The technology disclosed herein enables an absent participant to participate in a communication session. In a particular embodiment, a method includes identifying a meeting for an automated attendee to attend on behalf of a user. At a time for the meeting, the method includes joining the automated attendee to a communication session for the meeting. In the automated attendee, the method provides monitoring, in real-time, user communications exchanged between two or more other users over the communication session. During the monitoring, upon identifying a portion of the user communications that is relevant to the user, the method provides notifying the user about the portion.