Take live notes

To capture real-time notes, go ahead and:

1. Create a Session in Condens before the interview starts.

2. Next, click Start live note taking — this will open a minimal popup window where you can jot down anything you deem note-worthy, and the Session will display that live note taking is in progress. Please bear in mind that only one live note-taking instance can be active per Session at a time.

   

3. If you want to collaboratively take live notes, your colleagues can open the same Session in Condens, and then click Join live note taking session button.

4. Simply type your observation and press Enter on your keyboard. Each note is automatically time-stamped, labeled by author, and can be color-coded.

5. Once you’re finished, look for the End live note taking session in the upper-right corner of the window.

6. Sync with the recording:

   • If you’re using Zoom for your recordings, your notes will sync automatically.

   • For any other recording tool, click Upload or import recording. This will prompt a popup modal with the standard toggles for transcription, anonymization, and generating bookmarks, with the added option of syncing your live notes to match the starting time of the recording (this equals the moment when you pressed the record button, regardless of what happened in the recording, e.g. silence or waiting periods).

Once the recording is processed, your notes will appear in the and alongside . They’re visually slightly different to help you distinguish them easily from the transcript and auto-generated bookmarks.

You can easily control the visibilty of your notes in Bookmarks by clicking the three-dot menu in the upper-right corner. From there, you can use the toggle filter to show or hide notes, bookmarks, or both.

For each note, you can edit its:

• Text

• Timestamp (click on it to change manually, or drag it to another part of the transcript and the timestamp will adjust the time on its own)

• Color (click on the timestamp to change).

You can export your time stamped notes along with your transcript. To do so, click on the three-dot menu in the upper-right corner of the recording, and click .

• Who can edit notes?
  Currently, only Contributors can edit notes (their own or others').

• What if I type a note but hit 'Enter' a few seconds late?
  No problem. You can click on the timestamp of any note after you've sent it (or later in the transcript) to adjust the time manually so it aligns perfectly with the moment.

• Does this work with Ask Your Sessions?
  Yes. Condens AI takes your time-stamped notes into consideration when answering questions via Ask Your Sessions, providing richer context to the answers.

• Can I keep my live notes private from other teammates?
  Currently, Live Note-taking is collaborative, meaning anyone with access to the Session who joins the live note-taking view can see the notes being added in real-time.

• Does live note-taking record the call for me?
  No. This feature is strictly for taking notes. You still need to record the audio/video using your preferred tool (Zoom, Teams, etc.) and upload it to Condens later.

• Can I use this with Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, or in-person sessions?
  Yes! Since the note-taking happens in a browser window, it works alongside any recording tool. Just remember to note the exact time of day you started recording so you can sync them up later.

• Does live notetaking also mean live analysis or observation rooms?
  Live Notetaking is designed for capturing observations and remarks quickly, and does not in any way stream the video call itself.