Meeting Transcription
Pia can join a Microsoft Teams meeting as a silent attendee and transcribe it live — splitting the transcript into a separate, colour-coded bubble per speaker. All transcription happens locally on your machine.
What you need
Section titled “What you need”- A Microsoft Teams meeting link.
- A meeting host must admit the assistant from the lobby before it can transcribe.
- On first use, Pia downloads a small automation browser once (this needs internet the first time); later meetings reuse it.
- A speech-to-text model must be available — see the Speech guide. Optional speaker separation downloads one extra model when you enable it.
- An interactive Windows desktop with a working audio device.
While attending, Pia runs a bundled browser and a background automation helper — both ship with Pia, so there’s nothing extra to install.
Joining a meeting
Section titled “Joining a meeting”- Open the Assistant and click the meeting button in the message bar (tooltip: Join a meeting and transcribe). This opens the Meeting attendee panel.
- Paste the Teams meeting link.
- Optionally change the assistant name shown to other participants — it defaults to “‹your name›‘s assistant” (or “Pia’s assistant” if you haven’t signed in).
- Tick the consent box: “I confirm I’m allowed to have an assistant join and transcribe this meeting.”
- Click Join meeting.
The Join meeting button only becomes active once you’ve ticked consent and pasted a valid Teams link.
Pia then works through a few steps, shown under the title:
| Status | What’s happening |
|---|---|
| Preparing browser… | Setting up the automation browser (downloads it on first use). |
| Joining meeting… | Connecting to the Teams meeting. |
| Waiting in the lobby… | A meeting host needs to admit the assistant. |
| Attending — transcribing… | Pia is in the meeting and transcribing live. |
Pia always joins with its microphone and camera off.
During the meeting
Section titled “During the meeting”Each person’s speech appears as a chat-style bubble, and every speaker gets their own colour so you can follow who said what. New voices are labelled Speaker 1, Speaker 2, and so on in the order they first speak.
Renaming a speaker
Section titled “Renaming a speaker”To give a speaker a real name:
- Click the speaker’s name (with the pencil icon) above any of their bubbles, or
- Right-click a bubble and choose Rename speaker…
Type the name and confirm. Pia keeps that speaker’s colour, relabels their earlier bubbles too, and applies the name to everything they say next.
Speaker separation
Section titled “Speaker separation”Splitting the transcript by speaker (“diarization”) is controlled in Settings → Assistant → Meeting.
- Identify individual speakers in meetings — the master on/off switch (on by default). The first time you use it, Pia downloads a small speaker-recognition model; a Preparing Model dialog shows the progress. If the model can’t be downloaded, transcription still works — it just won’t split speakers, and your meeting is never blocked.
- Smart speaker detection (automatic) — on by default. Pia re-evaluates all voices as the meeting goes on and automatically corrects earlier speaker assignments, so you’ll see labels tidy themselves up live. No tuning needed.
Turn Smart speaker detection off to reveal manual controls:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Speaker matching sensitivity | How similar two voices must sound to count as the same person. Higher splits speakers more readily; lower groups more voices together. |
| Limit number of speakers | Caps how many distinct speakers Pia creates. Set it to the number of participants so one person isn’t split into several. No limit detects as many as it hears. |
| Minimum speech length for detection | How much uninterrupted speech is needed before Pia identifies a speaker. Longer is more reliable but very short remarks may stay unlabelled. |
Changes apply to the next meeting you join, not the one in progress.
After the meeting
Section titled “After the meeting”When the meeting ends (or you click Leave meeting), you can:
- Save… — write the transcript to a Markdown (
.md) file. - Summarize with assistant — hand the transcript to the Assistant for a summary.
Nothing is saved automatically — the transcript is only kept if you choose Save….
Choosing the browser
Section titled “Choosing the browser”Under Settings → Assistant → Meeting → Meeting browser you can pick which browser Pia drives:
- Bundled Chromium (default) — downloaded once; the most reliable choice.
- System Chrome / System Edge / Use system default — reuse an installed browser; Pia falls back to bundled Chromium if the chosen one is unavailable.
Show the meeting browser window is off by default: the browser joins hidden and the meeting plays silently in the background. Turn it on if you’d like to see the browser and hear the meeting on your speakers.
Privacy
Section titled “Privacy”- Audio is transcribed locally. Only model and browser downloads use the network.
- Voice fingerprints stay in memory for the duration of a single meeting and are wiped afterwards — nothing biometric is written to disk.
- Transcript text and speaker names are kept out of Pia’s log files.
- Pia joins muted, and (with the browser window hidden) captures the meeting silently.
See the Privacy guide for how Pia handles your data across the app.