PulseShape your notes with templates
Choosing a template for one-to-ones, sales calls, interviews and other purposes, and building your own.
The standard summary varies its structure to suit the content of the meeting, but when the kind of meeting is fixed, specifying the format in advance produces a more usable note. Choose a template and your summary note is generated to that format.
Selecting, creating and sharing templates is done in the desktop app (macOS / Windows). The web version you open in a browser is for viewing and editing notes that have already been created.
Applying a template
To apply one during the meeting, type / in the note input field. A menu opens; choose the template you want. The template you choose is used to generate the summary after the meeting ends.
You can also change it after the summary has been generated.
- Click the dropdown arrow on the “Enhanced” tab of the note.
- Choose another template from the list.
- The note is rebuilt in that format as soon as you choose it.
The tabs at the top of a note and the template selection menu expanded from them, showing standard and custom templates together.
For how to rebuild in the same format without changing template, or to make corrections by telling chat what you want changed, see AI-enhanced notes.
The templates provided as standard
Which standard templates you see depends on the role you chose when you first installed the app. You can change your role at any time from profile settings.
Mapped onto the kinds of meeting common in Japanese workplaces, they might be used as follows.
| Kind of meeting | Sections worth putting in the template |
|---|---|
| One-to-one | Progress since last time, what is proving difficult, assessment and feedback, commitments before next time |
| Sales call / visit report | Who attended from the customer and their roles, issues and requirements, what we presented, discussion of price and terms, next actions and deadlines |
| Regular team meeting | Reports from each owner, decisions, items to take away, agenda for next time |
| Recruitment interview | Career history, assessment of technical and specialist ability, motivation for applying, what we explained about the company, observations for the hiring decision |
| Customer support enquiry | What is happening, steps to reproduce, interim workaround, plan for a permanent fix, deadline for replying to the customer |
| Internal study session / tech share | Topic covered, key points, reference material, questions from attendees and the answers |
Naming the sections to match the wording you already use in internal documents makes them easier to search and copy across later.
Building your own template
Open the creation screen
Either choose “All templates…” in the template menu, or choose “Manage templates” from the workspace menu on the home screen. Both open the same screen.
Give it a name
This is what you will recognise it by in the list. Use a name that makes clear which meetings it is for, such as “Sales call (first)” or “Monthly review”.
Write the instructions for the AI
Describe in prose the purpose of the meeting, the tone you want, and what each section should contain. How to write these is covered under “Writing good instructions” below.
Decide the sections used in the output
Specify, in order, the sections to appear in the summary. Adding a condition to a section — “always include an owner and a deadline with each next action”, for example — makes the output more consistent.
Apply it to a real meeting and adjust
Reselecting this template on a past note lets you compare the tone against the same meeting data. Fix the instructions as you look at the output.
A list of your own templates and a create button, including the visibility shown against each template.
Writing good instructions
How well a template works depends a great deal on how the instructions are written. Keep these three things in mind.
1. State the purpose and background of the meeting
Start by writing what you want to get out of the meeting and what background needs to be understood.
- Example: “This is the record of a regular visit to an existing customer. Their contract is up for renewal soon, and the purpose is to understand how they are using the product and what frustrates them.”
2. Specify length and tone
- Example: “Write in detail. Keep figures, dates and proper nouns exactly as spoken.”
- Example: “Focus on what the other party said rather than on my own remarks.”
3. Set out the sections
List the sections you want and be specific about what goes in each. Sections such as “Key points of discussion”, “Decisions” and “Next actions” work for most meetings.
Rather than trying to get it perfect first time, it is quicker to apply it to real meetings and fix the instructions as you see the output.
Sharing a template with your team
A template you create is, by default, usable only by you. Click where it says “Only me” and you can change its visibility to your whole organisation. This is what you use to standardise the format of meeting minutes across a department or company.
Sharing requires that you are signed in with a company email domain (for example @yourcompany.co.jp). If you are signed in with a free email account such as Gmail or Yahoo! Mail, the visibility dropdown does not appear at all.
“Organisation” here means the set of users signed in with the same email domain. Even within the same workspace, members on different email domains (@companyA.co.jp and @companyB.co.jp, say) cannot see each other's organisation-shared templates.
The visibility options opened by clicking the label reading “Only me”.
- In the template list, the template now shows your whole organisation instead of “Only me”
- Another member on the same email domain can select that template in the template menu
If something is not working
- The template menu does not appear: check that you are in the desktop app. Templates cannot be selected or created from the web version.
- The visibility dropdown does not appear: you may be signed in with a free email address. Sign in again with an account on your company's email domain.
- Someone in the same workspace cannot see the template: a different email domain puts them outside organisation sharing. The practical workaround is to send them the instructions so they can create it on their side.
- A section I specified does not appear in the output: if the topic did not come up in the meeting, the section may be omitted entirely. If you want the section kept even when empty, say so explicitly in the instructions.