Teams Transcription (Licensing / Button greyed out for some users)

1. Copilot Business is NOT required for transcription.

Transcription and Copilot are separate features. With Microsoft 365 Business Standard, users can start transcription as long as Allow transcription is enabled in the Teams meeting policy. This is expected behavior and not a licensing loophole.

Copilot uses transcription as input, then adds AI on top:

• AI‑generated meeting summaries
• Key points, decisions, and action items
• In‑meeting Q&A, e.g.:
  • “What did we agree on?”
  • “Who owns this task?”
• Catch‑up for late joiners

Asking questions over the transcript content

2. Different behavior between users with the same policy is unfortunately common in Teams.

Transcription depends on multiple factors at the same time:

• user role (organizer / co‑organizer),
• per‑user meeting policy,
• policy propagation timing,
• client differences (desktop vs web vs Android),

The fact that transcription works on Android but is greyed out in the desktop app usually points to a client cache / policy sync issue, not an actual policy mismatch.

I’d recommend checking:

• Teams on the web,
• organizer role,
• meeting options (Copilot / recording settings),
• and ofc :) forcing a sign‑out or cache reset on the desktop client.