Live Captioning for Microsoft Teams meetings

Adding real-time/live captions to your Microsoft Teams meetings is easy with CaptionSync. In this article, we describe how hosts can provide real-time captions in a Teams meeting.

NOTE: The method described in this tutorial currently works only for Teams Meetings, not Teams Live Events.

Requesting Live Captioning:

• To request Live Captioning for your event, log into your CaptionSync account and follow the instructions in our Live Captioning tutorial on how to schedule and choose the appropriate service.

• Add the Teams link to the meeting next to Audio Source, and provide any additional information in the Comments section.

• If you also want to have a backup StreamText text feed, please add that request to the Comments section. E.g.: Please provide a StreamText link. But, note that if you need the live captions to be delivered to both outputs, Teams and StreamText, you'll need to specifically make that request in the Comments section, at schedule time. E.g.: Please provide live captions on both the Teams and StreamText.

• Once the Live Captioning request is booked, you'll receive a confirmation email from our live@automaticsync.com address, with the captioner's information and other details.

Note: If you need to make changes or cancel your existing request, you can do so from within the respective Live Captioning Details page, in your CaptionSync account. But, if you need to contact the captioner just before the session starts, or for urgent changes to the audio source information, please use the captioner's contact information provided in the confirmation email.

Set up CART captions in Teams:

Microsoft Teams now supports closed captions natively. To enable live captions for your Teams meeting, follow the steps below:

• The host or meeting organizer will need to enable CART captions for the Teams session by opening the meeting invite and clicking on Meeting options, prior to the session.

• On the Meeting options page, toggle Provide CART Captions on and click Save. This will generate a caption link.

• Under the caption link, select Copy link, and send this URL to the CART provider via Captioner Message Thread, before the start of the session (preferably, make it available at schedule time, in the Comments section of the request page):

https://api.captions.office.microsoft.com/cartcaption?meetingid=%7b%22tId%22%3a%2272f988bf-86f1-41af-91ab-2d7cd011db47%22%2c%22oId%22%3a%229c3d0526-277f-4ff4-8a2f-884993a6dc03%22%2c%22thId%22%3a%2219%3ameeting_Mzg4YzI0NzUtZDkyMS00ODEwLTg2NTktNzg0MWE3NmZiMGNl%40thread.v2%22%2c%22mId%22%3a%220%22%7d&token=tkb8kvx

• The captioner will use this URL to set up the event on StreamText and deliver captions into the Teams meeting.

Starting Live Captioning:

• Participants within the same organization's domain should be able to display or hide CART captions by going to the meetings controls and selecting More options ... -> Turn on live captions or Turn off live captions.

Additional Notes:

• Once the session has concluded, we will automatically email you a text transcript, in the next 24-48 hours, to the address(es) we have on file for the request. The transcript will also be available for download from within the Details page of your Live Captioning request, next to Transcript.
  

• Additionally, you can order a caption output for your session, in the .srt or .vtt format, from the Request drop-down menu, in the New Live Captioning Request page, at schedule time. If you have ordered a caption output, it will be emailed separately from our live@automaticsync.com address, in the following 24-48 hours. Note that, generating a caption output is a service with an extra cost.
  

• More information about providing Live Captioning for Teams meetings is available in Microsoft's Support Use live captions in a Teams meeting tutorial.