# Linking external participants to members

Sometimes the **Meetings** area shows a prompt at the top like "**was an external participant in 1 conversation — link with the member?**". This page explains what's behind it and what happens when you click.

## Internal and external participants

A participant in a meeting is stored in one of two ways:

- **Member** — linked to a real Lalabase user account (a project or organisation member).
- **External participant** — just a **name without an account**. This happens when you type a name in freely while capturing the meeting, or the AI picks up a speaker from the transcript.

So the difference isn't "belongs to the company or not", it's simply: **connected to an account, or just a loose name**.

## Why the prompt appears

Lalabase continually compares the names of external participants with the names of active members in your organisation. When an external name matches a member's name exactly, Lalabase suggests merging the two. This typically happens when you yourself — or a colleague — were captured in a meeting as a plain name instead of being picked from the member list.

The prompt only appears for meetings you are allowed to **edit**.

## What happens when you link

When you click **Link**, Lalabase assigns all matching external participant entries to the member:

- The **displayed name stays unchanged** — only the internal link to the account is added.
- The participation then counts as "this member was there": the person shows up in the **All participants** filter as a member, no longer as a loose name.
- **No content** is changed, no permissions are granted, nothing is deleted.

If you choose **Don't link**, Lalabase remembers that decision and the prompt won't reappear for that pairing. The loose name stays exactly as it was.

<div class="docs-callout docs-callout--tip">
  <div class="docs-callout__title">Better to capture it right away</div>
  <p>To avoid the prompt entirely, pick team members from the participant suggestion list when creating a meeting, instead of typing their name in freely.</p>
</div>

A link can be changed again later via **Edit conversation** in the participants field. How to create a meeting and add participants is covered in [Meetings: capturing conversations](https://lalabase.com/docs/en/guides/meetings/basics).