Fireflies

What is Fireflies?

Fireflies (or Fireflies.ai) is an AI-driven meeting assistant that uses natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms to actively listen, analyze, and summarize meeting conversations in real-time.

This cutting-edge tool can be integrated with popular virtual meeting platforms, allowing it to seamlessly join and record meetings. As the conversation unfolds, Fireflies.ai identifies key phrases, sentiment, and intent, distilling complex discussions into actionable insights, decisions, and tasks.

Its advanced capabilities enable it to distinguish between speakers, detect follow-up items, and even provide personalized recaps, making it an invaluable resource for teams seeking to streamline meeting workflows, enhance collaboration, and boost productivity.

Core Features

Fireflies offers a range of features to enhance your meeting experience and productivity.

• Transcription and Organization:
  • Accurate Transcription: Generate meeting transcripts with over 90% accuracy
  • Centralized Repository: Store all your online conversations in one place
  • Meeting Organization: Maintain an organized record of your meetings
• Search and Discovery:
  • Smart Search: Search by keywords, themes, dates, times, metrics, questions, and sentiment
  • Custom Topic Tracking: Automatically find discussions on specific topics
• Collaboration and Sharing:
  • Collaborative Annotation: Leave comments and reactions on transcripts for easy reference
  • Shareable Soundbites: Turn important call segments into shareable snippets (short audio quotes)
  • Seamless Integration: Embed transcripts and audio players in tools like Notion, Medium, and Salesforce, and sync with existing work platforms
• Productivity and Insights:
  • Effortless Content Creation: Turn meetings into shareable content
  • Quick Review: Review lengthy meetings in just a few seconds
  • Actionable Insights: Derive actionable insights from conversations
• Security and Accessibility:
  • Security and Access Control: Control who can view and receive meeting recaps, ensuring utmost privacy and security
  • Capture from Anywhere: Seamlessly capture voice conversations wherever you need it
  • Privacy: Ensure utmost privacy and security of your data
  • Content Extraction: Extract information from lengthy documents and web pages in seconds

Pros & Cons

Pros	Cons
Increased Productivity: Fireflies saves time and effort by automating meeting transcription, allowing users to focus on more important tasks.	Cost: Fireflies may be a significant expense, particularly for small businesses or individuals with limited budgets.
Improved Collaboration: The platform facilitates teamwork and communication by providing a shared space for meeting notes and discussions.	Steep Learning Curve: Some users may find the platform’s features and functionality overwhelming, requiring time to adjust and maximize its potential.
Reduced Meeting Fatigue: Fireflies’ quick review feature helps users rapidly grasp meeting content, reducing the mental fatigue associated with lengthy meetings.	Dependence on Internet Connectivity: The platform requires a stable internet connection, which can be a limitation in areas with poor connectivity.
Automatic Meeting Recording: Fireflies automatically connects with calendar meetings, ensuring all meetings are recorded and transcribed.	Data Overload: The platform’s centralized storage of meeting transcripts and recordings can lead to information overload if not managed effectively.
Scalability: The platform grows with your team, accommodating increasing meeting volumes and user numbers.	Security Risks: As with any platform handling sensitive meeting data, there is a risk of security breaches or data leaks if not properly secured.
Easy Integration: The platform integrates seamlessly with popular tools like Zoom, Google Meet, and Skype, streamlining workflows.	Transcript Accuracy: While Fireflies boasts high accuracy, there may be instances where transcripts require manual editing for optimal clarity.
Enhanced Decision-Making: With accurate and easily accessible meeting transcripts, users can make more informed decisions by referencing previous discussions.	Limited Free Version: The free version has limits, which may not be sufficient for larger teams or frequent meeting users.

