Take this down Mia: Audiocodes provides automated note-taking for Microsoft Teams users

The Israeli firm has partnered with Microsoft to assist companies with transcription and note-taking tools during online meetings

With workforces moving online, Israeli converged VoIP and Data networking company AudioCodes Ltd. is helping enterprises with note-taking capabilities and transcription services. Meeting Insights is a tool within Microsoft Teams that uses artificial intelligence to record, transcribe, and categorize work meetings.

 

By inviting ‘Mia’ into your video meetings, the AI bot is always listening and can detect who is talking and what each participant is saying. After the meeting, the organizer is emailed a summary of the talking points as well as the full transcript of spoken words with timecodes.

Gidi Adlersberg. Photo: PR

 

“We’re going to spend roughly one hour on this call,” said Gidi Adlersberg, product marketing manager of Audiocodes when talking to CTech. “If you take the cost of this call in plain salary terms, it’s about $100 dollars just for this session - the Return of Investment is poor.”

 

He suggests that while it is possible for people to use a voice note recorder to tape meetings (or news interviews), nobody listens to them. “There’s a good reason for this: it’s easier for us to talk than to write, but it’s easier for us to read than it is to listen.”

 

Using voice AI and recognition technology, Adlersberg claims that Meeting Insight could save workforces time and money by automating the note-taking procedure and providing visual aids. On a trial run with CTech, Adlersberg showed how participants can speak directly to Mia at any time during what he calls a “session.” He asked her to mark action items, record decisions that had been made and prepare to provide a summary of certain topics or conversations.

 

At the end of the Microsoft Teams meeting, organizers can then log onto the Meeting Insights dashboard. There, they will find the entire meeting where participants can search, scroll, or edit what has been recorded and organized by Mia. It can then be exported as a CSV or PDF file.

 

CTech got the opportunity to test its own meeting and see how it would work after the call and demonstration with Adlersberg. While Mia seamlessly interacted with the meeting, some of the transcription needed clarifying and not all commands were properly recorded.

 

The transcription service provided by Audiocodes operates at around 80% - the industry standard. However, its premium service includes human interference, where people listen to the recording and fill in any names or technical terms that might have been lost in translation.

 

While the partnership with Microsoft has been strong for around 10 years, Audiocodes has been operating since 1993. For 27 years, the company has been providing telecommunication services starting with regular calls all the way to modern-day video calling via the internet. Three years ago, Audiocode started its Voice AI activity for enterprise markets.

 

Today, its technology is integrated within Teams - Microsoft's communication and collaboration platform for businesses. As of April 2020, Teams has 75 million daily users who may have access to Meeting Insights.