Transcripts & conversations
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Once people have spoken, dembrane transcribes what they said and writes a summary. This is the day-to-day of working with that material: reading it, organising it, and keeping it accurate. Reading and organising is open to workspace owners, admins, members, plus external collaborators and observers (read-only); deleting is owner/admin/member only.
For the role-neutral reference, see conversations & transcripts.
When the transcript appears#
A conversation shows up in the dashboard as soon as it starts. The transcript follows about 30 seconds to a minute later. Why the wait? Audio is sent in 30-second pieces, and the higher-quality transcription takes a little extra processing time. So a fresh conversation with no text yet is normal - give it a minute.
The conversation list#
Each project has a conversations view listing everything collected. It’s your home base: search across conversations, filter by tags and other attributes, and select several to apply bulk actions (below).
Reading a conversation#
Open one to see:
- Transcript - the full text in chunks. Copy it or download a PDF.
- Summary - a short overview written by a language model. Generate it if it’s not there yet, or regenerate it after a retranscribe or if the first pass missed the point.
- Tags - labels you add to group related conversations.
- Verified artifacts - the points a participant approved, if you used verification in the portal.
- Anonymisation status - whether personal information has been redacted.
Note
Summaries are a starting point, not a verdict. They surface what's there so you can decide what matters - read the transcript when a point is load-bearing. People know how.
Tagging#
Tags make a pile of conversations navigable. Add tags that match the cuts you’ll want later - by table, theme, sentiment, or location. Tagged conversations are easy to filter and to select as context for Ask and reports. If you set portal tags, conversations arrive pre-tagged.
Locking#
Locking marks a conversation as settled and protects it from accidental changes. Lock the ones you’ve finished checking so a later bulk action doesn’t touch them by mistake.
Retranscribe#
If a transcript came out rough - heavy accents, a noisy room, jargon you hadn’t listed - you can retranscribe it. First fill in your project’s key terms, since they feed transcription. Afterwards, regenerate the summary so it reflects the improved text.
Tip
A bad transcript is usually a missing-key-terms problem. Add the proper nouns and acronyms, then retranscribe - the second pass is often markedly better.
Anonymisation#
If you turned on anonymise transcripts in the portal, dembrane redacts personal information as it processes each conversation, and the conversation shows its anonymisation status. Use it for sensitive topics and wherever you’ve promised anonymity - part of your broader data ownership & compliance responsibilities.
Bulk actions#
Select several conversations in the list and apply:
- move - relocate to another project;
- lock - settle a batch in one go;
- delete - remove conversations (owner/admin/member only);
- retranscribe - re-run transcription across a batch.
Warning
Deleting is permanent and removes the transcript and audio. To just keep something out of analysis, move it or filter it out rather than deleting.
A clean post-session routine#
- Skim the list; delete obvious test recordings.
- Retranscribe anything that reads badly (after checking key terms), then regenerate its summary.
- Tag conversations by the cuts you’ll want.
- Lock the ones you’ve reviewed and are happy with.
- Move on to Ask or a report.
Related#
- Conversations & transcripts - canonical feature reference.
- Transcription - how audio becomes text, and why key terms matter.
- Setting up the portal - key terms, anonymisation, and verification are set here.
- Chat & Ask - ask questions across tagged conversations.
- Reports - turn conversations into something shareable.
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