Setting up the portal

The portal is the page participants open - no account, no app - to record for you. You shape it in the portal editor, under the project’s settings → portal editor (open to workspace owners, admins, and members). Set it up once when a project starts, dip back in to adjust wording, and a few minutes here pays off in cleaner recordings and fewer confused participants.

For the role-neutral reference, see the portal editor.

Wording: title, description, finish text#

The three pieces every participant reads:

• Title - the welcome heading, in plain words (“Tell us about your street”).
• Description - a sentence or two on what you’re asking and why, and roughly how long.
• Finish text - the thank-you shown when someone’s done, plus anything they should know about what happens next.

Key terms (the highest-value field)#

Key terms are the proper nouns, jargon, place names, and acronyms specific to your topic - the words a general transcriber would mangle. List them and transcription gets them right far more often.

What you ask of participants#

• Ask for name - attaches a name to each conversation so you can tell them apart.
• Ask for email - lets you follow up or send a report.

Turn both off for a fully anonymous drop-in; turn them on when you need to attribute or follow up. Be guided by what you actually need - see data ownership & compliance.

Anonymise transcripts redacts personal information during processing. Use it for sensitive topics or when you’ve promised anonymity - it pairs well with leaving name and email off.

AI title & tags generates a title and tags for each conversation automatically, so your list is readable without manual labelling. Leave it on unless you want to title everything yourself.

Portal language#

The portal language only changes the intro screens a participant reads - the welcome and instructions. It does not change the language of transcripts: those stay in the language people actually speak, which you set on the project.

Notifications and email#

Participants can leave an email at the end to be notified when reports are ready or updated - great for post-event follow-up, and it pairs with auto-sending a report. You can also subscribe to be notified about portal activity, so you know when conversations are coming in without watching the dashboard.

The optional extras#

You can ignore these for a first run:

• Get Reply - gives participants a spoken reply after they record, shaped by a prompt you set. Use it when you want the portal to feel like a two-way exchange. Set the mode and prompt here.
• Verification - asks participants to confirm what was understood before they finish; they review extracted points and approve, reject, or modify them. Enable it, run it on finish, and set topics (predefined or custom). Worth it for high-stakes input; skip it for a quick drop-in. The participant-side flow is in the participant portal.
• Portal tags - tags attached to every conversation collected through this portal, so you can filter and group them later in conversations.

Preview, then share#

Use the live preview to walk the portal as a participant would: read the title and description aloud, check the finish text, and confirm the name/email questions match what you intend. Fix the wording until it reads cleanly to someone who knows nothing about your project. Then grab the QR code and invite link and you’re into collecting conversations.

Leaving fields empty: the defaults#

An empty field is not broken - it means the built-in default applies. When you ask about your settings in Ask, unset fields read as default. What each default does:

• Title and description empty - participants see only the built-in recording instructions, with no custom heading or intro above them.
• Finish text empty - the built-in thank-you screen, unchanged.
• Key terms empty - transcription runs on general vocabulary only, so your topic’s names and jargon are more likely to be misspelled.
• Reply prompt empty - replies follow the built-in behaviour for the selected reply mode.

Fill a field to override its default; clear it to go back.

A good default portal#

• Clear title, one-line description, warm finish text.
• A solid list of key terms.
• Ask for name on, email off (on only if you’ll follow up).
• Anonymise on for sensitive topics.
• AI title & tags on.
• Verification off unless accuracy sign-off matters.
• Preview, then share the QR.

Related#

• The portal editor - canonical feature reference.
• The participant portal - what participants experience.
• Collecting conversations - sharing the QR and other methods.
• Transcription - why key terms matter.
• Data ownership & compliance - handling names, emails, and anonymisation responsibly.