Tired of choosing between actually participating in meetings and taking good notes? What if your notes could write themselves while you stay fully engaged?

When you’re in an online meeting, how do you take notes? Whether you’re attending a webinar or participating actively, typing during the meeting has real drawbacks. You lose eye contact with the camera. Your keyboard clacking disrupts others. You just don’t seem engaged when you should be listening and interacting. That’s why AI notetakers have become so popular.

If you’re a paid Evernote subscriber, there’s a brand new option built right into Evernote.

Here’s how it works…

I add a meeting to my Google Calendar, either by hand or by accepting an invitation. The meeting link is in the calendar entry.

When I open Evernote, I see Evernote Home. Front and center is my calendar, copied directly from Google Calendar. The meeting I just added appears here too, along with the meeting link.

I want to take notes during the meeting. When I hover over the meeting, I see an icon that lets me create a note. Click it, and there’s my note. The meeting title is already entered. Below the title is a gray box containing the calendar event information.

These capabilities have been in Evernote for a while. Here’s what’s new.

Introducing the notetaker… right inside Evernote

If I want an AI notetaker, I don’t have to go somewhere else and copy-paste results into Evernote. Within that note, I use a slash command and start typing “meeting.” After a few keystrokes, I see options for an in-person meeting or remote meeting. I’ll choose “remote meeting.”

The Evernote AI notetaker is now recording. It’s that easy. When I click “stop,” I see the audio and a button to transcribe it to text. Notice the dropdown that lets me turn on speaker recognition. During the meeting, different people speak, and it’s helpful to know who said what.

I click the transcribe button and watch the text appear. I can play the audio. I can download the audio. I can have Evernote summarize the audio.

Different speakers are identified by number initially. You’ll see them labeled as “Speaker 1,” “Speaker 2,” and so on. But you can change those to actual names. Highlight the text and overwrite it with the speaker’s name. You’ll see your change on that entry and on every entry for that speaker.

Now you have your verbatim transcript, the audio of the meeting, and a summary. All of it is right there in that one Evernote note connected to the calendar entry.

Sharing the notes

Does someone else need a copy of your notes? Click the share button in the upper right corner. Enter their email address and set the appropriate permissions. Or share with anyone who has the link.

Communicating with your digital task manager

With any meeting, you can expect action items. What do you need to do as a result of this meeting? How do you get that task into your to-do list and link it back to these notes?

Since 2013, I’ve used TaskClone. I type my to-do and put a checkbox in front of it. TaskClone creates a new task in Remember the Milk, my task list of choice. In the video demonstration, you’ll notice symbols after the task name. This is Remember the Milk language.

• The caret indicates a due date. In this case, I want this task due tomorrow.
• The exclamation point indicates priority.
• The hashtag indicates the tag.
• For the note section of that task, I enter two slashes followed by the text.

Here’s what appears in Remember the Milk…

In the video, you see the result in Remember The Milk. When I open that task, I see all the information. You also get a link back to the Evernote note.

Now, you’re done!

From entering the meeting on your calendar to having a complete set of notes to having follow-up tasks on your to-do list, it’s all handled. When the meeting is over, you can relax and move on with your day. No copying and pasting anywhere.

Part of ending my workday is reviewing the notes I’ve taken. If I click on Notes in the Evernote sidebar, I see a chronological listing of what’s new. This gives me one more chance to read through what happened during the day. It’s my chance to add information, clean up details, and ensure I’ve captured any follow-up tasks.

If you have a paid Evernote account, this meeting notetaker has been rolled out in beta.

So here’s my question for you: How often do you take notes during online meetings or webinars? Are you already paying for an online notetaker? While free options exist, they come with limits. You also have to harvest your notes from that notetaker and put them into your notes app. With Evernote, it’s all contained right here.

This article from Evernote provides a wealth of additional information.

Ready to transform how you handle meeting notes in Evernote? Try the AI notetaker on your next call and see how much more engaged you can be when you’re not scrambling to type everything. Your future self will thank you when you have crystal-clear notes and actionable tasks waiting for you.

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