Fireflies is a smart AI meeting assistant that integrates with your favorite video conferencing platforms, including Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom. Fireflies joins your meeting as a participant to automatically generate notes, action items, transcripts, and more.
This blog will look at one such video conferencing integration: Fireflies-Zoom.
We'll explain different ways to integrate Fireflies with Zoom and discuss how this integration can level up your video conferencing game. Read on!
Fireflies-Zoom integration
Based on workflow, let’s divide the Fireflies-Zoom integration into two:
- Conventional Zoom-Fireflies integration
- Fireflies-Native Zoom integration
Conventional Zoom-Fireflies integration
In the conventional method, you add Fireflies bot Fred as a silent attendee to your Zoom meetings. You can do it in 4 ways:
- Setup Fireflies to auto-join your calendar events with a meeting link
- Invite fred@fireflies.ai as a guest
- Add Fireflies to a live Zoom meeting directly from your Fireflies Dashboard
- Turn on the meeting toggle on Fireflies Dashboard
1. Set up Fireflies to auto-join your calendar events with a meeting link
Log into Fireflies with your Google or Microsoft account. Once you’re on the Fireflies dashboard, look for the Current meeting settings on the right side of your screen.
Now select Join all calendar events with web-conf link from the drop-down below Meeting Fireflies will join. That’s it. Your auto-join settings are on.
Next time you have a Zoom event with a meeting link in your calendar, Fireflies will automatically join the event on time to record and transcribe it.
2. Invite fred@fireflies.ai as a guest
If you only want Fireflies to join specific events, use this method. Add fred@fireflies.ai as a guest to your calendar event.
Ensure you have the Zoom meeting URL and password added to the event.
3. Add Fireflies to a live Zoom meeting directly from your Fireflies Dashboard
Following this method, you can add Fireflies to any ongoing meeting. First, go to your Fireflies Dashboard and click Capture live meeting.
A pop-up window will appear where you can enter details such as Meeting name, Meeting URL, and meeting language.
Once done, click Invite Fireflies. Fireflies will join the meeting within just a minute.
4. Turn on the meeting toggle on Fireflies Dashboard
When you log into Fireflies, you can see all your upcoming meetings marked on your calendar under the Upcoming Meetings tab on Fireflies Dashboard.
If you want Fireflies to join a particular meeting, turn on the toggle against that meeting, and Fireflies will join the meeting on time.
Same way, you can also restrict Fireflies from a meeting by turning the toggle off.
Fireflies-Native Zoom integration
If you’re a Zoom pro or above user, you can set up the Native Zoom integration and skip the hassle of manually adding Fireflies to your meetings.
With Native Zoom and Fireflies integration, the Fireflies bot will not join your Zoom meetings. Instead, it uses your Zoom recording to create transcripts.
Follow these steps to integrate your native Zoom account with Fireflies:
- Open Fireflies Integrations
- Look for Zoom Native
- Connect Zoom Native with Fireflies
Step 1: Open Fireflies Integrations
Log into your Fireflies account and click Integrations on the left side of your screen.
Step 2: Look for Zoom Native
Once you’re on the Integrations page, search for Zoom. Click Zoom Native.
Step 3: Connect Zoom Native with Fireflies
Click Connect. It will redirect you to your Zoom account. Log into your Zoom account and grant Fireflies access to your account data.
And done! You’ve now successfully integrated your Zoom Native account with Fireflies.
And, if you ever wish to undo the integration, follow the same steps and click Disconnect.
How does the integration work?
Once you integrate Zoom Native with Fireflies, you no longer need to manually add Fireflies to your calendar events to record a Zoom meeting.
Simply go to your Zoom meeting and select Record to the Cloud. Fireflies will then automatically transcribe, summarize, and analyze them.
Once the meeting is over, you can find the transcription and an AI-generated summary of your meeting in Fireflies Notebook.
Settings preferences
For the best experience, we suggest you configure your Fireflies and Zoom account settings as follows.
Zoom account settings
1. Create a Role
- Open Zoom and navigate to the Roles under User Management. Click on 'Add Role'
- Enter a Role Name, Description and click on Add
2. Assign Permissions
- Within Roles, go to User and Permission Management and enable View Users
- Go to Account Management and enable View Recording Management
- Go to Reports and enable View Usage Reports
- Click ‘Save Changes’
- Click on the pencil icon next to the newly created Role
3. Add Members
- Go to Role Members and click Add Members to add team members
Note: Each user must have a paid Zoom plan to use Zoom Native integration.
4. Settings to capture speaker labels
Fireflies can automatically capture speaker labels of your Zoom meetings. To do that, you need to configure your Zoom account specifically as follows:
Log into your Zoom account and open Settings. Navigate to the Recording tab within the settings section.
Under the Cloud recording section, enable the setting to "Record a separate audio file of each participant." Now you’ve granted Fireflies permission to capture speaker names.
