Recording in-person meetings with Avoma – Workarounds
Avoma is designed primarily for digital communication platforms rather than in-person conversations. This article outlines three practical workarounds for using Avoma with in-person meetings: setting up a conference call bridge, uploading pre-recorded meeting files, and implementing a hybrid approach for larger meetings. It also provides guidance on optimizing audio quality, managing speaker identification after recording, and maintaining compliance with recording laws.
Understanding Avoma's limitations with in-person meetings
Avoma was primarily designed to integrate with digital communication platforms rather than capture in-person conversations. The platform doesn't offer direct support for recording meetings where participants are physically present in the same room. However, this doesn't mean you can't leverage Avoma's features for your in-person discussions—you'll just need to implement one of the workarounds described below.
Option 1: Setting up a conference call bridge
One of the most straightforward solutions is to set up a virtual conference call that runs during your in-person meeting. You can schedule a meeting using your preferred video conferencing tool, connect it to Avoma through your calendar integration, and join the virtual call from a laptop or mobile device during your in-person meeting. Place the device in a central location to capture audio from all participants and proceed with your meeting as normal while the call records.
When using this method, you'll encounter two primary limitations. First, speaker identification issues will arise since only one microphone is capturing all voices in the room, meaning Avoma will only identify the host as the speaker. The AI cannot distinguish between different people speaking in the same physical space. Second, audio quality challenges will occur as participants sitting farther from the microphone may not be clearly captured. This affects transcription accuracy, AI note quality, and keyword detection.
Option 2: Upload pre-recorded meeting files
If you have access to separate recording equipment, you can capture your in-person meeting and then upload it to Avoma afterward. Avoma supports various file formats including MP4, AVI, MKV, MP3, and WAV.
The process involves recording your meeting using a dedicated recording device, smartphone, or video camera, ensuring the recording is saved in one of Avoma's supported formats, and then uploading it through your Avoma account. This method allows you to capture potentially higher quality audio using specialized equipment, which can significantly improve the transcription and analysis results.
Option 3: Hybrid approach for larger meetings
For larger meetings where audio quality is especially important, a hybrid approach might be most effective. This involves setting up a conference call as in Option 1, having remote participants join normally, and using a high-quality conference room system with multiple microphones and speaker tracking capability for in-person attendees. Connect this system to the virtual meeting and ensure Avoma is set to record.
This approach works well for scenarios like quarterly business reviews where some participants are remote and others are in a conference room. The conference room system provides better audio pickup for in-person participants, while still allowing Avoma to capture the entire conversation.
Optimizing audio quality for better results
Regardless of which method you choose, optimizing audio quality will significantly improve your results with Avoma. Position the recording device or microphone centrally, ask participants to speak clearly and at a reasonable volume, minimize background noise, consider using external microphones when possible, test your setup beforehand for important meetings, and if possible, have key speakers sit closer to the microphone.
Managing speaker identification post-recording
Since Avoma cannot automatically distinguish between multiple speakers in an in-person recording, you'll need to manage this manually. After the meeting is processed in Avoma, you can navigate to the transcript and use Avoma's speaker editing features to manually identify different speakers. Look for natural breaks in conversation or topic changes to help identify speaker transitions, add speaker names to the appropriate sections of the transcript, and save your changes to improve the usefulness of the transcript.
While this requires additional work, it makes the final transcript much more valuable, especially for important meetings where attributing comments to specific individuals is necessary.
Compliance considerations
When recording in-person meetings, be mindful of applicable recording consent laws, which vary by location. Inform all participants that the meeting is being recorded, obtain explicit consent from everyone present, establish recording as a standard practice with advance notice for recurring meetings, follow your organization's policies regarding meeting recordings, and consider adding a note in meeting invitations about recording.
