# Take the hassle out of note-taking with Otter.ai

> In this blog post we walk you through how to make your meetings more accessible and searchable, with zero hassle involved. Learn more today.

**URL:** https://www.gosmarter.ai/blog/take-the-hassle-out-of-note-taking-with-otter.ai/

**Date:** 2019-12-18
**Author:** Mia Hatton

**Categories:** Archive

**Tags:** artificial-intelligence, data-strategy


---


How much time is spent taking and distributing minutes in your
organisation? How often are your staff impacted by miscommunications,
forgotten action points and lost meeting notes? All of these losses can
be avoided when you use an AI tool to automatically generate searchable
transcriptions of your meetings.

Prerequisites:

- An account with [otter.ai](http://otter.ai) gives you 600 minutes of
  transcription every month for free and allows you to share your
  transcriptions as .txt files.
- For 6000 minutes per month and advanced order export, you will need
  a premium plan from \$99 annually.
- If you have meetings online, you will need a **Zoom Pro** account to
  integrate with **Otter.ai**.

{{<
image src="note-taking.webp"
height="180"
width="300"
layout="responsive"
alt="two people note-taking in a room with a notepad and laptop"
attribution=""
>}}

## Steps to success:

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1. In a face-to-face meeting, launch **otter.ai** in your browser or mobile app.
2. Tap the \'**Record**\' button to start recording your meeting.
3. Give your meeting a title.
4. Hit the stop button when finished. **Otter.ai** will notify you when your transcript is ready.

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When your transcript is ready:

5. Open the transcript and make any necessary edits or add highlights.
6. Export the transcript using the menu icon, or share it via a link or email.

There is much more you can offload onto **otter.ai.** Once you\'ve got
started, you can sync it to your **Zoom** or **Dropbox** recordings,
identify speakers and sync it to your calendar for automated titling of
your meetings.

## More quick wins

Now that you've seen how just how quick and easy it can be to infuse
your business processes with AI, why not check out a few more of our
quick win projects that might be relevant to your business? Get
inspired, download our free [7 Quick Wins Projects
guide - link no longer works]() and start winning
with AI today.

## FAQs

{{< faq question="Why does note-taking matter in manufacturing?" >}}
In a manufacturing business, meetings happen across the full breadth of operations: production planning, quality reviews, supplier calls, customer technical discussions, management meetings. Each generates decisions, action points, and commitments that need to be captured accurately and acted on. When note-taking is done manually, in the meeting, by someone who is also trying to participate in the conversation, the quality of the record is inevitably compromised.

Otter.ai addresses this by transcribing and summarising meetings automatically — capturing what was said, who said it, and what was decided, without requiring anyone in the meeting to divide their attention between the conversation and the record-keeping. For manufacturing teams where meetings drive operational decisions, this is a practical productivity improvement.
{{< /faq >}}

{{< faq question="What is the integration with operational workflows?" >}}
The value of meeting transcription is not just the record itself — it is what happens with the record. Action points captured in Otter.ai can be imported into project management tools, decision logs can be shared with people who were not in the meeting, and commitments made by suppliers or customers are documented in a form that is searchable and retrievable.

For a production manager following up on a supplier commitment about delivery timing, or a quality manager tracking whether an agreed corrective action was implemented, the meeting transcript is evidence that the commitment was made. That is a meaningful operational improvement over 'I think we agreed X in that call last Tuesday.'
{{< /faq >}}

{{< faq question="What is the broader productivity case?" >}}
Meeting productivity tools like Otter.ai are part of a broader category of tools that reduce the administrative overhead of managing a manufacturing business. When GoSmarter talks about removing the manual work that takes time away from productive work, tools like Otter.ai are part of the picture — not just manufacturing-specific software, but any tool that removes friction from the way teams work together and make decisions.
{{< /faq >}}