AI-powered transcription company Otter.ai has announced a new integration that automatically joins, records, and transcribes scheduled Zoom meetings.

The Los Altos, California-based company, which raised a fresh $50 million tranche of funding just a few months ago, has offered integrations with Zoom for a while (as well as with Google Meet). However, this latest tie-up goes further by carrying out all the manual steps involved in joining a meeting, transcribing it, and sharing notes with all users.

Assist

Otter Assistant, as the new feature is called, connects with a user’s Google or Outlook calendar (once permissions have been granted) to see when a Zoom meeting is due to start. It then joins the call and starts recording on schedule, with no manual actions required.

For transparency, Otter Assistant shows up on the call as a participant. And each other participant in the call can view the live meeting notes, with support for making notes and highlighting text that is visible to everyone.

One key differentiator from the existing Zoom integration is that this now works with all Zoom calls, regardless of whether the user is the official host.

This launch also serves as a major boost to Zoom’s burgeoning app ecosystem, something the company has been keen to encourage to make its platform more useful and, ultimately, stickier.

Zoom itself has also been on something of a feature launch spree of late, having recently brought Alexa for Business to Zoom conference room calls also rolled out a new “immersive view” to position remote participants in the same virtual room.

The Otter Assistant is available as part of Otter.ai’s business plan, which costs $20 per user per month.