What is a Zoom Notetaker

You’ve probably seen a Notetaker join one of your Zoom calls as a participant, and you’ve probably wondered: what is this thing and what does it do?  A silent observer, it stays in the background and doesn’t contribute to the conversation. You could almost forget it was there, and it will never draw attention to its own presence. But it is busy the entire time, and takes notes automatically without ever needing a break.

Your friendly neighborhood notetaker is actually a new type of AI software, built on the convergence of several recent artificial intelligence developments. Taking advantage of breakthroughs in voice recognition and transcription, as well as natural language processing, semantic search and analytics, the AI assistant not only records audio and takes down the words that are spoken—the way your phone does when you give a dictation—but it also understands them, as much as any computer can, and is able to summarize meeting conversations and extract the moments that matters.

How does an AI notetaker know what Zoom meetings to join? A smart meeting assistant or notetaker doesn’t show up uninvited, but if it has been connected to a calendar it will actively look for meeting links. In most notetaking apps you can choose what meeting you’d like your assistant to join by setting a rule—either internal or external. You can also set up your meeting notes app to attend all meeting types, or to only take notes when you’ve pressed a record button.

Notetaking software begins by making a video record of the Zoom conversation and using video to text technology to provide a running transcription of what’s happening. More than just a word-for-word of the audio, this transcription also includes information extracted from the visual record of your call, as well as any text, charts, or analysis displayed. Video transcription is far more complicated than basic audio transcription, but has the potential to be far richer in information.  The final transcript, mapped to the recording, is what forms the basis for the next step: semantic analysis powered by natural language processing.

Natural language processing is what enables a smart assistant to tell that when your teammate proposes a launch date of Jan 16, and another team member suggest that big day be put off till Feb 1st, they are both discussing the same thing. It’s what enables it to extract key points and track things like competitor mentions in client calls or feature requests in user research interviews. Based on neural networks that have been trained upon thousands and thousands of meetings like yours, these AI models are able to get at the meaning behind whatever creative way your meeting participants take to express what they’d like to say.

An intelligent automatic note taker can also use AI sentiment analysis to determine how a speaker feels about what is being discussed. For instance, knowing that participant A did a trial run of software B and took ten minutes to get results is helpful, but knowing that he or she was frustrated, annoyed, and almost angry about the amount of time it took is even more helpful for those working on developing a user experience.

What this means is that a good Zoom notetaker will not only take accurate meeting minutes but also provide you with an intelligent summary of what was discussed, complete with action points, key suggestions, and follow-up notes. These notes can be linked to the video recording so that you can view clips of key moments in the conversation or review visuals shared on screens.

 With this in mind, it’s easy to see why you’d want to use a zoom notetaker. No one appreciates being assigned the job of minute-taker, and even the best secretary couldn’t do as thorough and efficient a job of taking notes as a smart meeting assistant. Companies who have already adapted notetakers find themselves with more flexibility, better operational efficiency and higher customer satisfaction. Benefits of an auto notes taker include:

• Eliminating the drudgery of notes, and freeing up your staff to participate in the discussion or make good use of their time elsewhere

• Providing a shareable asset which can convey information from the primary source (the actual recording)

• Generating a wiki style repository of data (great for when you need to look up a customer status or understand a record).

• Aggregating intelligence to spot patterns and trends across calls

This last one is especially useful if you’re dealing with a large quantity of Zoom call records, for instance, in a customer service situation. Going through every transcript looking for patterns and trends is simply not feasible, but notetaker software can accomplish this in very short processing times. An AI assistant can also summarize this information in a way that makes it share with operations research teams, shareholders, or whoever needs to see the data.

If you get a spike in support calls, use your artificial intelligence assistant to find out why quickly. Then use the search function to pull up the actual transcripts—and recording clips—that can illustrate exactly what is going on for your debugging team. Knowledge sharing is suddenly almost automatic, and everyone can react immediately whenever an issue pops up.

As it is, your AI note taker has the potential to become your new go-to app and your favorite piece of office software. Saving time and generating structured, useful information makes meeting assistants a worthwhile integration into any conference call software. It’s wonderful to have all the information from a virtual meeting condensed into a searchable wiki, and reports are never easier than when you can draw on real data and an unlimited number of video clips to illustrate your points. Stakeholders who don’t have the time and flexibility to attend meetings can still be given a front-row seat on what is going on, and everyone involved in development has all the information they need to make decisions. But live note taking has more untapped potential, and AI assistants are only at the first stage of development.

It won’t be long till we see the Hyperia Zoom notetaker that can do real-time A.I. transcription, and provide AI live semantic analysis even while your meeting is on. This will be a game-changer for the hearing disabled, and enable everyone to be able to view AI extractions in real time. Staying focused and on top of information shared has never been easier.

Live note taking and real time analysis will also enable you to make sure that your meeting record and follow-up emails are as accurate as possible. You’ll be able to provide live feedback on things that got triggered during the call and can make sure your follow-up task was accurately captured and tagged.  Your meeting record is an important asset, and being able to provide real-time input to ensure that record is the best it can be will make it still more valuable.

Transparency is key in any software adoption, and there’s no better way to gain transparency than to see the work your AI assistant is doing in real time, as it happens. This live analysis can also have a significant impact on productivity. If you’re veering off into tangents or having difficulty following your agenda, it’ll be visible immediately, and you’ll have the opportunity to get back to your intended program.

At the end of the call, you’ll be able to go over extracted items with your team and check to make sure that everyone’s on the same page and ready to take whatever next steps are appropriate. Decisions reached and follow ups needed will have been flagged and summarized, and bugs and feature requests will be easy to see at a glance.

With an artificial intelligence assistant working on your team, you won’t have to sweat the small stuff.  All that brain power that would have been focused on meeting minute and summaries is free to put where it really matters, and your actionable insights will not longer be the results of your labors—they’ll be the beginning of well targeted, transformation actions that make your company the best it can be.