A meeting in the browser, and a page it leaves behind
Certainty HelpDesk runs video meetings in the browser, with nothing to install and no account needed to attend one. Every meeting leaves a page behind carrying who was there and for how long, the transcript, the recording, the write up, and the work items the meeting changed.
Three things that go missing between the meeting and the record
A client is sent an invitation for a tool they do not have, and joins ten minutes late.
Decisions live in one person's notebook until the next call needs them.
What was agreed on Tuesday never reaches the record it was agreed about.
Nothing to install, and a door somebody has to open
A meeting link opens in a browser. Anybody holding it can come, with or without an account: a guest gives a name, meets a mirrored camera preview and a microphone meter, and gets a device picker for anything they have more than one of. If the browser refuses, the screen says which refusal it was and offers a real way in without a camera or a microphone rather than a dead end.
Then the lobby. Team members walk in; a guest asks, waits on a card that starts counting after half a minute, and can knock again no more than once every thirty seconds. Anybody already in the call can open the door, from a list in the corner with Let in and Not now beside each name, or Let everyone in once more than two are queued.
- Fifty people fit in a call, and the first team member through starts the room
- The owner decides who may share, who may admit, and whether guest links work at all
- A guest link opens fifteen minutes before the start and stops four hours after it
Tiles that page as the room fills, and a screen that changes hands
Everybody has a tile with their name, a glyph when they are muted, their initials when the camera is off and a ring while they are talking. The grid arranges itself from the room and the screen, so two people sit side by side on a desktop and stack on a phone. Past twelve tiles on a computer, or six on a phone, the stage turns into pages with the sharer and the most recent speakers first, and only the page in front of you pulls any camera, which is what keeps a meeting of fifty usable on a phone.
Sharing hands your screen to the room and takes the stage while the tiles drop into a strip. One screen holds the stage at a time and it can change hands: press Share while somebody else is sharing and the bar asks whether to replace their screen, and on Replace theirs stops, yours takes the stage and they are told who took it over. The keyboard does the same work as the controls, m for the microphone, v for the camera, c for the chat, s for sharing, and holding the space bar talks while muted, and the in-call chat is kept, so a team member gets what was said before they opened the panel and the whole conversation is still there afterwards.
- A dropped connection rebuilds itself, and only after three failed attempts does one message ask you to reload
- A message that could not be sent keeps its bubble, says Not sent and offers Retry
- A meeting ends five minutes after the last person leaves, and none runs past twelve hours
- On a phone the room opens inside the installed app rather than throwing you out to a tab
Six in the room, one screen shared, captions on
Everybody's words reach the transcript, whatever their browser
Turn captions on and what you say is written down for the room, with the last few lines overlaid above the controls and a small mark on your tile. Where a browser cannot caption on its own, the words are written down on the device itself after a one-time download and the audio never leaves the machine. Where even that is not possible, they go through your team's own captioning service instead. The room is told plainly which kind it is getting.
What a meeting keeps is the owner's decision. Two switches, one for the transcript and one for the write up, set when scheduling and changeable mid-call. Turn the transcript off and captions still show live in the room while nothing is stored; turn the write up off and no summary is made. Both are on unless somebody says otherwise.
- Somebody listening on speakers is not credited with the other person's words, and short replies like yes and okay are kept
- The meeting page's Transcript tab interleaves spoken captions and typed messages
- A browser that cannot caption still shows everybody else's lines
- Captions are part of what a delete purges, along with the recording and the summary
The host's own browser records, and everybody is told
Nothing is ever recorded on its own. Only the person who set the meeting up can start a recording, only while signed in and in a browser that can record, and where any of that is untrue the control is simply not there. While one runs, everybody in the room including guests sees a Recording badge naming who started it, and a red dot sits in the header for as long as it lasts.
When a meeting ends the write up starts by itself: an overview, decisions, and action items with owners. The people who were in it hear when it lands, by notification or by email, and guests without an account are left out of both. A recurring series keeps one record per occurrence, so each run has its own transcript window and its own summary, picked from a selector on the meeting page.
