Intelligent Recap to work, the meeting has to be recorded. Start your Teams meeting as usual. In the meeting toolbar, click the three dots (More actions) and select Start recording. All participants get a notification that the meeting is being recorded.
Tip: Tell your team in advance that you record meetings. That creates transparency and increases acceptance.
Along with the recording, it is worth turning on transcription too. Click More actions again and select Start transcription. The transcript is the basis the AI builds its summary on. Without a transcript, Intelligent Recap is not available.
Step 2: Open Intelligent Recap after the meeting
Once the meeting has ended, it takes anywhere from a few minutes to an hour for the AI summary to be ready, depending on the length of the recording. You do not get a separate notification, but you will find the recap right in your Teams calendar.
Open your calendar in Teams and click the relevant meeting entry. You now see several tabs: Details, Recording, Transcript and Recap.
Click Recap. Here you will find the full AI summary. The summary is split into sections. At the top you see the main topics of the meeting, below that the action items with the people responsible. To the right sits a timeline of the video with chapter markers.
Step 3: Push action items straight into Planner or To Do
The best thing about Intelligent Recap is not the summary itself, it is what you do with it. The AI recognises when tasks were handed out during the meeting and shows them as action items.
You might see, for example: «Lisa by Friday: prepare the proposal for client XY.» Click the action item and select Add to Planner or Add to my tasks (To Do). The task is created directly with the context from the meeting, including a link back to the meeting recording. That way no task loses its context.
Step 4: Custom AI summary for tailored recaps
If you have a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, you also get the custom AI summary. With this feature you can tell the AI what it should focus on in particular when it summarises.
In the Recap tab, go to Copilot and select Customise your summary. You can either choose from predefined templates or enter your own instructions, for example:
- «Summarise the meeting from the sales department's point of view.»
- «Highlight all decisions that have an impact on the budget.»
- «List all questions that were left open.»
The AI then creates a tailored summary cut precisely to your needs. That saves an enormous amount of time if you regularly sit in long meetings.
Step 5: Use the video recap for people who missed the meeting
Since early 2026, Intelligent Recap also offers a video recap. This feature automatically turns the recording into short video highlights with spoken commentary.
You will find the video recap in the Recap tab as well, directly below the text summary. Click Show video highlights to start the automatically generated short film. Share the video recap straight out of Teams: click Share and choose whether you want to send the link by chat or post it in a channel.
Step 6: Set up recap access for the whole team
By default, everyone who took part in a recorded meeting has access to the recap. If you want people who were not invited to be able to see the summary too, you have to grant access explicitly.
In the Recap tab, go to the share icon and select Add people. Alternatively, you can post the recap straight into a Teams channel: click Post to channel, pick the relevant channel and optionally add a short comment. All channel members then see the recap right in their channel feed.
Practical tip: custom dictionary for technical terms
If you work in an industry that uses a lot of technical terms, product names or abbreviations, it is worth setting up the custom dictionary in Teams. It lets Teams recognise and transcribe your industry-specific terms correctly, which directly improves the quality of the AI summary.
Your IT administrator can configure the dictionary in the Teams admin centre under Language settings. Put together a list of your most important technical terms and hand it to the IT team. The effort is minimal, the benefit is considerable.
Conclusion and next step
Intelligent Recap in Microsoft Teams is one of the most practical AI features in the M365 ecosystem. You not only save time on taking minutes, you also stop missing action items. With the new 2026 features like the custom AI summary and the video recap, it has become even more useful.
Try it out now: record your next Teams meeting, turn on transcription and let the AI do the work. You will not want to work without Intelligent Recap again.
