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Summarizing virtual meetings

In this guide, we'll show you how to use the feature to automatically generate summaries of your virtual meetings, so you can quickly review important information and take action based on the insights gathered from the conversations.

Get started​

Before we begin, make sure you have an AssemblyAI account and an API token. You can sign up for a free account and get your API token from your dashboard.

The entire source code of this guide can be viewed here.

Step-by-step instructions​

  1. 1

    Create a new file and import the necessary libraries for making an HTTP request.

  2. 2

    Set up the API endpoint and headers. The headers should include your API token.

  3. 3

    Upload your local file to the AssemblyAI API.

  4. 4

    Use the upload_url returned by the AssemblyAI API to create a JSON payload containing the audio_url parameter.

  5. 5

    Make a POST request to the AssemblyAI API endpoint with the payload and headers.

  6. 6

    After making the request, you will receive an ID for the transcription. Use it to poll the API every few seconds to check the status of the transcript job.

    Once the status is completed, you can retrieve the transcript from the API response, using the summary key to view the result of the summarization.

Understanding the response​

Your transcript summary will be located in the summary key of the API response. You'll also find other parameters containing the summary_type, and summary_model and other standard transcript metadata.

Refer to the API reference for a breakdown of every element in your transcript output.

Best practices​

Identify the most important information you want to include in the summary and choose the Summarization model and type that best suits your use case.

When using the conversational model, make sure that the two speakers have distinct voices and that there is minimal background noise. For shorter recordings, the gist or headline options may provide the most effective summary, whereas for longer recordings, the bullets_verbose or paragraph options may be more appropriate.

Consider the context in which the summary will be used, and whether additional context or explanation is necessary to understand the summary.

Experiment with different summarization options to find the one that works best for your specific use case.

Advanced usage​

informative (default): Best for files with a single speaker such as presentations or lectures.bullets (default): A bulleted summary with the most important points.
conversational: Best for any two-person conversation such as customer/agent or interview/interviewee calls.bullets_verbose: A longer bullet point list summarizing the entire transcription text.
catchy: Best for creating video, podcast, or media titles.gist: A few words summarizing the entire transcription text.
headline: A single sentence summarizing the entire transcription text.
paragraph: A single paragraph summarizing the entire transcription text.
Learn more

Conclusion​

AssemblyAI maintains a number of different summarization models for different use cases, so you can choose between a more informative summary or a catchier tagline for your audio. You can refer to the AssemblyAI blog to see more examples of our summarization features in action.

If you're experiencing issues with generating a summary, make sure that you've included the summarization parameter in your request and set it to true. In addition, note that the Auto Chapters model and the Summarization model cannot be active in the same request. If you try to enable both Auto Chapters and Summarization in a single request, you will receive the following error message: "Only one of the following models can be enabled at a time: auto_chapters, summarization."

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