Recording a meeting

When you're in a room with someone and no notetaker is on the call, tap Record a meeting (the microphone at the top of the app). Louvain records through your device's microphone, writes a transcript after you stop, and asks you who each voice was. The transcript then works like any recorded meeting: it's in Meetings, your plate picks up what you were asked to do, and what to know going into the next one draws on it.

The record button appears only where your workspace can transcribe recordings.

While you record

• The first time, your browser asks to use the microphone. Allow it for Louvain.
• The top bar shows a red dot and how long you've been recording, with Pause and Stop. Pausing stops the clock and the recording until you resume.
• Your recording is sent to Louvain every 30 seconds while you record. If your connection drops, Louvain keeps what it has and sends the rest when you're back online. If the page closes, you lose only the last few seconds.
• You can move around the app while you record. Closing the tab or reloading asks you first.
• A recording can run for up to four hours.

On an iPhone or iPad, keep Louvain on screen. The phone stops the microphone when it locks or you switch to another app, and no web page can prevent that. When it happens, Louvain keeps everything recorded up to then and asks whether to Record more (it carries on in the same recording) or Finish.

If a recording was still running when a page closed, Louvain offers it back the next time you open the app: Finish and transcribe what reached it, or Discard it.

After you stop

Louvain transcribes the recording. It usually takes a minute or two, and it carries on if you leave the page. Then the panel shows each speaker with the first thing they said:

• Press ▶ beside a speaker to hear a few seconds of them, then tap a name for that voice. Louvain offers you, and the people in your workspace who were invited to a calendar event at the same time.
• Each choice holds for this meeting only. A speaker's words become theirs: what they promised reaches their plate.
• Once you name a voice, the transcript shows that person's name instead of "Speaker 2", and Ask reads it the same way. A voice nobody has named stays unidentified: Ask won't treat it as you, even though you recorded the meeting.
• Open the transcript opens it in the viewer. You can also change who a speaker was there, under Who spoke.

The transcript shows when the meeting was held in your own time zone, for example "Thursday, 29 October · 14:08–14:10".

Playing it back

While its audio is kept, a meeting you recorded plays in the viewer, sentence by sentence:

• Click any sentence to play from where it was said. The sentence being said is highlighted, and the transcript follows along as it plays.
• The bar above the transcript has play and pause, back and forward 10 seconds, a slider over the whole meeting and the speed (1×, 1.5×, 2×).
• Only you see the player. Anyone else, and you once the audio is gone, sees the transcript as text.

Speakers start as "Speaker 1", "Speaker 2" and so on. Louvain never guesses who a voice is, not even yours.

If the recording overlapped an event on your calendar, the meeting takes the event's title when you didn't give it one, and lists who was invited, whether the event is on a Google or an Outlook calendar. In Meetings, the recording appears under that event on either calendar. Otherwise it's named for when it started, on your own clock: "Meeting on Thursday 29 October at 14:08".

To change the name, choose Rename in the panel after you stop. The meeting keeps its transcript, its speakers and its audio under the new name.

Who can read it

Only you, until you share it. The recording and its transcript are kept for you alone, whoever was in the room or invited. Being invited to the calendar event doesn't let anyone else read it.

Sharing it

To let colleagues read the meeting, open it in Meetings (its Transcript tab) or find it in Library › Meetings, and choose Share…. Add the people in your workspace who should read it; a workspace admin can also add a directory group.

• They read the transcript and who spoke, and find the meeting in Library › Shared with me, Meetings, Search and Ask, as any meeting they can read. Nobody else can, and nothing about it shows to anyone else.
• The audio stays yours: only you hear it, and only you can delete it.
• Only you share it. The people you share it with can't share it on.
• Only you name the voices. The people you share it with see who spoke, as you decided it.
• There's no public link for a recorded meeting.
• Removing someone takes the meeting away from them straight away. So does their leaving the workspace, or the group you shared it with.
• If you disconnect your recorded meetings, nobody you shared with can read them. Your shares come back when you reconnect.
• The first time you share a meeting, Louvain reads it again, which takes a moment. The people you add can read it a few moments after you share it.
• They're told once in Inbox, and by email if they keep Files shared with me on, unless you turn off Notify people when you share.

Who spoke

Who spoke, beside Share…, opens the transcript. Open Who spoke at its top to say who each speaker was.

How long the audio is kept

• The audio is kept for 30 days after the transcript is ready, so you can hear who each voice was, then deleted. Your workspace's admin can choose 7 or 90 days or a year instead. The panel, the player and the meeting say when.
• Delete audio deletes it straight away: in the panel after you stop, on the player's bar, or on the meeting's Transcript tab in Meetings.
• If the meeting is removed from Louvain, its recording and audio go with it.
• The transcript stays either way: it's one of your sources, until you remove it.
• A recording you discard before it's transcribed is deleted with its audio.
• A recording left running with nothing new for a day is finished and transcribed; one that never sent any audio is deleted. One that couldn't be transcribed is deleted after 7 days.
• A recording can be at most about 128 MB. If it reaches that, it stops and keeps what was recorded.

Where the audio goes

The audio is stored by Louvain (in its file storage, not its database, where that is set up), and sent once to the transcription service listed on Subprocessors (Deepgram) to be transcribed after you stop. Nothing is transcribed while you're recording.