Otter.ai wants to be your meeting hub

Otter wants to be more than a transcription app. The company just announced a series of new features that it hopes will make it a go-to collaboration tool for corporate meetings. “As a baseline, Otter can record and capture a lot of conversation and turn it into searchable notes,” said Simon Lau, Otter’s VP of Product. “Now, we see that this is something that allows team members to collaborate and communicate more easily during the meeting.”

Lau said Otter's customers have consistently wanted to get more out of Otter than just a verbatim transcript. One of the biggest suggestions Lau heard was the ability to add additional notes to a transcript and put highlighted quotes in one space. This suggestion turned into Otter's new "Meeting Gems" feature. You’ll be able to centralize your most important notes in one space. Otter’s users can turn notes into action items and tag co-workers within their Otter plan.

Otter transcripts will now include a screenshot button, so you can attach screenshots directly into the notes. The company is also introducing AI-generated summaries that recount notable questions or themes. The AI summary consists of "chapters" that users can click to read a recap of what was discussed.

The calendar view is more prominent in the redesign, and you can more easily turn Otter’s assistant (the transcription AI that joins meetings) on or off. Once you attach your calendar to Otter, you can join meetings directly from the home screen. The home feed will also show users their notifications: for example, if someone tagged you in a meeting note. This is an effort on Otter's part to make the app "more geared toward continuing the workflow."

"In between meetings, if you have two or three minutes to catch up, you can do a quick reply and take care of some of the things that carry over from the meeting," Lau said.

The new features are available to Otter users on the Business plan today. They will launch to Pro and Basic users in the coming weeks.