What is the Minutes Copilot feature and how does it work?

What is the Minutes Copilot feature?

Minutes Copilot uses meeting transcripts generated by Microsoft Teams to help you create automated minutes. This includes:

• Summaries of discussions
• Decisions made
• Tasks assigned

These can be generated:

• Per agenda item, individually or
• For the entire meeting, with results split by agenda item

The AI-generated content serves as a first draft, helping you save time and reduce errors when writing minutes.

Why use this feature?

Writing minutes is one of the most time-consuming and error-prone aspects of meetings. 

Minutes Copilot helps you to:

• Access the full transcript next to the minutes editor
• Avoid missing important information
• Accelerate the process of writing accurate and complete minutes
• Automatically extract summaries, tasks, and decisions per agenda item

How does it work?

During the meeting:

1. Start transcription in Teams: More > Record and transcribe > Start transcription
2. Select your language
3. Stop the transcription at the end of the meeting

In Sherpany:

1. Go to the Minutes tab of your meeting
2. Click the "Transcripts" button (top right) to view the Microsoft Teams transcript

Use AI to generate content:

1. Click "AI Minutes" under an agenda item to create a summary
2. Click "AI Tasks and Decisions" to extract tasks and decisions
3. Click the top-right "AI Minutes" to generate summaries, tasks, and decisions for the entire meeting, split per agenda item

How can transcripts be uploaded into the meeting?

1. Go to the minutes tab of your meeting
2. Click the "Transcripts" button (top right) 
3. Click on "Upload Transcript"
4. You can upload a vtt file or copy/paste the text
5. You can upload multiple transcriptions, sort them, and delete them once minutes are uploaded
   

This allows us to:

• Use MS Teams without the need to provide consent for Sherpany to access their MS365 instance. 
• Use other video calling tools like Zoom, WebEx, Google Meet, and others.
• Support in-person meetings if a recording and transcribing system is already in place.

How can I use notes when no transcript is available?

For meetings without a recording or transcript (for example, confidential or in-person meetings), Minutes Copilot User Notes lets you write draft notes per agenda item directly inside the minutes view. These notes become the input for AI generation, enabling the full Copilot summarisation flow even without a transcript.

1. Write bullet points, short summaries, or key remarks per agenda item before triggering AI generation
2. When generating AI content, you are asked what to consider as input and how you want the output to be applied (append or overwrite)
3. If needed, you can roll back to a previous version of the minutes via the version history

Who can see the transcripts?

Only meeting editors can view transcripts in the Minutes tab. It means that:

• Confidential information is protected
• Guest users and non-editors cannot access transcript data

Privacy and data

• The AI uses a local large language model hosted entirely within Sherpany’s infrastructure. No data is sent or exposed outside our secure environment, all access and retention policies can be managed on Microsoft side (more information here).
• Please note that Transcripts generated via Microsoft Teams are stored within Microsoft (Teams / OneDrive / SharePoint) according to your organisation’s Microsoft 365 settings. In this case, their retention and access are managed by your Microsoft administrators.