For Executive Assistants ·
What you'll accomplish
By the end of this guide, you'll have Otter.ai automatically joining your executive's Zoom and Microsoft Teams meetings, transcribing the conversation, and producing a summary with action items — ready within minutes of each meeting ending. You'll spend 5 minutes reviewing instead of 45 minutes taking notes.
What you'll need
Go to otter.ai and sign up with your work email. Use the Google or Microsoft sign-in option if your organization uses those — it makes the calendar sync simpler in the next step.
What you should see: Your Otter.ai home dashboard with a blue "Start recording" button and a conversations panel.
Troubleshooting: If you get an error on Microsoft sign-in, try creating an account with email/password first.
In Otter.ai, go to Settings (gear icon) → Calendar Sync. Click "Connect Google Calendar" or "Connect Outlook Calendar." Sign in with your calendar account. Toggle on "Automatically join meetings" — Otter will now look at your calendar and auto-join any Zoom/Teams/Google Meet links it finds.
What you should see: A list of your upcoming meetings with a checkmark showing Otter will join them.
Troubleshooting: If your meeting links aren't detected, make sure the Zoom/Teams links are in the calendar event description, not just in the Notes field.
In Settings → OtterPilot (their auto-join feature), choose whether Otter joins all meetings or only ones you're organizing. For EA work, set it to join all meetings on your executive's calendar. Set notifications to send you the transcript by email when the meeting ends.
What you should see: A toggle for "Auto-join meetings" set to On.
Join a Zoom call or record a short voice memo in the Otter app. Otter will transcribe it in real time. After a few minutes, open the transcription and look for the automatically detected action items (shown in a different color or in the "Action Items" tab).
What you should see: A transcript with speaker labels, timestamps, and highlighted action items.
Troubleshooting: If speaker names are wrong, click the speaker label and assign the correct name — Otter learns over time.
After each meeting, Otter emails you a summary within 5–10 minutes. Open it, review the action items for accuracy, edit any misheard phrases, and forward to meeting attendees. For your executive's one-on-ones, copy the action items into your tracking system.
What you should see: An email with the full transcript, a 5-bullet summary, and a list of action items with speaker attribution.
(For when you need to brief your executive on Otter content or share with the team)
"Here are the key points from today's [meeting name] call per Otter's summary: [paste bullets]. Action items: [paste action items]. Full transcript available on request."
"Otter flagged [X] action items from this morning's meetings. I've reviewed them and added them to Asana. Three need your input — see flagged items."
"Could you confirm Otter's attribution on this item? It sounds like it was assigned to [name] but wasn't clear: [paste item]"