Transcription

Transcription turns a recording into searchable text, with automatic speaker recognition, an AI summary and a choice of document templates. You can correct the result directly in your browser, share it with your team or hand it to a workflow automatically. Unlike a private recording app, the processing stays bound to your roles and permissions, and an AI-generated summary is always labeled as such.

Best for: meeting minutes, customer conversations in the trades, consultations and client meetings, municipal council and committee meetings, interviews.

Before you begin

Transcription has to be enabled for your organization. Datenmassiv AI does that, not your own administrator; if the menu item is missing, contact your account manager at Datenmassiv AI.
Before your first transcription, you confirm once that everyone taking part in the conversation has agreed to the recording (Section 201 StGB, and for employees possibly Section 87 BetrVG); this applies to uploaded files as well as to your own recordings, and the confirmation appears in your organization's activity log.
With Copy notice for participants you get a short text that you read out or send before the conversation.

Create a recording

A recording comes from an existing file or straight from your microphone; every way goes through the same dialog.

Open Transcription in the sidebar and click New recording.
Under Type of meeting, choose what the recording is for, such as Meeting minutes, Customer meeting, Site meeting, Council meeting or Employee review; without a choice, Standard meeting applies. With Add participants and agenda you can enter names and agenda items if needed, one per line.
Stay on the File tab and drag a recording into the field, or click Choose file. To make your own recording, switch to Recording instead and start with the round microphone icon.
If needed, open the settings below (for example "German · 1–10 speakers") and choose the language of the conversation, or leave Detect automatically selected if you are unsure or the conversation switches languages.
Stop a running microphone recording with the square icon (Stop recording).
Click Transcribe.

The summary is created right away in the chosen type: a council meeting gets minutes with resolutions and voting results, a site meeting gets construction progress, defects and tasks per trade. An agenda structures the minutes into exactly these items; items that were not discussed are marked as "Nicht behandelt" (not discussed). Named participants help to assign speakers; the AI only sets a name where the conversation makes it recognizable, for example when someone is addressed by name.

A file or microphone recording may be at most as long as your organization has set, but technically never longer than four hours; the file must not exceed 500 MB. Longer recordings automatically go through a separate processing path and take somewhat longer than short ones. Supported formats are listed under Reference.

Get a live transcript

With Live you see the text while the conversation is still going on, with speaker recognition, for example for a meeting around a table with a laptop or phone in the middle.

Click New recording, choose the Type of meeting and, if needed, participants and agenda, and switch to the Live tab.
Choose Language and Maximum speakers and click Start recording.
End the session with Stop & save; the finished transcript with its summary then opens.

A live session lasts at most two hours; a notice appears five minutes before, and afterwards the session is saved automatically. The time from start to stop is billed, including pauses. If the internet connection drops briefly, the session reconnects by itself for up to one minute. If the microphone is interrupted, for example by a call on your phone, the session is saved with everything said up to that point. If you close the window by accident, everything said up to that point is kept and is completed as a transcript automatically after about an hour at the latest.

Record an online meeting

With Teams, Zoom or Meet you record the meeting audio without an additional participant: before starting, in Recording or Live, tick Capture the audio of an online meeting. After the start, the browser asks what to share: choose the tab with the meeting and tick "Share tab audio" there; if the meeting runs in the desktop app, share your screen with system audio. Your microphone and the meeting audio end up together in one recording. This works in Chrome or Edge on a computer; the participants who joined remotely also have to agree to the recording.

With several microphones

If each person speaks into their own device, every statement appears with the right name straight away, without speaker recognition. During a running live session, click the Connect more microphones icon at the bottom and then Share with team and allow microphones; this shares the recording with your team. Send the link shown to the participants; up to four more members of your organization open it on their device while signed in. There, before turning anything on, they see the purpose, who is responsible, the recipients, the storage period and their rights; only with Agree and turn on microphone does their microphone turn on, and without agreeing they only read along. Everyone sees the shared live transcript; if one microphone picks up a sentence that another one already carries, it is marked gray and is dropped when saving. With Disconnect microphone a person leaves the session; when you end the session, all microphones end with it. Each additional device counts against the AI quota with its speaking time, like a separate live recording.

My audio file is not accepted

The most common cause is an unsupported format, above all video exports from Teams or Zoom (MP4), which Datenmassiv AI does not accept directly; it is easier to record the meeting right away (see above). Export only the audio track from the recording, for example as MP3 or M4A, and upload that file.

Assign speakers and correct the text

The draft is created automatically; you do the fine-tuning.

At the top of the transcript, click a speaker's name to rename them.
Click the speaker icon next to a single section to assign exactly that section to another speaker, or create a new one with New speaker….
Use the ⋮ menu next to a speaker to merge them into another one with Merge with…, or remove them with Delete….
To correct the text, click a section, edit it and save with Save (or Ctrl+Enter).
For a recurring error, such as a misrecognized name, open Find & replace above the transcript and replace all matches at once.

