The Workflow Edit | Practical AI Tool Tutorial
How to Use Zoom AI Companion Without Generic AI Instructions
When your meetings blur together and your notes are useless by Friday, Zoom AI Companion can turn each call into a structured recap with action items — if you set it up before the meeting starts.
Dear Suzannah
Dear Suzannah, I sit through back-to-back video calls all day and by Friday I cannot remember who said they would send the Q3 numbers or what we decided about the vendor switch. My notes are just random words I typed while someone was talking.
Let the tool capture the meeting and pull out decisions, owners, and next steps for you.
The real use case
Turn messy Zoom meetings into organized recaps with decisions, action items, and owners — without taking notes during the call.
No prompt needed: use this workflow instead
This tool works through its interface, not a blank prompt. Follow these steps to get the result you need.
- Before the meeting, open Zoom settings and confirm AI Companion is enabled for your account — check ‘AI Companion’ under Settings > Meeting.
- Start or join your Zoom meeting and click the AI Companion icon in the toolbar to turn on meeting summary and smart recording.
- During the meeting, speak naturally — do not change your behavior. The tool captures the transcript in the background.
- After the meeting ends, open the email Zoom sends automatically with the summary, or go to the Zoom web portal and find the meeting under Recordings > AI Companion.
- Review the summary’s action items section: check that each item has a clear owner and due date. Edit any that are vague or missing an owner.
- Copy the decisions and action items into your project tracker, CRM, or follow-up email. Delete anything that is not actionable.
- Share the recap link with attendees who need it, or paste the relevant section into your team channel.
Make the result less generic
- Rename meetings with clear titles before they start so the recaps are searchable later instead of all being called ‘Zoom Meeting.’
- Assign owners verbally during the call — say ‘John, you own the vendor follow-up’ — so the tool captures clear ownership.
- Delete non-actionable recap sections before sharing so recipients see tasks, not a transcript dump.
- Review the recap the same day while the meeting is still fresh enough to catch errors.
- Use the recap to populate your tracker directly instead of retyping action items from scratch.
Quick human check
- Does every action item in the recap have a named owner, not just ‘we should’ or ‘team to follow up’?
- Are the due dates specific (Friday July 18) rather than vague (‘soon’ or ‘next week’)?
- Did the tool capture the actual decision, or just the discussion around it?
- Can you paste the action items into your tracker without rewriting them?
- If you shared the recap with someone who missed the meeting, would they know what happened and what to do next?
