🍪 #9: A way to creating actionable meeting summaries

A small tool that saves me hours on Windows and the new Dune trailer.

Dec 20, 2023

Hi,

and welcome again to Little Bites, my weekly bite on productivity, apps, tech, …

This week I would like to talk about a way I found to get a meeting summary without a Teams “Copilot” license, a small tool that saves me hours on Windows and the new Dune trailer.

Happy reading,
Steven

Reading time: 5 minutes to chew through.

👋 I'm on Threads!!

Last week marks the point of where Threads access was enabled for European users and following this announcement, I created my account. With global users already on board and the link to Instagram, it feels less like an “empty” space and currently still has a great and positive vibe.

I'll be "threading (?)" about similar topics as this newsletter, so anything tech, AI, iOS, apps,...

Follow me at https://www.threads.net/@s_gobino

🤖 Getting a meeting summary without a Teams Copilot license

🏷️ AI

We're fully emerged in the Microsoft ecosystem at my company.
Microsoft is pushing AI in every tool they have available, so more and more of these AI features are being tested to see if they provide us with some value.

Of course, all of these features are not available to everyone yet, as they come with at a "hefty" monthly cost, so only the lucky few can test-drive them. Like Copilot for Teams, which allows you to get a summary of a meeting, including the most important discussion points and actions.

Unfortunately, I'm not one of the lucky few. So for a recent webinar I did, I had to figure out my method of getting a summary via another way.
With some thinking, I was able to, without too much hassle.

And, the result was remarkably good.

All you need is the meeting transcript and Copilot on Microsoft Edge.

So how can you get a meeting summary?

Extract your meeting document and save it as a PDF document
Open the document in Microsoft Edge and open Copilot in the top right corner
Prompt Copilot to generate a summary of the document with timestamps. Depending on the type of meeting, you can ask for an overview of tasks and decisions or an outline of the main chapters.
If needed, ask for adjustments

In the example of my summary, I asked for a summary including timestamps of the main chapters where I also provided a list of these main chapters.

It's not perfect, but results are generated easily without too much manual work.

Note: While I explained the process for the transcript of Teams and using Copilot on Microsoft Edge, this could be done with any other meeting transcript and AI service that allows you to upload or open the document, like Perplexity AI for example.

Do keep in mind to be cautious about the documents that you ask an AI to process. Make sure to only use "trusted" tools when working with private and secure documents.

Have you tried something similar?
Or do you have other tips?

A simple tool that saves me a lot of time on Windows

🏷️Windows

I spend a lot of time behind a computer and in this often have to reference the same information, like email, URLs, specific texts, and emojis,...
And there are few solutions to this. For starters, you can do it all manually, or you can copy it into a document and copy/paste it from there.
But wouldn't it be easier to use some kind of text replacement, that by typing something, it automatically gets replaced by what you need?

When you're on a Mac, iPad or iPhone, you're in luck as this is already system-integrated.
On Windows, unfortunately not. It seems that Microsoft is too busy with AI to implement such a simple yet time-saving tool.

Luckily, there are tools for this, and Espanso is such a tool.
It's something you install and forget, but in return provides you with a huge time-saving.

Have a look at this video of Nicole van der Hoeven (who is also a great resource when it comes to Personal Knowledge Management with Obsidian)

To get started, head on over to Espanso, download and install the correct version.
Afterwards, locate the folder in which Espanso is installed, and open this folder with a text/code editor, for example, Sublime Text as I'm using.
Open the base.yml file and start adding triggers and text replacements as you need.

For example:

- trigger: ":br"
  replace: "Best Regards,\nJon Snow"

Text replacements can be as simple or as complicated as you want them to be. More of these can be found in the Help section of Espanso or check the above video.

Sublime Text showing some examples I’m using

🎬 Dune: Part Two Trailer

I normally don't go to the movies very often, but was happy I did with Dune: Part One. The visuals and sounds are a big portion of what makes Dune so great and viewing it on the big screen really immerses you into it all, providing an amazing experience.

After watching Part One, I committed myself to reading the whole series, and I'm well on my way into Dune Messiah.

With this knowledge, I'm very much looking forward to Dune: Part Two for which a new trailer was released last week.