Most users are familiar with Read's meeting reports that are available after the call, but did you know that you can also view live notes and transcription while your meeting is happening? Whether you missed part of the meeting and need to get caught up, or just want to go back and reference something that was discussed earlier, live notes and transcripts can help you stay on top of the conversation during your meetings.
There are a few ways to enable live notes with Read - this article will explain how to do so using Google Docs, but you can see below for other methods.
Enabling the Google Docs integration
Enabling live notes with Google Docs is easy, simply locate Google Docs on your Apps & Integrations page and click "Connect":
After going through the authorization with Google to grant the necessary permission, you'll get sent back to Read. Here you'll see a setting you can configure to control document access:
By default, all new Docs will be created on your Google Drive as accessible to anyone with the link. Your other option is to make it accessible only to you by default. In either case, you can always adjust the sharing directly from the Google Doc after it's created.
How it works
Finding your live notes
After enabling the Docs integration, Read will automatically write live notes and transcripts to your Google Drive whenever it is added to a meeting. Shortly after Read joins the call, you'll receive a link to the notes in your meeting chat, so you and other participants can easily find it:
All notes and transcripts are written to a folder directly under your "My Drive" called "Read AI Notes". Do not rename or move this folder, otherwise Read will generate a new folder in the same location during the next meeting.
Read will create separate documents for the live notes and transcript, named using the date of the meeting (in YYYYMMDD format), followed by the meeting title, followed by either "Live Notes" or "Transcript". If your meeting is part of a recurring series, then your notes and transcripts will get inserted at the top of the documents for the previous meeting, rather than creating new documents.
Be aware that if you added Read manually, your title won't get pulled from any calendar event and may be something generic like "Teams Meeting".
Document layout
Each live notes doc will look something like this:
Within the doc, you'll find a few components:
- At the top, you'll see the meeting date and title, followed by the list of invited guests' emails.
- If you added Read manually instead of having it auto-join, you won't get the list of guests or the meeting title.
- Right below are links to the live transcript (in a separate Google Doc) as well as the full meeting report (available on Read after the meeting ends).
- Underneath that is a "Your Notes" section, where you can type in any notes you want to take manually.
- After the line break, you'll see the "Live Notes" section, which Read will update automatically throughout your meeting.
At the top of the live notes section you can see the most recent line (aka "turn") from the transcript. Below this, Read will generate live notes for your meeting in a bulleted list format. Read should generate new bullet points roughly every minute or two, depending on the pace of conversation, with the newest appearing at the top of the Live Notes section.
Please do not manually edit anything under Live Notes during the meeting, or else it may lead to issues with the automatic note generation. If you want to add to the notes, you can do so under the "your notes" section above, or use comments.
Lastly, remember that if you want to adjust the sharing on this document beyond the two preset settings from Read, just click on the "Share" button at the top right of the Google Doc.
Other ways to get live notes
If you use Microsoft 365, check out Read's OneNote integration for live notes.
You can also access live notes from Read's live meeting dashboard. There you can view live notes, as well as real-time metrics and access other tools during your meeting, however unless you connect the Docs or OneNote integration, your live notes won't be saved after the call.