Otter.ai Tutorial for Beginners

What You Will Learn

Prerequisites

Step by Step Guide

1. 1

   Setting Up Otter.ai

   Create your account at otter.ai and connect your Google or Microsoft calendar. Enable the OtterPilot feature to have Otter automatically join your scheduled meetings. Configure which meetings to join based on calendar rules. Otter appears as a participant in your call and begins transcribing immediately.

   Pro Tip: Set Otter to only auto join meetings where you are the organizer at first. Once you are comfortable with how it works, expand to all meetings.

2. 2

   Live Transcription During Meetings

   As your meeting progresses, Otter transcribes everything in real time with speaker labels. You can follow along on your phone or laptop and highlight important moments as they happen. Add comments and tags during the meeting to mark decisions, action items, and key discussion points.

3. 3

   AI Generated Summaries

   After each meeting, Otter generates a structured summary including key topics discussed, decisions made, action items with assignees, and follow up questions. The summary appears within minutes of the meeting ending. Review and edit the summary before sharing it with attendees.

   Pro Tip: Customize your summary format in settings to match your team preferred note taking structure. This saves time on editing after every meeting.

4. 4

   Searching Your Meeting History

   Otter search lets you find any moment across all your transcribed meetings. Search for a keyword, phrase, or speaker name and Otter shows you every instance with timestamps and context. This is incredibly valuable for finding "what did we decide about X" without rewatching hours of recordings.

5. 5

   Collaboration and Sharing

   Share meeting notes with attendees automatically or manually. Team members can add comments, highlight sections, and assign action items within the transcript. Use channels to organize notes by project, department, or topic so related meetings are grouped together.

6. 6

   Recording and Transcribing Audio

   Beyond meetings, use Otter to transcribe any audio. Record in person conversations with the mobile app, upload audio files for transcription, or use the browser extension to transcribe webinars and presentations. Every transcript is searchable and shareable.

7. 7

   Integrating with Your Workflow

   Connect Otter to Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, and other tools to automatically push meeting notes where your team needs them. Use the Zapier integration to trigger actions based on completed transcriptions. For example, automatically create follow up tasks in your project management tool.

Automation Ideas After Learning Otter.ai

Frequently Asked Questions