When the notetaker doesn't join or isn't let in

This page covers two cases: the notetaker never joins your meeting, or it reaches the call and nobody lets it in.

If nobody lets the Groupthink notetaker into your call, the meeting is not captured at all. There is no transcript, no notes, and no recap. Nothing partial is saved.

Summary

• If nobody lets the notetaker into your call, the meeting is not captured at all: no transcript, no notes, and no recap.
• The notetaker waits at least 10 minutes, and up to 25, and stops once your meeting was scheduled to end. If it is still waiting about a minute after it asked to join, we email the host to let it in.
• If you cannot admit it, ask the meeting owner to admit it, or record privately through the desktop app with Private with App, where there is no waiting room.
• If the notetaker never reached the call, check that your calendar is connected, your attendance setting allows it to join, the event has a Google Meet, Zoom, or Teams link, and your workspace has an active trial or paid plan.
• The notetaker waits on an invite you have not answered when nobody else on it is a coworker or a contact, and it does not join a task block. Adding it to that event yourself still works.

When the Notetaker Does Not Join

A notetaker has to actually be on the call. Either set an attendance option under How should Groupthink attend your meetings?, or start one manually with Start Notetaker. See How the notetaker joins your meetings.

For a scheduled meeting, check that your calendar is connected, that your attendance setting allows the notetaker to join that meeting, that the event has a valid Google Meet, Zoom, or Teams link, and that your workspace has an active trial or paid plan.

The notetaker also waits on an invite you have not answered when nobody else on it is a coworker or a contact. See Unanswered invites from people you do not know. It also does not join a task block, a block only you are on that you made, even when the block has a video link. See Task blocks on your calendar. Adding the notetaker to that event yourself still works, in both cases.

If the notetaker reached the call but was left waiting outside it, see When the Notetaker Is Not Let In.

Unanswered invites from people you do not know

Groupthink waits on a calendar invite when both of these are true:

• You have not answered it.
• Nobody else on the invite is a member of your workspace or one of your contacts.

While it waits, Groupthink does not create an agenda for the event, the notetaker does not join, and the people on the invite are not added to your contacts. This keeps a spam invite from turning into a meeting and new contacts.

Accept the invite in your calendar, or answer maybe, and all of that happens with no extra step. If you want notes without answering, add the notetaker to that event yourself. See Add It to One Meeting.

Meetings you organize are never held. Unanswered invites that include a coworker or a contact work as before.

Task blocks on your calendar

A block on your calendar that only you are on, and that you made, is a task, not a meeting. See Task blocks for how Groupthink tells them apart.

The notetaker does not join a task block on its own, whatever your attendance setting, even Automatically Join All Meetings. A video link on the block does not change this. Google Calendar adds a Meet link to many events you make, so a to-do block often has one.

If you want notes on a task block, add the notetaker to that event yourself. See Add It to One Meeting. A block someone else is on is a meeting.

Why a calendar block was not recorded, and when auto-start does not start notes: see Reference.

When the Notetaker Is Not Let In

This is the most common reason a meeting comes back empty. The notetaker did reach your call. It asked to be let in, waited outside, and was never admitted, so it never heard anything.

If the notetaker never reached the call at all, the cause is something else, such as an invite you have not answered from people you do not know. See When the Notetaker Does Not Join.

What happens

When your call uses a waiting room, a lobby, or host admission, the Groupthink notetaker arrives and asks to join like any other guest. It appears in the participant list under your name followed by "'s notetaker", for example Dana Lee's notetaker, unless you set a different name under Settings, Meetings, Bot identity. See User Settings.

Someone already in the meeting has to admit it. If the notetaker is still waiting about a minute after it asked to join, we email the host to let it in. Until that happens the notetaker hears nothing at all, so there is nothing to transcribe and nothing to summarize. Groupthink does not produce a partial recap from the part of the meeting it missed, because it did not capture any of it.

The notetaker does not wait forever. It waits at least 10 minutes, and up to 25, and it stops once your meeting was scheduled to end. After that it gives up and the meeting is marked as one Groupthink could not capture. In most cases we then email you to say the notetaker could not get in.

If you are the meeting organizer

Watch for the admission prompt at the start of the call and let the notetaker in. On most platforms this appears as a notification asking you to admit a waiting participant. Admit the Groupthink notetaker from the lobby when it requests to join, the same way you would admit any other guest.

