Bookmarks — Not Just For Books
Audio bookmarks in Talko pinpoint key moments
Your team has all the tools it could ever need to run like a well-oiled machine. Project management and doc-sharing tools, team messaging apps, CRM and ERP systems, and so much more. You might even use them all perfectly as-designed!
Even still, there are times when you just need to talk — weekly status calls, impromptu design discussions, daily “standups”, break/fix scenarios.
For mobile and distributed teams, this means hopping on a conference call. We built Talko to be the absolute best, most reliable tool for mobile team conferencing. What’s not to love about there being no such thing as a dropped call?!
But even the most amazing, high-quality call experience can break down if key team members aren’t there. And therein lies the reality — as we’ve become increasingly mobile (and busy) it has become near-impossible for teams to consistently all be together for a call, even for scheduled meetings. There are scheduling conflicts, doctors appointments, customer meetings, customer visits, sick kids, and (gasp) days off.
The call still happens — after all, as Freddie Mercury once said, the show must go on. But those who weren’t there are immediately out of sync. A decision was made that they need to be aware of, an outstanding issue requires their attention, or the team is simply left with an incomplete picture of project status without their input. To try to ‘close the loop’, meeting notes are shared via email, where the ensuing conversation meanders and becomes unwieldy. People then start trying to clarify though 1:1 calls. Suddenly, nobody on the team knows what’s what, and decisions made in the meeting are being un-made.
It’s madness,… and it’s why we made call recording a key part of the experience in Talko.
Any busy team trying to generate ideas, solve problems and generally get things done quickly and efficiently needs all team members to have easy and transparent access to the information they need to do their job. Team conversations and conferences are an important part of that. Providing that easy and transparent access should never require the ‘tax’ of post-meeting emails and sidebar conversations.
But having a record of the conversation isn’t always enough. It’s important to help people quickly find the moment(s) that matter. Someone trying to come up to speed on a design decision shouldn’t have to listen to an entire 90 minute design meeting if the only thing that matters is the moment when a critical decision was made and summarized.
Marking such a moment is what our audio bookmarking feature is all about.
How to Create a Bookmark
- When in a call, press-and-hold the audio amplitude track, right where the important moment begins. You can do this while LIVE, when you know someone is about to say something to remember, or after the fact by scrolling back to the important moment.
- Annotate the bookmark and include a #hashtag for easy discovery. You don’t have to do this, but it will provide a visual annotation for everyone to immediately see why the moment matters.
- The bookmark’s spot is marked visually in the call. You can quickly go to its specific moment in time with a simple tap of the bookmark. Once there, tap the Play button to listen to that moment.
That’s it. A fantastic and low cost way to help your team stay in sync. Give it a try and let us know what you think!