5. Enable Join before host
On your Zoom account settings, open Meeting Options and select Allow participants to join before host. This ensures Fireflies joins the meeting on time and captures everything you need, even if you run late.
6. Turn off participant authentication
As Fireflies joins as a guest from the Zoom Web SDK, you need to turn off participant authentication for Fireflies to join your meetings without any issues.
For this, open the Settings of your Zoom account on a browser window. In the Security section, make sure Only authenticated users can join meetings from the Web Client is turned off.
Fireflies settings
The video recording feature is exclusive for business tier users of Fireflies. If you’re one, turn on the Record Meeting Video toggle on your Fireflies Settings page. Once done, the AI notetaker will also capture the video of your Zoom meetings.
Difference between Conventional and Native Zoom integration
Benefits of using Fireflies over Zoom in-built transcription
Yes, Zoom does have in-built transcription capabilities. However, using Fireflies over the in-built transcription feature comes with its perks. Here are a few:
- Generates 90%+ accurate transcription with time stamp and speaker labels
- AI-generated summary for quick review
- Advanced search capabilities and chatbot assistance
- Analytics and AI meeting assistant
- Multi-language support
- Advanced collaboration features
- Guaranteed security with private storage options
1. Generates 90%+ accurate transcription with timestamps and speaker labels
Fireflies guarantees 90%+ accurate transcription along with speaker labels and time stamps. The transcripts are well-structured, with proper punctuation and capitalization. You can easily download them in 5 different formats: PDF, DOCX, SRT, CSV, and JSON.
Meanwhile, Native Zoom transcripts are low in accuracy and poorly structured. You’ll have to spend considerable time editing the transcripts to make them foolproof.
2. AI-generated summary for quick reviews
On top of accurate transcription, Fireflies also provides an AI-generated summary that allows you to review lengthy discussions in a few minutes. The summary contains keywords, meeting outlines, bullet-point notes, and possible action items.
Zoom native transcription does not generate any summary.
3. Advanced search capabilities and chatbot assistance
Fireflies provides advanced search features like Smart Search and AI filters that help you locate key moments in hour-long meetings in seconds.
Alternatively, you can chat with Fireflies chatbot AskFred, which brings the power of ChatGPT in meetings, and quickly get accurate answers to any questions you have about what went down during your Zoom session. You can also use AskFred for writing blogs, emails, social media posts, etc., from the meeting transcript.
Zoom transcription offers only the basic search function.
4. Analytics and AI meeting assistant
Fireflies AI meeting assistant can automatically join your calls to record and transcribe them for you. On top of that, it also offers a conversation intelligence feature that helps you quantify your conversations, derive actionable insights from them and understand what’s working and what’s not.
For instance, you can use Fireflies Conversation Intelligence to evaluate your sales reps’ performance by analyzing the metrics on their calls—longest monologues, talk-to-listen ratio, number of filler words used during a conversation, etc.
Soorya Radhakrishnan
5. Multi-language support
Zoom native transcription only supports the English language. Meantime, Fireflies supports 60+ languages, including Arabic, Spanish, Italian, German, and French.
6. Advanced collaboration features
Fireflies is more than just a transcription software. It offers advanced collaboration features like:
- Soundbites: Create shareable audio snippets from the highlights of your audio
- Thread: Add and reply to comments within the transcript
- Playlist: Create a collection of soundbites and related audio from multiple files in one place
It also seamlessly integrates with 50+ video conferencing and productivity tools like Notion, Slack, and Aircall and offers an API for building custom integrations. This lets you automatically share transcripts and meeting summaries to your preferred platforms.
Meanwhile, Zoom transcription does not have any collaboration or native sharing features. You need to download the transcription and share notes with your peers manually.
7. Guaranteed security with private storage options
Fireflies is GDPR and SOC 2 Type II certified. Its database is housed in a Virtual Private Cloud with AWS, while the servers are hosted on Google Cloud. Additionally, all of your data in AWS S3 is completely encrypted both at rest and during transit.
Also, at Fireflies, we don't share your data with third parties or use your data to train our AI models. We have a zero-day retention policy signed with our vendors. By design, our product can't access your audio or transcripts, as those will be kept private.
Recently, we have also launched the Private storage option with which you can have dedicated and isolated storage for your sensitive data.
Sam Udotong
On the other hand, cybersecurity researchers found multiple vulnerabilities in Zoom that might pose a threat to your data.
Create a perfect searchable memory of your Zoom meetings with Fireflies
The Fireflies-Zoom integration is a game-changer for anyone who frequently hosts or participates in Zoom meetings. It automates transcription, note-taking, and analysis, saving you a great deal of time and effort.
With its superior accuracy, multi-language support, collaboration features, and top-notch security, Fireflies gives you more value than Zoom's built-in transcription. Also, be it conventional or native, setting up the integration is quick and easy.
So, ready to document your Zoom meetings without lifting a finger? Integrate your Zoom account with Fireflies today!
