Call recordings, transcripts, and summaries are useful in many business contexts, but you need to follow the recording laws in your region and in your attendees' regions. Legally, you are always responsible for getting consent, even when a tool does the recording for you.
This article explains how Fellow notifies attendees before and during a meeting, how to send an automatic pre-meeting disclosure email, and what to do if someone does not consent. It also covers best practices like consent disclaimers and admitting the Note Taker once everyone has joined.
Important note: if you are using botless recording it is up to you as the user to notify other participants that the call is being recorded.
Botless recording can be enabled or disabled by a workspace administrator at any time by visiting Workspace Settings > Recording > Recording methods > Desktop recording
How does Fellow notify meeting participants of the Note Taker recording the call?
Before the meeting
Fellow can notify attendees in two ways before the meeting starts.
Pre-meeting disclosure email
If recording disclosure is turned on, Fellow emails selected attendees one hour before an auto-recorded meeting to let them know it will be recorded. You can add custom text to this email. This is not a default setting, you'll need to configure it on a per-meeting series basis, or an Administrator on the Enterprise plan can configure this for your entire workspace under Workspace Settings.
See how to set up pre-meeting disclosure emails.
Fellow calendar
If the auto-record feature has been configured for this meeting, you'll see an indication within your Fellow calendar via the My Week page (A). Google Calendar users with the Fellow chrome extension will also be see the event description (B).
Note: if the Note Taker is manually invited to join this call, this will not appear.
A
B
During the meeting
You will be able to see that the Note Taker is about to join the meeting within your Fellow note:
The Fellow Note Taker will not record your call unless it is admitted by a participant or host. Once the Note Taker has been admitted, all present attendees will see 1) the Note Taker appear as a participant, and 2) a message explaining who invited the Note Taker to join and that the call is now being recorded.
For meeting participants who are in your Fellow workspace, you'll also see an indication within your Fellow note that the call is being recorded:
Zoom Native Capture
When using Zoom Native Capture (also known as Real-Time Media Streaming or RTMS), Fellow records your Zoom meetings directly through Zoom's native recording API rather than having a bot participant join the call.
This means that unlike bot-based recordings, participants won't see the Fellow Note Taker appear in the participant list or receive a chat message notifying them that Fellow is recording. However, it's important to note that Zoom's own native recording indicators will still appear to participants if your Zoom account has recording notifications enabled.
Because participants won't see Fellow's explicit notification, it's especially important to follow the best practices outlined in this article - including adding consent disclaimers to your calendar event descriptions and sending pre-meeting notifications - to ensure all participants are aware that the meeting is being recorded and have the opportunity to consent or object before the recording begins.
If a meeting participant does not consent to being recorded, how can the Note Taker be removed?
If you'd like to remove the Note Taker from your call, you can either remove the Note Taker as a participant or stop the recording from within your Fellow note.
Redaction
Enterprise Plan users can redact portions of the video and transcript permanently so they can no longer be viewed:
Check out this article for a step-by-step walkthrough!
Other best practices
If you're looking to add additional precautions, here are a few extra tips to try:
Consent disclaimers
There are a few ways that you can implement consent disclaimers.
Pre-meeting reminder through Fellow's automations to automatically notify attendees on a per-note series basis:
Calendar event descriptions: Add a note to your calendar description prior to a meeting notifying them that the call will be recorded
Admitting the Note Taker once all attendees have joined
Another great best practice adopted by teams using call recorders has been to wait until all attendees who will be joining the call have been admitted. This ensures that all attendees see the Note Taker join and can object if they do not consent to being recorded.
More Information
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