Can’t join a Teams meeting but still want to know everything that was said? Thanks to the new “Follow” option in Outlook, you can get all the details afterwards.

Fomo or Fear of being left out is the fear of missing out on social interactions. In a work context, this means attending all meetings you are invited to, even if your agenda is already full, because you might miss something important. Outlook delivers the medicine and will soon introduce a feature that lets you track Teams meetings without actually having to be physically present.

The Follow option will be added to Outlook invitations starting in March 2024, according to the product roadmap for Microsoft 365 apps. By enabling this option, you indicate that you cannot be present at the meeting but would like to be kept informed. You will then receive an overview of the meeting, such as how long it lasted and a list of participants.

The content of what is said is of course the most important thing. Microsoft could use the AI ​​capabilities in Teams to provide followers with a summary of the conversation. For now, the summary features are only available if you have a Teams Premium subscription, which is currently in testing. You may have to pay extra for this feature.

To everyone present

From a data protection perspective, there are concerns about the new function. The organizer of the meeting sees which invitees have opted for the tracking function. We can imagine that those present may not necessarily want it to be shared afterwards. The tracking feature can quickly become a monitoring tool to check who attended which meeting. Microsoft is not providing any details about how it will solve the problem for now.

The tracking option will be available in the web and desktop versions of Outlook from March 2024 and is expected to be available for Teams later this year.