- Recordings can be dragged to any moment, and new ones show their real length at once
- A line reminds the host, and only the host, to keep the tab open while it records
- A recording stops itself at two hours, and a broken upload keeps what was already saved
- A failed write up keeps a Try again, and the last good summary survives the attempt
After the meeting
Attendance, the work it changed, and a delete that means it
Every meeting leaves a page. Chips for the kind of meeting, when it ended and whether it still needs a name; a strip carrying when it was, how long it ran, who came and whether there is a recording; a Who was there timeline with each person's time in the call, drops and rejoins included; details and links in a side rail; and the name and the notes editable on the page itself.
Linked to is the join between the conversation and the work. A meeting can be linked to issues, feature requests, change requests, a project or an organisation, and each linked issue records the meeting in its own history. Deleting is separate from cancelling: a confirmed delete takes the event and permanently purges the recording, the transcript, the captions and the summary, and deleting one occurrence of a repeating meeting leaves the room standing for the rest.
- Attendance counts the people and the minutes, with guests marked as guests
- Clients see only links to items they can already open, their own project included
- The page fits a phone: the tabs wrap, the figures sit two by two, attendance gets a line per person
- Any finished meeting gains a Sharing tab, decided per person, for colleagues and clients alike
Who was there, the transcript, the recording, the write up
- No server-side recording. The host's browser is what records, so the tab has to stay open and a recording stops itself at two hours.
- Screen sharing is not available on a phone or an iPad, because the browser there has no screen picker to offer. The control stays in the bar and says so rather than disappearing.
The things teams ask about this
Does anybody have to install something to join a meeting?
No. A meeting link opens in a browser, and there is nothing to download and no account to make. Somebody without an account gives a name, checks their camera and microphone on the screen before the room, and waits for a team member to let them in. On a phone, staff with the app installed get the room inside the app rather than being thrown out into a browser tab.
How many people can be in one meeting?
Fifty in the call, with sixty more able to wait in the lobby, and up to ten of those can be knocking from the same office connection. Past twelve tiles on a computer, or six on a phone, the stage shows one page of people at a time, with whoever is sharing and whoever spoke most recently first, and only the page in front of you pulls camera video, so a phone in a room of fifty is asked for a handful of faces rather than forty-nine.
Where is a meeting recording actually made?
In the browser of the person who set the meeting up. There is no server-side recording, which is why only that person sees a Record button, why they get a line asking them to keep the tab open, and why a recording stops itself at two hours. The upshot is honest rather than ideal: if their browser closes, the recording ends, and what had already been saved is kept and pointed at from the meeting page.
What happens if my browser cannot produce live captions?
Your words still reach the transcript. Where the browser has no captioning of its own, the speech is written down on the device itself after a one-time download and the audio never leaves the machine; where even that is not possible, it goes through your team's own captioning service instead. The room is told which of the three it is getting rather than being left to guess.
How does a weekly meeting handle transcripts and summaries?
One record per occurrence. A repeating series keeps a single join link, but each run gets its own transcript window and its own write up, chosen from an occurrence selector on the meeting page, so last Tuesday's decisions are not folded into a summary that tries to cover three months.
If we delete a meeting, is the recording really gone?
Yes. Deleting is a separate action from cancelling a scheduled one and it is confirmed before it happens: it takes the event and permanently purges the recording, the transcript, the captions and the summary. Deleting one occurrence of a repeating meeting leaves the shared room standing for the rest of the series; deleting the series takes everything. It belongs to whoever created the meeting, or to a role that moderates team events.
Can a client open the recording, the transcript or the summary?
Only what somebody decided to share with them. Any finished meeting gains a Sharing tab where anyone who can approve project access chooses, per person, whether they may open the recording, the transcript, the summary or nothing at all. It is not limited to the people who were on the call: a client who was never there can be added and given any of the three; a colleague gets the meeting on their calendar and, if switched on, the recording. Until then the meeting page is locked for a client who attended, with a way to ask, and every grant can be tightened again later.
Where this connects to the rest of it
See it against your own work
Thirty minutes on a call, one of your real client projects on the screen, and an honest answer about whether this part of the product earns its place in how you work.
partnerships@dhcertainty.com