Remix: Capturing Transcripts
So much has changed since our first post on 3/27/25
Multiple times a day, I use a transcript of a meeting, conversation, or just my own ramblings as the starting place to create an email, newsletter post (including this one!), or a proposal. One of our earliest posts was about Capturing Transcripts, but as with everything with GenAI, much has changed.
I have a hunch this isn’t the last time we’ll revisit this topic.
📰 What’s Happening in GenAI
Project Pomelli Brings AI to Creative Process
Google Labs just launched Pomelli, an experimental AI tool designed to enhance creative workflows by helping users organize ideas, generate content, and collaborate with AI in real-time. Think of it as a creative partner that actually understands context and can help you move from scattered thoughts to structured outputs. For SMBs doing any content creation, this represents the next evolution of AI assistance — less about one-shot generation, more about ongoing creative partnership.
Read more →
An Actually Useful Guide to Using AI
Ethan Mollick’s latest “Opinionated Guide to Using AI” cuts through the noise with practical, tested approaches for getting real value from AI tools. His key insight: stop treating AI as a search engine and start treating it as a junior colleague you’re training. The guide includes specific prompting strategies and workflow integrations that SMBs can implement immediately.
Read more →
Google’s New Public Policy Stories Platform
Google launched a public policy platform sharing stories about AI’s real-world impact across industries and communities. While it’s partly PR, there are genuine case studies here showing how smaller organizations are using AI for everything from accessibility improvements to operational efficiency. Worth mining for ideas relevant to your industry.
Read more →
🔀 Capturing Transcripts Remixed
Eight months ago, we showed you how to capture meeting transcripts to supercharge your AI workflows. Set up transcription, organize your files, feed them to AI for proposals, summaries, and insights.
If you built that workflow and it’s working, congrats; you’re ahead of 90% of businesses.
But the transcription landscape has evolved significantly. It’s time for a remix.
The Platform Problem
The native transcription in Zoom, Meet, and Teams has gotten remarkably good. Gemini in Google Meet provides seamless integration with automatic transcripts saved to Drive. Teams finally got its act together. Zoom... well, Zoom is still Zoom (requiring manual starts unless you record everything), but the quality of the transcription and notes have improved.
Unfortunately, your customers don’t care about your preferred platform. You use Teams, they use Zoom, and your vendor insists on Meet. Suddenly you need four different transcription systems, four different file locations, four different workflows. Oof.
And those meetings where six transcription bots join before any humans? Your clients hate those as much as you do. Some CEO’s are booting them out of meetings altogether.
Granola solves this elegantly. It captures audio directly from your device — no bots joining calls, no platform limitations. It works for Zoom, Meet, Teams, or that random videoconferencing tool your European client insists on using. It even works for in-person meetings. Lately, I’ve been noticing people using it at conferences to capture transcripts of public sessions.
The live transcript works regardless of the platform, and before a call, you can jot down rough notes or questions that get automatically enhanced with context from the transcript. No more choosing between taking notes and being present.
They’ve got some nascent organizational tools as well, and Granola integrates with Zapier; you can build a simple automation to keep everything nicely organized on Google Drive, Box, or Dropbox.
We’re updating our prior recommendation; we still love Gemini in Google Meet, but Granola has replaced it as our tool of choice because it works everywhere, has killer sharing features baked-in, and is AI workflow automation friendly.
Keep It Legal
In a number of states, recording conversations without all-party consent is illegal, including California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Washington.
If you’re calling across states, the strictest law applies — even if you’re in a one-party state, you need permission from all parties if anyone is in a two-party state.
Because Granola captures audio directly from your device without announcing itself, YOU must inform participants. Every. Single. Time. Forget once in California? That’s potentially a felony.
The safe play: Start every meeting with “I’m using an AI assistant to take notes — is that okay with everyone?” If they continue talking, you’ve got implied consent. Document this in your meeting practices.
There’s an experimental feature inside of Granola to automate posting this message to meeting chats; I’ve found it to work most of the time. If you’re using Granola, turn it on now.
Drowning in Documents
Success creates new problems. Six months of transcripts later, you’re drowning in data.
How do you:
Find that pricing discussion from three months ago?
Share relevant context without oversharing sensitive details?
Turn meeting insights into actual business processes?
Know what’s safe to feed to AI and what needs redaction?
If you’re a one-person shop or very small team, then Granola could be your all-in-one solution. But for larger businesses, you’re going to need to get creative with a goal of getting everything into one, unified place where it’s searchable and shareable.
Tools like Zapier (and many other workflow builders) can automatically take transcripts and route them to your systems — creating tasks in Asana, updating CRM records, or building searchable knowledge bases. Automation without organization is just faster chaos.
The winning approach:
Get it all in one place: If everyone in your org is using Granola, you can use their integrated tools - but that can also get expensive. It’s easy enough to use Zapier and get them all into a shared drive.
Establish naming conventions: [Date][Client][Topic] works better than “Meeting with John”
Separate by sensitivity: Keep compliance discussions separate from general meetings, and have clear rules of the road for which meetings are always transcribed and which meetings should never be transcribed → shared.
Before feeding transcripts to AI or sharing with teams:
Remove client-specific pricing that shouldn’t be generalized
Redact personal information (health issues, family matters mentioned in passing)
Strip out legally privileged communications
Delete competitive intelligence that shouldn’t leave your inner circle
Once organized and sanitized, your transcript corpus becomes a goldmine. What’s actually working for SMBs:
Sales Teams… Connect Granola or similar tools to your CRM to automatically log call summaries, update deal stages, and flag at-risk accounts based on conversation sentiment.
Product Development… Query across all customer calls to identify feature requests, pain points, and usage patterns. “Show me every time someone mentioned our checkout process” becomes actionable intelligence.
Operations… Use AI to generate formatted daily summaries of all previous day’s activities, including escalated issues and resolutions, improving team communication.
Transcription isn’t the differentiator anymore — everyone can do it. The winners will be those who turn transcripts into intelligence, automate what matters, and protect what’s sensitive.
Your transcripts are either an asset or a liability. There’s no middle ground.
The tools have evolved. The legal requirements haven’t gotten easier. But the opportunity to build a true meeting intelligence system — one that learns from every conversation and improves your business systematically — has never been more accessible.
Just remember: With great transcription comes great responsibility. Use it wisely.
Questions? Email us at info@remixpartners.ai — we read every message.