Pricing

Category: Freemium

1. Free ($0)
   • Unlimited transcription, limited AI summaries, and 800 minutes of storage per seat
   • Basic support (email and chat)
   • Suitable for individuals starting out or with minimal meeting transcription needs
2. Pro ($10/mo (yearly) or $18/mo (monthly))
   • Unlimited transcription credits for transcribing meetings
   • Unlimited AI summaries
   • 8,000 minutes of storage per seat
   • Priority support (email, chat, and phone)
   • Suitable for individuals and small teams with regular meeting transcription needs
3. Business ($19/mo (yearly) or $29/mo (monthly))
   • Unlimited transcription credits for transcribing meetings
   • Unlimited AI summaries
   • Unlimited storage
   • Priority support (email, chat, and phone)
   • Advanced features like custom transcription and analytics
   • Suitable for fast-growing businesses with multiple teams and frequent meetings
4. Enterprise (Custom Pricing)
   • Unlimited transcription credits for transcribing meetings
   • Unlimited AI summaries
   • Unlimited storage
   • Priority support (email, chat, and phone)
   • Advanced features like custom transcription, analytics, and security controls
   • Dedicated customer success manager
   • Suitable for large-scale enterprises with complex meeting transcription needs

Getting Started with Fireflies

Signing Up

1. Visit the Fireflies website and click on “Get started for free” or navigate to app.fireflies.ai
2. You’ll be prompted to sign up by connecting your Google or Microsoft/Outlook calendar
3. Grant Fireflies the necessary permissions to access your calendar and meeting details
4. Fireflies will sync all your scheduled events moving forward

Setting Up Your Account

After signing in, you’ll want to customize your Fireflies account settings to tailor the experience:

1. Visit the Settings page from the left navigation menu
2. Auto-Join Settings
   • Specify which meetings you want Fireflies to automatically join based on criteria like meeting ownership, web conferencing links, or your company domain.
   • For example, you could set it to auto-join all events with a Google Meet or Zoom link
3. Email Settings
   • Choose who should receive email notifications containing meeting transcripts/summaries
   • You can opt to only send them to yourself or include other teammates as well
4. Privacy Settings
   • Control the level of access for viewing meeting recordings, transcripts, notes, and insights
   • You can make them private, share with meeting attendees, or open to your entire team/organization
5. Meeting Compliance
   • Enable automatic meeting disclaimer notifications to be sent at start of recorded sessions
   • Customize the notification text to align with your company policies or local regulations
6. Industry Settings
   • Set your industry type to optimize Fireflies’ speech recognition model for improved accuracy
   • For example, legal or medical domains with unique terminology
7. Custom Vocabulary
   • Upload a list of custom words, phrases, acronyms, etc. for Fireflies to learn
   • Especially helpful for technical jargon used within your company

Inviting Fireflies to Meetings

There are several ways to invite Fireflies’ AI assistant bot (“Fred”) to record your meetings:

Calendar Invites

1. When scheduling a new meeting on your calendar app, invite fred@fireflies.ai
2. Be sure to include the session’s web conferencing link or join details
3. Fireflies will automatically join that event to record based on your calendar connectivity

Auto-Join Settings

If you’ve enabled auto-join rules in your settings, Fireflies will automatically join meetings matching those criteria without any manual intervention required.

Add to Live Meeting

1. In the Fireflies dashboard, click the “Add to Live Meeting” button
2. Enter the meeting name, URL/link, and language
3. Click “Start Capturing”
4. Fireflies will instantly join the meeting in progress as a participant

This method allows you to dynamically invite Fireflies to any live session on the fly.

During Meetings

Meeting Roles & Notifications

Once Fireflies joins a meeting, all attendees will see “Fireflies.ai Notetaker” appear in the participant list. Fireflies will remain on mute and simply record the audio/video streams.

If enabled, attendees will also receive the meeting compliance notification indicating the session is being recorded by Fireflies.

As the meeting host/organizer, you maintain full control over Fireflies’ presence. You can remove it from the meeting at any time, which will stop any further recording and processing.

However, keep in mind that removing Fireflies from a meeting after a certain point will not delete any transcription or analysis that has already been processed up until that exit time.