Passages with a dashed underline show where the recognition was uncertain; proofreading pays off most there.

If a name is misrecognized in every recording, ask your administrator to add it under Settings → Vocabulary; future recordings of the whole organization up to 30 minutes and all live transcriptions then recognize it better (see Vocabulary).

Use the result

Right after processing, an automatic summary appears at the top, visibly labeled AI-generated. Check AI-generated content before you use it. If the summary could not be created automatically, its place shows the notice The minutes could not be created automatically.; as the owner, choose a template above it to create them.

With Export you copy the transcript or summary to the clipboard, or download the result as Word, PDF or in one of four other formats, regardless of whether you created the recording yourself. The full list is under Reference.
The templates sit side by side above the minutes, with the current one highlighted; as the owner, you regenerate the minutes with one click, in the same or another document type, such as Meeting minutes, File note, Consultation note or Order / quote; participants and agenda are kept.
With Ask AI you ask questions about the recording: Ask here answers in the sidebar with a jump to the passage, Continue in AI Chat opens AI Chat with this recording as a reference, and you can add further documents. As the owner, click Process further to put the transcript into a knowledge base under File in knowledge base, or to start a saved workflow with the transcript under Complete a task automatically. For filing, you can choose any active knowledge base you are allowed to upload documents to; the document carries the summary, speakers, timestamps and a link back to the recording. If you file the same recording again, the existing document is updated instead of duplicated; if you delete the recording, the filed document disappears as well.
To have a workflow start after a recording in future without any click, choose the trigger Transcription finished in the workflow; there you set which recordings and which meeting types start it (see Workflows).

Tasks from the minutes

Below the summary, the tasks agreed in the conversation appear as a separate list, visibly labeled AI-generated. Where the conversation names them, each task has a person responsible and a due date; "by Friday" becomes the date of the next Friday after the meeting. A name is automatically linked to a member of your organization if exactly one member has that name.

Tick off a task once it is done.
Below the task, choose another person responsible from your organization, or Nobody assigned.
Change or delete the due date in the date field; a due date that has passed is marked overdue.
Click the timestamp to play that passage of the conversation, as long as the recording is still stored.

Only the person who owns the recording may change its tasks; anyone who may see the recording also sees its tasks. If you delete the recording, its tasks disappear with it.

Approve and send the minutes

New minutes are a Draft; the status is shown in the list and on the recording's page. Once you have checked them, approve them as the owner.

On the recording's page, click Approve.
Choose the recipients from the members of your organization and confirm with Approve.

Afterwards Minutes approved appears on the recording, with the time and the recipients. If you have activated your own copy of the template Send minutes to participants, each selected person receives the approved summary as a Word file by email; without approval, nothing goes out. At first the template only applies to recordings of the person who created the workflow. For recordings shared with the team, a configured workflow can use Team recordings only instead; private recordings of other people never start it. Setting this up, including the required Edit workflows permission, is described in the workflows chapter. Only members of your organization can receive the minutes; send them to external people yourself via Export. If you regenerate the summary with another template, the minutes become a draft again.

Keep track of all tasks

Under Transcription → Tasks you find the open tasks from all recordings you may see: your own and those shared with the team.

Choose Assigned to me to see only tasks linked to your account, or Overdue for due dates that have passed.
Narrow the list down to one person with All assignees, including participants without an account.
Click the recording title below a task to jump to that passage of the conversation.

Here, as on the recording's page, you can only tick off tasks from your own recordings.

Ask all recordings

With Ask all recordings at the top of the Transcription page you ask one question of all recordings you may see: your own and those shared with the team, never other people's private recordings. The answer backs every statement with a number; clicking the number or the evidence below it opens the recording at exactly that passage. If no matching recording turns up, the dialog says so instead of guessing; then try other keywords, such as a name, a place or a topic. The search looks for words in the transcripts; a question using the terms that came up in the conversation finds the most. The agents also search your recordings when a task asks for it (see Agents).

In the detail view, click Share.
Choose My team instead of Private (only you) and confirm with Save.
Your team can then search the recording in AI Chat through the knowledge base "Team recordings" and ask questions about it; a match links directly to the quoted passage in the conversation.

If you set the visibility back to Private (only you) or delete the recording, it automatically disappears from the team search again. Whoever owns a recording may always edit, approve and delete it, regardless of their role. The permission "Delete other people's recordings" is only needed for recordings that belong to someone else; your administrator grants it under Settings → Roles & permissions. All roles at a glance: Reference.

How long recordings are kept

The audio file is deleted automatically after 30 days; the transcript is kept. If your organization has set a deletion period for transcripts, the top of the transcript shows the day on which it will be deleted, together with its copies in knowledge bases. Your administrator sets this period (see Privacy).

Next step

Workflows: turn a transcript into a finished document automatically, with an approval step for you.
AI Chat: search your shared recordings and ask questions about them.
Knowledge bases: your knowledge base "My recordings" and the shared "Team recordings" at a glance.
Reference: languages, formats, limits and periods in one place.