Step 1: Standardize Your Meeting Workflow

Set up OtterPilot to auto-join all recurring team meetings. Create a naming convention for your Otter transcripts — for example, “Weekly Standup — [Date]” or “Sprint Planning — [Sprint Number].” This makes it easy to search and reference past meetings.

Step 2: Configure Action Item Extraction

In Otter’s settings, enable “Action Items” extraction. After each meeting, Otter will automatically identify statements that represent commitments, tasks, or decisions and list them in a dedicated section of the summary. These are typically sentences starting with “I will,” “We need to,” or “Let’s…”

Step 3: Create a Follow-Up Routine

After each meeting, open the Otter transcript and review the extracted action items. Assign each item to a team member by @mentioning them in the Otter comments. Set a deadline for each item. This creates a visible, accountable record of who committed to what.

Step 4: Integrate with Your Project Management Tool

Connect Otter to your project management tool via Zapier or direct integration. Set up a workflow that automatically creates tasks in Asana, Trello, or Jira from Otter’s extracted action items. This ensures that meeting commitments are immediately tracked in your project board alongside other work.

Step 5: Build a Searchable Knowledge Base

Over time, your Otter transcript library becomes a searchable knowledge base. Use OtterPilot chat to ask questions like “When did we decide to switch vendors?” or “What was the timeline for the Q3 campaign?” — and get answers with direct references to the specific meeting where the decision was made.

Step 6: Measure and Improve

Track metrics like action item completion rate, average time to follow-up, and number of repeated discussions (when the same topic comes up in multiple meetings without resolution). Use these insights to improve meeting efficiency and team accountability.

ProTips:

• At the start of each meeting, briefly review the action items from the previous meeting — Otter makes this easy with one-click access to the last meeting’s summary
• Use Otter’s highlight feature during meetings to mark key decisions in real time, making post-meeting review faster
• Share meeting summaries with stakeholders who couldn’t attend, reducing the need for repeat meetings and keeping everyone aligned

Step 1: Create Your Otter.ai Account

Go to otter.ai and sign up for a free account. The free plan includes 300 minutes of transcription per month, which is enough for most individual users. For higher volume, the Pro plan at $16.99/month offers 1,200 minutes.

Step 2: Connect Otter to Your Calendar

In the Otter dashboard, go to Settings > Calendar and connect your Google Calendar or Outlook. This allows Otter to see your upcoming meetings and auto-join them. Once connected, you’ll see your scheduled meetings appear in the Otter dashboard.

Step 3: Enable OtterPilot Auto-Join

In Settings, enable “OtterPilot” — this is Otter’s feature that automatically joins your scheduled Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams meetings. Configure it to join all meetings, or only meetings you manually select. When OtterPilot joins a meeting, it appears as a participant named “Otter.ai” and begins transcribing immediately.

Step 4: During the Meeting — Live Transcription

Once OtterPilot is active, you’ll see a live transcript appearing in real time in your Otter dashboard. You can follow along, highlight important moments by clicking the star icon, and even add comments inline. Other participants can also access the live transcript if you share the Otter link.

Step 5: After the Meeting — Review the Summary

Within minutes of the meeting ending, Otter generates an AI summary with key topics, decisions, and action items. Open the transcript in your Otter dashboard to see the summary at the top, followed by the full transcript with speaker labels. Action items are automatically extracted and highlighted.

Step 6: Share and Collaborate

Share the transcript with teammates by clicking the Share button — you can set permissions for view-only or comment access. Teammates can highlight key moments, add comments, and assign action items. You can also export the transcript as a text file, PDF, or copy it directly to your notes app.

ProTips:

• Use the OtterPilot chat feature to ask questions about past meetings — “What did we decide about the product launch?” — and get instant answers from your transcript library
• Set up Otter’s Slack integration to automatically post meeting summaries in a designated channel, keeping the whole team informed
• For important meetings, review the AI summary for accuracy and manually correct any transcription errors before sharing