Recording Capabilities

By default, Fireflies will record the audio streams of any meeting it joins. For Business/paid plan users, you can also enable video recording from the Settings page.

If enabled, Fireflies will capture both audio and video for an integrated multimedia experience. It can transcribe the audio while also allowing you to review the corresponding video recordings.

Meeting Duration

Fireflies can remain in a meeting for up to 2 hours by default from the scheduled start time. However, there are options if your sessions tend to run long:

• Use the “Add to Live Meeting” option to re-invite and extend Fireflies’ presence
• For videoconferencing platforms like Zoom and Google Meet, Fireflies will automatically extend its recording duration if the meeting runs over the scheduled time (no need to re-invite)

In the event you are running late to a scheduled meeting yourself, Fireflies will patiently wait up to 20-30 minutes for the host to start before exiting.

Fireflies can also record meetings where you are not in attendance, as long as it was invited via your calendar integration. This ensures no conversations get missed even if you can’t make it.

After Meetings

Your Fireflies Notebook

All of your recorded meetings will be compiled and stored in your personal Fireflies Notebook, accessible from the left navigation menu. Think of this as your unified knowledge base of conversations.

Within each meeting entry in the Notebook, you’ll find:

Transcripts

• Full AI-generated transcripts with speaker labels, timecodes, and searchable text
• Options to download in multiple formats like PDF, Word, transcript (.srt), and more
• Ability to edit, highlight, comment, and add discussion threads inline

Summaries

• AI-generated executive summaries analyzing the key discussion points
• Includes sections for top keywords, meeting overview, outline/agenda, bulleted notes, and action items
• Customizable summary templates and advanced prompting for summary fine-tuning

Media

• Easy access to review the original audio and video recordings
• Create shareable Soundbites with text and audio clips of important moments
• Build customizable Playlists combining Soundbites across multiple recordings

Smart Search

• Powerful search functionality goes beyond just keywords to track important insights
• Use AI filters to instantly find action items, company references, meeting sentiments, and more
• Get quantitative analytics on participant engagement like talk ratios and filler word usage

Ask AskFred

• Natural language AI assistant to ask questions about a specific meeting
• Get answers summarized and synthesized directly from the transcript
• Can also assist with writing tasks like email drafts or document summarization based on meeting context

My Feed

Your personalized Fireflies homepage with a feed highlighting key takeaways, decisions, and action items from across all your recent meetings. This allows you to easily review everything important without juggling between individual transcripts.

Chrome Extension

The Fireflies Chrome extension enables recording and transcription of Google Meet sessions directly within your browser. This is a great option if you don’t want the Fireflies bot visibly joining as a participant.

The extension allows you to capture meetings with a single click and then access the transcript and summary in your Fireflies Notebook as usual.

Getting Started

1. Install the Fireflies Chrome extension from the Google Web Store
2. Sign into the extension using your Fireflies account credentials
3. The extension will automatically detect when you join a Google Meet call

Recording Meetings

Once in a Google Meet session, you’ll see the Fireflies extension icon in your Chrome toolbar. Simply click it to start/stop recording that meeting.

You also have options to:

• Pause and resume recording
• Add a meeting title and details
• Adjust the audio output source

After the meeting, the recording will automatically sync to your Fireflies Notebook, where you can access the transcript, summary, analysis and other capabilities.

This keeps the actual meeting streamlined without additional participants while still enabling you to capture discussion details.

Mobile Apps & Recording In-Person Meetings

While Fireflies is optimized for capturing virtual meetings and collaboration, its capabilities extend to in-person conversations as well through its mobile apps for iOS and Android.

