Capture your first meeting with Granola and review AI-generated notes.
Use when testing Granola setup, learning the interface,
or understanding how meeting capture works.
Trigger with phrases like "granola hello world", "first granola meeting",
"granola test", "granola quick start", "try granola".
Capture your first meeting with Granola and learn the three-phase workflow: live notepad, Enhance Notes, and Granola Chat. Granola captures audio from your device (no bot joins), transcribes it, and merges your typed notes with the full transcript to produce structured output.
Prerequisites
Completed granola-install-auth setup
Calendar connected with an upcoming meeting (or create a test one)
Microphone + Screen & System Audio permissions granted
Instructions
Step 1 — Start a Meeting
Join any video call — Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Slack Huddle, or WebEx
Granola auto-detects the meeting from your synced calendar
A floating notepad appears showing the meeting title and attendees
If auto-detection fails, click the Granola icon in your menu bar and select Start Recording
Step 2 — Take Live Notes in the Notepad
During the meeting, type rough notes directly in the Granola notepad:
- discussed Q1 priorities
- sarah owns onboarding revamp
- need design review by thursday
- budget question - follow up with finance
These notes give Granola context. The AI uses your notes plus the full transcript to produce better output — you do not need to capture everything.
Step 3 — End Meeting and Enhance
End your video call
Granola processes the transcript (typically 1-2 minutes)
Click Enhance Notes — Granola merges your notes with the transcript
Select a template (or use the default) to structure the output
Step 4 — Review Enhanced Output
Granola produces structured notes based on your template:
# Team Standup — March 22, 2026
## Summary
Discussed Q1 priorities. Agreed to focus on customer onboarding
improvements. Sarah will lead the initiative with a design review
by Thursday.
## Key Decisions
- Onboarding revamp is the top priority for Q1
- Budget approval needed from Finance before expanding scope
## Action Items
- [ ] @sarah: Schedule design review meeting by Thursday
- [ ] @mike: Create onboarding improvement tickets in Linear
- [ ] @alex: Follow up with Finance on budget allocation
## Participants
Sarah Chen, Mike Johnson, Alex Kim
Step 5 — Use Granola Chat
After enhancement, use the chat panel to ask questions about the meeting:
"List my action items"
"Draft a follow-up email to the attendees"
"What were the open questions?"
"Summarize the budget discussion"
Granola Chat has full context of the transcript and your notes.
Step 6 — Use Recipes for Repeatable Prompts
Type / in Granola Chat to invoke Recipes — saved prompts for common tasks:
/standup — extract blockers and progress updates
/follow-up — draft a follow-up email
/action-items — list all action items with owners
Create custom recipes for your team's workflows
Output
Complete meeting notes with AI-generated summary
Key decisions and action items extracted with owners
Full searchable transcript (expandable in the note)
Granola Chat available for post-meeting queries
Tips for Better Notes
Type key points during the meeting — even rough notes dramatically improve output
State names when assigning actions — "Action item: Sarah will schedule the review"
Use explicit action language — "We decided...", "Next step is..."
Summarize decisions verbally — the AI picks up on decision language
One speaker at a time — reduces transcription errors
Error Handling
Error
Cause
Fix
No transcript generated
Wrong audio device selected
Check System Settings > Sound > Input matches your meeting audio
Meeting not detected
Calendar event missing video link
Add Zoom/Meet/Teams link to event, or manually start recording
