I Built One Otter Template So Every Meeting Note Looks the Same
Raw transcripts are a wall of text. A template turns them into the four things you actually need.
Otter's auto summary is fine but it varies by meeting, so my notes folder was chaos. I built one template with fixed sections: decisions, owners, deadlines, open questions. Now every meeting fills the same shape and I can scan a week of them in minutes.
Setting it up took five minutes. I pasted the template into Otter's summary instructions so the generated note always leads with decisions, not a rambling recap. The model complies because I told it the format up front instead of hoping it guesses.
The payoff is search. When someone asks 'who owned the launch date' I filter by the owners section across all notes. Without the template that question meant opening five transcripts and skimming. The structure is the feature.
If your meetings produce notes nobody reopens, the problem isn't the tool, it's the format. One template, enforced, and the notes start earning their keep.