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Recording Modes and Options

You can get conversations into Harmony in four ways: send the Companion Bot to a live meeting, record locally with the Desktop App, let Auto-Join schedule the bot from your calendar, or upload an existing recording or transcript.

Companion Bot for live meetings​

Use the Companion Bot for Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams calls. The bot is dispatched through Harmony's meeting-bot provider integration (Recall.ai or MeetingBaas, depending on workspace configuration) — Harmony itself does not host the bot.

To send the bot manually:

  1. Copy the meeting link from your meeting platform.
  2. Open Quick Launch (the Cmd/Ctrl+K command palette) and pick Remote.
  3. Paste the link and click Ask Companion to join.

The bot joins as a visible participant (default name: Harmony Bot, configurable per workspace). If the meeting has a waiting room, the host must admit the bot before recording starts.

Auto-Join from your calendar​

Auto-Join schedules the Companion Bot for qualifying calendar events automatically. It is gated by several layers and is not a single workspace toggle. All of these conditions must be true for an event to be auto-joined:

  • The bot-auto-join Reflag feature flag is on for your deployment.
  • The backend env kill-switch HARMONY_REMOTE_AUTOJOIN is set to "true".
  • Your workspace admin has enabled auto-join (Workspace Settings → Experimental, persisted as organizations.auto_join_enabled).
  • Your personal User Preferences → Experimental auto-join setting is on.
  • Your calendar is connected (Google Calendar today).
  • The event has a supported Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams link.
  • The event starts in the supported scheduling window — between 2 minutes and 28 days in the future. Events starting in less than 2 minutes are not auto-scheduled (use Remote instead).

If auto-join is not enabled at any of those layers, you can still send the bot manually from Quick Launch or from an upcoming calendar event in the Harmony calendar view.

For the full layered model and troubleshooting, see Recording automatically.

Desktop recording​

Use the Harmony desktop app on macOS or Windows when you want local control over the recording. It is best for:

  • Platforms the bot does not support.
  • Phone or VoIP calls.
  • In-person conversations.
  • Screen recordings or product walkthroughs.

The desktop app can capture screen content, system audio, microphone audio, and an optional camera overlay depending on the permissions you grant. Linux is not a supported platform for desktop recording today.

Upload an existing recording​

Use upload for past meetings, in-person recordings, phone calls, or imports from another tool.

  1. Open Meetings in the sidebar.
  2. Pick Upload from Quick Launch on the Start tab, or open the Cmd/Ctrl+K command palette and choose the Upload tile.
  3. Choose the Recording tab to upload an audio or video file or paste a public recording URL, or choose the Transcript tab to paste raw text.
  4. Fill in Team, Contact, Owner, and Medium.
  5. Click Upload.

Harmony accepts standard audio and video files up to 2 GB. See Uploading meetings manually for the full flow.

Live video calls inside Harmony​

Harmony also has an in-product Harmony Calls capability for 1:1 video, plus a Harmony Meetings Quick Launch tile that opens an external demo meeting URL. Both are gated by feature flags and are off by default in most deployments. Importantly:

  • Harmony Calls do not produce a recording or transcript in the standard Harmony backend — they are not turned into conversations.
  • The Harmony Meetings tile opens a link at m.heyharmony.com and is reflag-gated.

These are different from "starting a Zoom / Meet / Teams call from Harmony" — Harmony does not natively launch external meeting platforms on your behalf. To record a Zoom, Meet, or Teams meeting, copy the link and use Remote in Quick Launch (the Companion Bot path), or rely on Auto-Join.

During and after a meeting​

While the bot is in the call, it records silently. Removing the bot from the meeting stops the recording. Desktop recordings can be stopped from the recording panel in the desktop app.

Processing usually finishes in a few minutes after the meeting ends or the upload completes. Long recordings (1+ hour) can take 10–15 minutes. The conversation page updates live in the app — Harmony does not send an email or OS notification when processing finishes.

See How Harmony captures conversations for what you get once a meeting is processed.

Troubleshooting​

Companion didn't join: confirm the link is a supported Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams URL, that the meeting is active, and that the host admitted the bot from the waiting room.

Auto-join did not run: see Recording automatically — every layer (deployment flag, backend env, workspace toggle, user pref, calendar, event start time) must be in order.

Quality issues: see Transcription quality.