Conversations & transcripts
On this page
A conversation is one recording (or one piece of typed text) someone contributed to your project. Once the audio is transcribed, you can read it, copy it, summarise it, tag it, and feed it into chat, the library, and reports.
Open a project and go to Conversations. You get one row per recording: its title, where it came from, how far it’s got through processing, and any tags. Open a row to read the full transcript and act on it. Everyone who can see a project can read and download conversations; deleting needs owner, admin or member (see roles & permissions). Reading transcripts is in every plan, including Free - the tiers only gate what you do on top of them (chat, library, reports).
The conversation list#
Each row shows:
- Title - typed by the participant, set by you, or generated by a language model if you turned that on in the portal editor.
- Source badge - portal audio for spoken recordings, portal text for typed submissions. Tells you at a glance whether there’s audio behind a row or just text.
- Status - uploading, transcribing, summarising, or finished (see transcription).
- Tags - any project tags applied.
Use search and filters to narrow a big project by tag, status, or text.
Tip
If you offered both a "speak" and a "type instead" route, source badges let you see the mix of spoken vs typed contributions without opening every row.
Bulk actions#
Select several rows to act on them together:
- Move - send them to another project (or a workspace you can access). Handy when recordings landed in the wrong place. See data ownership & compliance for what moving means across workspace boundaries.
- Lock - mark them read-only so they’re not edited during analysis.
- Delete - permanent; see the warning below.
- Retranscribe - re-run transcription, for example after improving your key-terms prompt in the portal editor.
Important
Bulk delete and retranscribe hit every selected row, and there’s no undo. Check the selection count before you confirm.
Reading a conversation#
Open any row for the full transcript.
Transcript. Recordings are captured and transcribed in short chunks (roughly half-minute pieces, so a recording survives a crash or dropped connection). You read the transcript as those chunks, in order - which also makes it easy to point at exactly where something was said, and to retranscribe just the part that came out poorly.
Copy. Copy the transcript (or a part) to paste into notes, an email, or another tool. To get transcripts out in bulk, use the project-level export.
PDF download. Download one conversation as a tidy, shareable PDF - the right tool for handing a single interview to someone without dashboard access. For many at once, use export.
Summary. Most conversations are summarised automatically when transcription finishes. You can generate one if it’s missing, or regenerate it after a retranscribe or if the first pass missed the point. Lighter chat and report passes read from the summary, so keeping it accurate pays off downstream.
Note
A summary is a language model's reading of the transcript - a starting point, not the final word. dembrane surfaces what's in the room; the judgement about what matters stays with you.
Tags#
Apply project tags to group conversations - by table, theme, location, session, whatever your project needs. Tags drive the list filters and let you scope chat to a subset. You can also offer some tags to participants to pick at the start of their recording; set those up in the portal editor.
Verified artifacts#
If you enabled verification in the portal editor, participants review and approve the key points a language model pulled from their own words. Those verified artifacts are participant-checked, so they carry more weight than an unreviewed extraction. See the participant portal for the participant’s side.
Lock#
Lock a single conversation to make it read-only - once a round of collection is done, or before you share a project widely. You can also lock in bulk from the list.
Anonymisation#
If you turned on anonymise transcripts in the portal editor, personal details are redacted as the transcript is processed, and the conversation shows its anonymisation status. See data ownership & compliance.
Important
Anonymisation happens during processing, not retroactively. Turn it on in the portal editor before you collect, so it’s applied as recordings come in.
Retranscribe#
Re-run transcription on a conversation when:
- the audio was fine but the transcript has errors a better key-terms prompt would fix (set key terms in the portal editor, then retranscribe);
- a chunk failed or came back empty;
- you changed anonymisation and want it reapplied.
Retranscribing replaces the transcript, so regenerate any earlier summary afterwards (see reading a conversation).
Delete#
Delete a single conversation from its detail page.
Warning
Deleting can't be undone - it removes the recording and its transcript. To just keep one out of analysis, lock it or move it to an archive project instead. Only owner, admin and member can delete; external and observer cannot.
Feeding everything else#
Conversations are the raw material for the rest of dembrane:
- Chat & Ask - ask questions across a chosen set, with cited sources.
- Library & analysis - extracted topics, aspects and quotes across many conversations at once.
- Reports - assemble findings into something you can share.
The cleaner your conversations - sensible titles, consistent tags, accurate transcripts - the better all three work.
Related#
- Transcription - how audio becomes text, and what the status stages mean.
- Chat & Ask - ask questions across your conversations.
- Library & analysis - extracted topics, aspects and quotes.
- Reports - assemble and share findings.
- The portal editor - set titles, tags, key terms, anonymisation and verification before you collect.
- Export & data portability - get transcripts out in bulk.
- Roles & permissions - who can read, delete and lock.
- For a host’s walkthrough, see transcripts & conversations.
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