Auto-Transcribe Meetings and Capture Action Items

1. Go to otter.ai and sign up with your email or Google account.
2. Verify your email if prompted.

What you should see: A dashboard with an empty conversation list and a record button.

This lets Otter see upcoming meetings so you're not hunting for a record button mid-call.

1. Look for a calendar connection option, usually under account or integration settings.
2. Connect your Google Calendar or Outlook calendar.

What you should see: Your upcoming meetings listed inside Otter with their titles and times pulled from your calendar. Troubleshooting: On the free plan, Otter doesn't automatically join and record your video calls for you. You'll need to start recording yourself each time, either from the Otter website during the call or the Otter app.

1. For a virtual meeting, open Otter alongside your Zoom, Teams, or Meet call and click record from the Otter side.
2. For an in-person meeting, open the Otter mobile app, set your phone in the middle of the table, and tap record.
3. Let it run for the full meeting.

What you should see: A live, scrolling transcript appearing as people talk, with rough speaker labels like "Speaker 1" and "Speaker 2." Troubleshooting: Free-tier meetings cap at 30 minutes each. If your meeting runs longer, the recording stops and you'll need to start a new one, or upgrade if this happens often.

Otter is genuinely unreliable at identifying who's speaking, especially in the first couple of minutes, so fix this while it's fresh.

1. During or right after the meeting, tap or click on a "Speaker 1" label.
2. Type in the real name. Otter applies it retroactively through the rest of that transcript.

What you should see: Names replacing the generic speaker labels throughout the transcript. Troubleshooting: In a meeting with more than four or five people, expect to do a bit of manual cleanup. Speaker identification gets noticeably less accurate as the group grows.

1. Once the meeting ends, Otter generates a summary and a list of action items within a minute or two on its own.
2. Open the summary panel and read through the suggested action items.
3. Edit anything that's misattributed or vague before you send it anywhere.

What you should see: A short summary paragraph followed by a bulleted list of action items, each ideally tagged with a name. Troubleshooting: If an action item is assigned to the wrong person, it's almost always because the speaker labels weren't fixed in Step 4. Go back and correct the labels, then regenerate.

1. Export the summary as text or a link, since there's no built-in one-click "send to attendees" button on the free plan.
2. Paste it into an email or your team chat tool addressed to everyone who was on the call.

What you should see: Attendees receiving a clean written recap instead of you retyping your handwritten notes.