What meeting templates are and what they are made of

Every summary Sally writes follows a meeting template. The template decides which sections the summary has, in which order they appear and what Sally looks for in each of them. A daily needs blockers, a sales call needs the customer's needs, and an interview needs the candidate's answers.

The template is where you tailor your summaries to your own work. You decide what goes in and what Sally leaves out.

You do not have to build anything to get started. Every account already has the General Meeting template, and this article shows you what it contains, where to find it and which parts of a template you can change later.

Quick navigation

1. Finding your templates
2. What a section is made of
3. Versions and the live template
4. Preview and test
5. Managing templates and categories

1. Finding your templates

1. Open Settings at the bottom of the left sidebar.

Figure 1: Open Settings

2. In the sidebar on the left, under Configuration, pick Meeting templates.

Figure 2: The Meeting templates entry in the sidebar, here already open

3. The overview lists every template you can use. In a new account that is exactly one, General Meeting. Your categories are on the left, the templates themselves on the right. The two tabs at the top switch between Meeting templates and the Section library.

Figure 3: The overview in a new account, the two tabs at the top, the only template on the right

General Meeting is Sally's default template and it is in every account. The footer of the card shows who owns it and how often it has been used. Sally's own templates are read-only, so you cannot change them directly. What you can do is duplicate one and edit the copy.

Figure 4: General Meeting is in every account

Who can change what

Templates that belong to you carry the label You. Templates that were shared with you show the team or the organization account instead, and whether you may edit them depends on your role there. How you decide who gets to see a template at all, only you, one team or the whole organization, is covered in Sharing a template.

2. What a section is made of

A section is one block in the finished summary, for example Summary, Topics, Decisions or Tasks. Here is how to look inside one.

1. Click the card of a template. Under Sections you see every section in the order it will appear in the summary.

Figure 5: The sections of a template in the order they will appear

2. Click one of the sections in that list. A panel with its settings opens on the right. Each section has a title, which becomes the heading in your summary, and a prompt, which is the instruction Sally follows. Under Output you decide how much detail Sally writes, whether it adds timestamps and which format the result is in, HTML or Markdown.

Figure 6: Every section has a title, a prompt and its output settings

Four sections come with their prompt already written: Summary, Topics, Decisions and Tasks. You can take those as they are. For Custom list and Free text you write the prompt yourself. Sections and the section library covers that in detail.

What Sally draws on while writing

Sally writes every section only from what is available about the meeting: the transcript, the linked calendar event, Sally taking part in the online meeting and your settings. Slides, the chat or earlier meetings are not part of it. The full list and tips for your prompts are in What Sally knows when generating.

3. Versions and the live template

Next to the template name you always see its state, and below it the version that is live right now, for example Published and Version 1.1 is live. The published version is the live one: it is the version your meetings actually use.

Figure 7: State and live version sit right next to the name

You can still change a template at any time. With the first change, Sally creates a working copy in the background and saves every further change automatically. The name then shows Unpublished changes. Summaries written in the meantime keep using the live version. Only when you click Publish do your changes become the new live version. Editing and publishing a template walks through it step by step.

An existing summary does not change on its own

A new version only applies to meetings that are summarized from that point on. A meeting Sally has already summarized keeps its summary until you put a template on it yourself. She then writes the summary again from the existing transcript, and the previous wording is replaced. Applying a template shows where to do that.

4. Preview and test

Before a real meeting relies on your template, you can test it against a recording you already have. That way you see the result up front.

1. In the overview, click the card of the template and switch to the Preview tab at the top. If you have tested the template before, the field shows the recording you tested last, together with its latest result. Nothing is generated again. The info icon next to Preview & test explains what you see: always the current state of the template with every unpublished change, not the published version.

Figure 8: The preview shows the current state with every change

2. Click into the field and pick the recording you want to test with. Sally lists your recordings with their dates, and the ones you already tested carry last tested on. If you pick a recording you haven't tested yet, the test starts right away. For a tested one, Sally shows the existing result.

Figure 9: Picking a recording starts the test on it

3. To generate a result again, click Generate preview or Regenerate to the right of the field. It usually takes about a minute, because Sally generates several sections at the same time. After that the sections of the template appear one below the other, each with the text Sally worked out from that recording. A click on an entry expands it.

Figure 10: The result shows what the template makes of this recording

If you change the template afterwards, the previous result stays in place. A note above it tells you that it belongs to an earlier state. Regenerate shows you the current one.

The recording itself stays untouched, so this is a safe way to check whether your prompts really deliver what you had in mind.

5. Managing templates and categories

The overview is where you manage individual templates and organize your categories. There are two places for that.

1. Click the three dots in the top right of a template card. The menu shows every action for that template.

Figure 11: The actions for a single template

• Edit opens the details of the template: title, description, category and visibility.
• Add to favorites puts the template at the top of your overview so you find it faster.
• Duplicate creates an editable copy. This is the way to start from one of Sally's templates.
• Export saves the template as a file. Export and import explains what you can do with it.
• Deactivate takes a template out of use without deleting it.
• Delete removes it permanently. A template that is already in use cannot be deleted, only deactivated.

2. Click the gear icon above the category list on the right. That opens Manage categories.

Figure 12: The gear icon is above the category list

Categories are just for order in the overview: create them, rename them, drag them into the order you want. Click the folder icon in front of a category name and pick your own icon from the grid. That makes the categories easier to tell apart at a glance. A category has to be empty before you can delete it.

Figure 13: Categories keep the overview tidy

Not sure where to start?

If you only want a better structure quickly, take a look at Sally's ready-made templates first. There are 30 of them, and copying one into your own account takes two clicks.