The Fireflies mobile app turns your smartphone into a portable voice recorder and transcription device. This allows you to capture things like:

• Client meetings or sales calls when out of the office
• Interviews, lectures, presentations, or events
• Contract negotiations or sensitive legal/HR discussions
• Brainstorming sessions or meetings without computer access
• Any voice conversation that needs to be recorded

Using the App

To start recording on the mobile app:

1. Open the Fireflies app and tap the “+” or “Transcribe” button
2. Select “Record Audio” and grant microphone permissions if prompted
3. Tap the red record button to begin capturing audio
4. Pause and resume recording as needed during the conversation
5. When finished, tap stop and provide a name for the recording
6. Tap “Upload” to sync the audio file to your Firefiles Notebook

You can monitor the sound levels during recording to ensure proper audio quality. The app also lets you view any previously uploaded recordings for that mobile device.

If you have an internet/data connection during recording, the audio will start uploading immediately for faster processing. Otherwise, it will sync to the cloud once a connection is available.

Reviewing Mobile Recordings

Once uploaded to your Fireflies workspace, mobile audio recordings function just like virtual meeting recordings in terms of:

• Receiving AI-generated transcripts and summaries
• Having the ability to create bookmarks, soundbites, comments
• Searching and analyzing the conversation
• Sharing or integrating into your existing apps and workflows

This ensures all your recorded meetings and discussions have a consolidated home in your Fireflies Notebook, regardless of whether they were captured virtually or in-person through the mobile apps.

AI-Powered Insights

In addition to providing comprehensive capture and logging of your meetings, Fireflies leverages artificial intelligence to generate insightful analysis:

Topic Tracking

• Define custom keywords, phrases, and topics important to your team
• Fireflies will automatically track anytime those get mentioned across all meetings
• Surface specific instances with precise details to quickly extract those insights

Conversation Intelligence

Get quantifiable metrics around conversational aspects like:

• Talk ratios between participants
• Use of filler words like “um” or “uhh”
• How long each person spoke uninterrupted
• Overall participation percentages

These insights can help make meetings more efficient and productive.

Collaboration Tools

Fireflies provides several collaboration features to share important discussions:

Comments & Threads

• Leave timestamped comments on specific parts of transcripts
• Start discussion threads around those comments to capture feedback and additional context

Sharing & Integrations

Fireflies makes it easy to share important meeting recordings, transcripts, notes and audio clips with teammates through several methods:

Email Sharing

1. From within a meeting transcript, select the “Share” option
2. Enter the recipient email addresses
3. Choose to share just the transcript, or include the audio recording as well
4. Add an optional message
5. Click “Send” to package and email everything

Link Sharing

You can also generate shareable links for meeting artifacts like:

• Transcript text
• Audio/video recordings
• Specific soundbite clips
• Summarized reports with notes

These links can then be distributed however you need, such as through messaging apps, document collaboration tools, etc.

Integrations

Fireflies has native integration capabilities with over 40 popular apps and cloud services across categories like:

Project Management:

• Asana
• Trello
• ClickUp
• Monday.com

CRMs:

• Salesforce
• HubSpot
• Pipedrive
• Zoho CRM

Dialers:

• Salesloft
• Outreach.io
• RingCentral

Messaging/Collaboration:

• Slack
• Microsoft Teams
• Cisco Webex
• Workplace by Meta

Storage:

• Dropbox
• Google Drive
• Box
• OneDrive

These integrations allow you to automatically sync and share meeting data, transcripts, recordings and more directly into the tools and workflows you already use.

For example:

• Log call recordings and notes to the appropriate contact/opportunity in your CRM
• Push meeting transcripts and audio to team messaging channels
• Create new Asana tasks from recorded action items
• Save meeting artifacts to cloud storage repositories
• And much more based on your specific integration needs

Zapier & API Access

In addition to the native integrations, Fireflies provides a Zapier connector that enables integration workflows with thousands of additional cloud apps.

The Fireflies API also allows developers to build custom integrations and apps tailored to their organization’s processes, security policies and data sharing requirements.

Overall, these integration capabilities ensure all your recorded meetings, discussions and conversational insights can seamlessly sync into your existing technology ecosystem instead of getting siloed in yet another standalone app.

