Automatic Transcription for My Bookings Meetings

Question

I am trying to set up automatic transcription for meetings scheduled through the BookWithme feature. Right now, the host has to manually enable the transcription feature and some forget to enable when the call starts. I need to have the feature enabled for a specific group, not the entire organization. meeting templates cannot be applied. Would love to know if anyone has run into this and the workaround for this blocker.

Answer 1

Hi @Andrew McManus,

Welcome to the Microsoft Q&A forum.

Thank you for reaching out regarding automatic transcription for meetings scheduled through the Bookings / Book with Me feature.

After reviewing your scenario and the available Microsoft documentation, the response provided by Q&A Assist appears to align with the current supported behavior. Meetings created through Bookings or Book with Me follow the same recording and transcription controls as standard Microsoft Teams meetings, and there is currently no Bookings‑specific setting that allows administrators to automatically enable transcription by default for a selected group of users.

At this time, Teams meeting policies can be used to allow or restrict recording and transcription and can be scoped to specific users or groups. However, the “Record and transcribe automatically” option still typically requires the meeting organizer to enable it per meeting.

Given this limitation, there does not appear to be a fully supported way to ensure transcription starts automatically for all Bookings meetings for a specific group without relying on organizer action. If this capability is important for your workflow, you may want to submit a feature request through the Microsoft Teams · Community to share this use case with the product team. Feedback submitted there is reviewed by the engineering teams and can help highlight the need for group‑scoped, organizer‑independent automatic transcription support for Bookings meetings.

As community moderators, we kindly ask for your understanding that our access to internal development details is limited. Our primary role is to guide users toward the appropriate resources and support channels. While we may not have influenced product design decisions and have limited access to internal development details, we’ll continue doing our best to support you within the scope of our responsibilities.

Additionally, since many other users have expressed similar concerns but may not know where to submit feedback, if my response has helped you better understand the situation and guided you toward a possible next step, please mark it as the “Accepted Answer.” Your action will help pin this post to the top, making it easier for others in the community who are experiencing the same issue to find your feedback and support it.

Thank you again for your engagement and for bringing such a thoughtful use case to light. Please feel free to reach out if you have any further questions or insights.

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Answer 2

Automatic transcription for Bookings/Bookings-with-Me meetings can only be controlled through the same recording/transcription controls that apply to Teams meetings in general; there is no separate Bookings-specific auto-transcription switch in the provided information.

From the available settings:

1. Auto-start of recording + transcription is controlled per organizer via the Record and transcribe automatically meeting option.
2. Admins can control whether organizers even see that option via the Auto recording policy in Teams meeting policy (PowerShell -AutoRecording parameter on Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy).
3. This policy can be scoped to specific users or groups, not the whole organization.
4. When enabled for an organizer, the Record and transcribe automatically toggle is available in Meeting options, but is Off by default for standard meetings; the organizer must still turn it on per meeting unless a template or label enforces it.
5. Meeting templates and sensitivity labels can enforce automatic recording/transcription, but templates are not usable in the scenario described, and there is no admin policy that directly forces Record and transcribe automatically on for all meetings for a subset of users.

Implications for the scenario:

• It is possible to:
  • Enable recording/transcription capability for a specific group (via Teams meeting policies and, if needed, calling policies for call transcription).
  • Expose the Record and transcribe automatically toggle only to that group (using -AutoRecording in Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy scoped to those users).
• It is not supported, based on the provided information, to:
  • Globally force Record and transcribe automatically to “On” for all Bookings/BookWithMe meetings for a specific group purely via policy, without either:
    • A meeting template, or
    • The organizer manually turning the toggle on per meeting.

Workarounds within the documented capabilities:

1. Scoped auto-recording policy for the group
   • Create/assign a Teams meeting policy with -AutoRecording enabled only for the target group. This ensures:
     • They can see the Record and transcribe automatically option in Meeting options.
     • They can choose to have meetings auto-record and transcribe.
   • This does not remove the need for organizers to enable the toggle per meeting, but it limits the feature to the group instead of the whole org.
2. Use of templates or sensitivity labels where possible
   • Where meeting templates are available (not BookWithMe), they can enforce automatic recording and transcription for specific meeting types for that group. The context explicitly notes templates can:
     • “Enforce automatic meeting recording for certain types of meetings.”
   • This does not solve BookWithMe directly but can cover other scheduled meetings.
3. Ensure transcription is allowed for the group
   • Confirm that the meeting policy for that group has Transcription enabled and that recording is allowed, so that when auto-recording is used, transcription can run.

Given the constraints in the provided material, there is no documented way here to fully automate transcription for BookWithMe meetings for a subset of users without any organizer action, other than using templates (which are not applicable in this case). The closest supported configuration is:

• Assign a custom Teams meeting policy with -AutoRecording enabled and transcription allowed to the specific group.
• Instruct those users to enable Record and transcribe automatically in Meeting options for their BookWithMe meeting types.

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References:

• Overview- Recording and transcription for Teams meetings, events, and calls
• I can't transcribe a meeting in Microsoft Teams
• Manage Microsoft Teams meeting recording and transcription options for sensitive meetings
• Manage Teams recording policies for meetings and events
• Configure call recording, transcription, and captions in Teams
• Overview of custom meeting templates in Microsoft Teams
• I can't record a meeting in Microsoft Teams