# Meetings: capturing conversations

The **Meetings** area lets you capture client calls, phone conversations and meetings as their own work object — with notes or a transcript, participants and an optional AI summary. That way conversation outcomes stay findable instead of getting lost in scattered notes.

A meeting documents a conversation that **has already happened** — it is **not a calendar** and not for scheduling. You plan upcoming appointments in your usual calendar; in Lalabase you capture the outcome afterwards: what was discussed, with whom, and what follows from it.

## Creating a meeting

1. Open **All Meetings** from the sidebar.
2. Click the **plus** in the top right.
3. Choose the **project** the conversation belongs to. The form appears below it.
4. Give it a **title** and pick a **date & time** (default: now), plus an optional **duration**.
5. Add **notes** and/or paste a **transcript** from your recording tool.
6. Save. The new meeting is then at the top of the list. If a filter is active that it does not match, the message tells you it was created and is only hidden.

If you are already working inside a project, there is a shorter way: **Meetings** in the project navigation opens that project's own list. The plus there creates straight away, without asking for a project, and the saved conversation opens in the detail view.

<div class="docs-callout docs-callout--warning">
  <div class="docs-callout__title">Don't forget consent</div>
  <p>Recording and transcribing a conversation requires the participants' consent. Obtaining it is your responsibility.</p>
</div>

## Adding participants

In the participants field you pick **team members** directly from the suggestion list — the participation is then linked to that account. Names of people without an account (client contacts, for example) you type in freely; they are kept as **external participants**. If a transcript is present, the AI can detect the speakers automatically on request (**Detect participants with AI**).

What to do when a name captured as external actually belongs to a team member is covered in [Linking external participants to members](https://lalabase.com/docs/en/guides/meetings/external-participants).

The participant list also drives how the transcript is displayed: speaker lines such as "Samira:" are shown in bold as soon as the name matches a captured participant. If someone is missing from the list, their lines stay plain. Add that person as a participant, and their turns will be highlighted too.

## AI summary

If AI is enabled and configured for your organisation, **Generate summary** produces a compact overview of the key points. You can regenerate it at any time.

## Booking time on a meeting

Below the title you see the time already booked on the meeting. Click it to open the form; while nothing is booked yet, it reads **Log effort …**. You enter the time on the left and see the entries booked so far on the right. How those times are billed later is covered in [Billing time](https://lalabase.com/docs/en/guides/billing/bill-time).

## Making it findable in search & chat

When saving, enable **Release for search & chat** so that notes and transcript become findable through search and searches in the AI assistant for every project member with meeting read access. Removing the release ends this discoverability.

Separately, you can explicitly select an open meeting as a reference using **Ask assistant**. **Create analysis** beside saved analyses and **Derive tasks** beside ticket suggestions open that same assistant in the matching mode without submitting anything. With meeting read access, the assistant can read notes and transcript even without a search release. Selecting a reference does not release it for search or change the meeting or its saved analyses. The fixed AI summary keeps its own button. See [Meetings in the assistant](https://lalabase.com/docs/en/guides/ai/assistant#meetings).

## Filters, saved views and columns

In a project's meeting list, **All meetings** is the base view. Add filters for participants, meeting date, creator, creation date or last update. A participant condition can match any, all or none of the selected names. Combine conditions and remove them individually.

Search offers **Title only** and **Title and content**. Content search also covers notes, transcripts and summaries. The project list searches every meeting you can read, regardless of whether it is released for searches in AI chat. Meetings are listed only under **Meetings**; **Knowledge** contains notes and files.

Save your selection as a named view. Its menu lets you edit conditions, reset changes or open the **expert filter**. A view without conditions is valid and shows all readable meetings within its scope. Meeting views appear only here, not under **Knowledge**. Editing a shared view requires edit permission for that view.

Use the **column picker** to select and reorder information. The title always remains visible. Pinned columns remain readable when the list narrows beside an open meeting. The base view stores your personal selection; saved views can have their own columns. Applying columns to all your views preserves each view's existing pins.

Opening and closing a meeting preserves the search, filters, sorting and page. The organisation-wide **All meetings** overview in the sidebar retains its own search and existing filters.