The prompt is easy to miss when the meeting is already underway and people are talking, so it is worth checking the waiting room once after the first minute or two, before anything you want captured has been said.

If you are not the organizer

You may not be able to admit the notetaker yourself. Whether a non-host can let a guest in depends on the conferencing platform and on how that specific meeting was set up, so it is not something Groupthink can change from our side.

If you cannot admit it, you have two options:

1. Ask the meeting owner to admit the notetaker. Whoever is hosting can let it in, and once it is in, everything from that point forward is captured normally.
2. Record privately through the desktop app instead. The Private with App option records the call through the Groupthink desktop app on your own machine. Nothing joins the call, so there is no waiting room to get past and nobody needs to admit anything. See Privately Recording Meetings and Capture a Meeting Without a Visible Bot.

Option 2 is the reliable fix if you regularly sit in meetings you do not host.

What the Meeting Looks Like in Groupthink

The meeting is still there, but its recap page has no summary and no transcript on it.

In lists of past meetings, such as Recaps in the sidebar, the meeting has a No recap badge, so you can spot it without opening it.

Once the notetaker was never admitted, no notes are coming, and the page says so. It reads No notes for this meeting, followed by a sentence with the reason, for example "Groupthink was still waiting to be let into your video conference when the meeting ended, so there is no transcript or recap." The exact wording depends on what happened in the call. That is the terminal message. Nothing more will appear, and there is nothing to re-run.

If instead the page still says Processing meeting notes..., give it longer than you might expect. Most recaps land within about half a minute, but roughly one in seven takes ten minutes or more. You do not need to watch a clock. The page keeps checking for as long as Groupthink is still working on the recap, and it tells you when it is done, whether or not it found anything.

Recovering the Meeting You Already Lost

The conversation itself is not lost to your relationship history. If you have notes or a transcript from any other source, you can log them against the meeting and Groupthink will read them. See Recover Your Notes When the Notetaker Misses a Meeting.

Reference

Why a Calendar Block Was Not Recorded

Why didn't Groupthink record my calendar block? If only you are on it and you made it, Groupthink treats it as a task block, not a meeting, and never starts notes on it by itself. The same goes for an event that only you are on with no video link, and for an event Groupthink reads as in person with no video link, such as a concert with a friend, even when other people are on it: there is no call to join. If it is a call, click Mark as a call on its card on Today, and opening its agenda page while it runs starts notes on their own again. Open its agenda page and start notes yourself if you want them.

When Auto-Start Does Not Start Notes

• When a start link does not start notes. If you opened a ?start=1 link and notes did not start, a grey note on the agenda page may say why: the event is a task on your calendar and not a meeting, or notes for this event already ended. Either way, you can still start notes yourself on the agenda page. When notes would have started on their own and did not, the page shows no note.
• No meeting link, no bot. If the notetaker would need to join but the meeting has no video link, nothing starts and the page says "There is no meeting link to record. Start the call in your conferencing app first, or start notes manually to use a Groupthink room."

For when auto-start runs at all, see Auto-Start Recording.

Frequently Asked Questions

What name does the notetaker use in the waiting room? By default it uses your name followed by "'s notetaker", for example Dana Lee's notetaker. If you set a display name under Settings, Meetings, Bot identity, it uses that instead. If your profile has no name, it appears as Groupthink.

Will I get a partial recap of the part it did attend? No. If the notetaker was never admitted it captured nothing, so there is no partial transcript and no partial summary. If it was admitted late, you get everything from the moment it was let in onward, but nothing said before that.

How long will the notetaker wait? At least 10 minutes and at most 25, and it stops once your meeting was scheduled to end. Admitting it late still works, and you get the rest of the meeting from that point.

Is there a setting that makes it get admitted automatically? Not in Groupthink. Admission is controlled by your conferencing platform and by the settings on that meeting, not by anything on the Groupthink side. If you want capture that never depends on being admitted, use Private with App desktop recording instead.

Does this affect private desktop recordings? No. A private desktop recording runs on your own machine and never joins the call as a participant, so there is no waiting room involved.

Getting Help

Still not sure why a meeting came back empty? Email us at support@groupthink.com and we can look at that specific meeting.

Related

• How the notetaker joins your meetings
• Recover Your Notes When the Notetaker Misses a Meeting
• Troubleshooting Private Meeting Recording
• Google Meet
• Zoom
• Microsoft Teams
• Known Issues