User Groups

• Create custom groups within your Fireflies workspace
• Share specific meetings, transcripts, soundbites and more with just that group
• Great for segregating conversations relevant to particular teams, projects or clients

Advanced Tips & Customization

Set Meeting Exclusion Rules

While the auto-join setting is convenient, there may be certain meetings you want to exclude Fireflies from joining automatically. The Meeting Rules section allows you to:

• Specify keywords to look for in the meeting title/description
• If Fireflies detects those keywords, it will not attempt to auto-join that event
• For example, block events containing keywords like “draft,” “unlisted,” or “briefing”

This gives you added control over Fireflies’ presence instead of an all-or-nothing auto-join approach.

Custom Bot Name

By default, Fireflies will appear in your meetings as “Fireflies.ai Notetaker.” However, you can request a custom display name for an additional fee:

• $5 per month for the first 5 users to use the same custom name
• $5 per month per additional user for unique custom names

Having a consistent name like “Novafai Notetaker” provides a more cohesive experience.

Zoom Native Integration

For paid Zoom users, you can set up Fireflies’ native Zoom integration to bypass having the bot visibly join meetings. Instead of showing in the participant list, Fireflies will leverage Zoom’s cloud recording capability to transcribe sessions.

To enable this:

1. Go to Integrations in your Fireflies settings
2. Find the Zoom Native integration tile and click Connect
3. Sign into your Zoom account and grant permissions
4. During Zoom meetings, select Record to the Cloud

After the meeting, Fireflies will process the cloud recording and sync the transcripts/analysis back to your workspace.

Private Cloud Storage

For teams dealing with sensitive data, Fireflies offers an optional Private Storage add-on to isolate your audio recordings and transcripts in a dedicated virtual private cloud.

This bank-level cloud storage is encrypted at rest and during data transit to provide an extra layer of security compliance.

Optimizing Transcription Accuracy

To get the highest quality transcription and analysis from Fireflies, follow these best practices:

• Use high-quality microphones and ensure clear audio
• Minimize cross-talk interruptions and background noise
• Speak clearly and avoid using excessive filler words
• Provide Fireflies with relevant custom vocabulary lists
• Set your industry type to customize the speech recognition model
• Record meetings via Fireflies whenever possible (rewatch pixel recordings)

Compliance & Security

Fireflies has robust security certifications (GDPR, SOC 2 Type II) and employs encryption protocols to protect your data. It is designed with privacy in mind, giving you full control:

• Set granular access permissions for meetings/transcripts
• Customize meeting join/exit notifications and disclaimers
• Leverage private cloud storage or self-hosted deployment options 
• Prevent indexed data while adhering to data residency policies

Conclusion

In today’s fast-paced business landscape, where valuable information is often lost in the flurry of meetings and discussions, Fireflies emerges as a game-changing solution.

By harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and natural language processing, this innovative platform streamlines meeting workflows, enhances collaboration, and unlocks new realms of productivity.

Fireflies’ ability to transcribe meetings accurately, generate insightful summaries, and provide actionable insights empowers teams to focus on what truly matters – making informed decisions and driving meaningful progress. With its seamless integration capabilities, Fireflies seamlessly blends into existing technology stacks, ensuring that critical conversations and outcomes are readily accessible across various tools and platforms.

Moreover, Fireflies’ commitment to security and compliance ensures that sensitive data remains safeguarded, alleviating concerns about privacy breaches. Its flexible pricing plans and customization options cater to diverse organizational needs, making it accessible to individuals, small businesses, and large enterprises alike.

As the demand for efficient communication and effective knowledge management continues to grow, Fireflies positions itself as a pioneering force, revolutionizing the way teams capture, analyze, and leverage the wealth of information exchanged during meetings.

By embracing this cutting-edge technology, organizations can unlock new levels of productivity, foster seamless collaboration, and gain a competitive edge in an increasingly dynamic business environment.