Real-Time Transcription

Generate meeting transcripts in real-time.

Real-time transcription generates meeting transcripts in real-time and allows you to consume the transcripts in two ways:

• Receiving real-time transcription webhook events
• Calling the Get Bot Transcript endpoint

Fetching a transcript from Get Bot Transcript while the call is still in progress will return the transcript generated so-far.

Webhooks are completely optional but can be useful for building real-time experiences.

Quickstart: Enable AI real-time transcription

To enable transcription for a bot, specify the transcription_options parameter when calling Create Bot.

At minimum, you must specify the provider and have valid credentials set in the Recall dashboard. You can also set provider-specific parameters to customize the AI model & transcription behavior.

For a comprehensive list of provider-specific parameters, see the Create Bot reference.

JSON

{
  "meeting_url: "https://meet.google.com/myy-meet-ing",
  "transcription_options": {
    "provider": "assembly_ai" | "assembly_ai_async_chunked" | "aws_transcribe" | "deepgram" | "gladia" | "rev" | "speechmatics" | "symbl"
    // ...other provider-specific params
  }
}

Call Get Bot Transcript to see the full transcript for the call. If the call isn't over yet, this endpoint will return the transcript produced thus far.

To receive transcription results as they're generated, you can leverage Transcription Events.

Webhooks

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Setup and verification

To receive live transcript events on your server, there are two things you need to do when Creating the Bot.

Configure transcription for the bot

Make sure you have transcription enabled by setting the transcription_options parameter:

{
  "transcription_options": {
    "provider": "default"
  },
  ...
}

Specifying this parameter will cause transcription to be done, which can be retrieved in-full using Get Bot Transcript.

This is also a prerequisite to receiving real-time transcription webhook events.

Specify the real_time_transcription.destination_url parameter

☑️

To start receiving transcription webhook events, specify the real_time_transcription.destination_url parameter in the Create Bot endpoint.

At this endpoint, you'll want to set up an endpoint to handle incoming transcription events.

For example, I might have an endpoint at https://api.my-app.com/webhook/transcription that verifies incoming webhooks and fires off an event of your own in your application.

Webhook Verification

Verifying incoming webhooks

Speaking of verification, we recommend implementing verification by including a query parameter, such as token=your-random-token, in the URL you provide.

When we make the request to your endpoint, we will use the exact url, including any query parameters. You will then be able to verify the query parameter in your server's webhook handler.

Events

Real Time Transcription

This webhook is sent when new real-time transcription is available.

JSON

{
  "event": "bot.transcription",
  "data": {
    "bot_id": string,
    "transcript": {
      "speaker": string | null,
      "language": string | null,
      "original_transcript_id": number,
      "words":[{
        "text": string,
        "start_time": number,
        "end_time": number
      }],
      "is_final": boolean
    } | absent,
    "search": {
      "speaker": string | null,
      "original_transcript_id": number,
      "hits":[{
        "text": string,
        "start_time": number,
        "end_time": number,
        "confidence": number
      }]
    } | absent
  }
}

Transcription Logs

This webhook is sent via Svix when fatal errors occur when communicating with your transcription provider.

JSON

{
  "event": "bot.output_log",
  "data": {
    "bot_id": string,
    "log": {
      "level": string,
      "message": string,
      "output_id": string | null,
      "created_at": string
    }
  }
}

Partial results

When using real-time transcription, the time to receive a transcription webhook can vary according to how long the utterance is. In cases of longer monologues, this delay can be quite significant and may hinder the real-time experience.

To alleviate this, you can leverage partial transcription results to decrease the latency of transcription events, even with longer utterances.

These are low-latency partial or intermediate results for an utterance and can be used as intermediates for the final transcript.

Enable partial results

To enable partial results, set partial_results to true in the real_time_transcription object when calling Create Bot:

JSON

{
  "real_time_transcription": {
    "destination_url": "https://my-app.com/api/webhook/recall/transcription",
    "partial_results": true
  },
  ...
}

When partial_results is set to true, you will receive partial transcription results in addition to the finalized results.

Using partial results

The is_final field indicates whether or not the block is a partial result or not.

For example, if I say "Hey, my name is John. It's really nice to meet you.", I might receive:

A series of partial results (is_final = false):

Ay my name

Hey my name is John.

Hey my name is John, it's really nice

Then a short time after this, a more accurate final result (is_final: true):

Hey, my name is John. It's really nice to meet you.

This is useful for cases where you may want to use partial results immediately, but then update it with the more accurate, finalized result after receiving it.

One common pattern is to to display partial results in your UI, and then replace them with the finalized version once received.

FAQ

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What is the original_transcript_id?

Recall splits and rejoins transcription utterances for various purposes when processing the transcript.

The original_transcript_id is a way to keep track of which chunks came back together from the transcription provider, in case you want to use this information yourself.

All transcript parts that have the same original_transcript_id were from the same transcript part from the transcription provider and can be sorted accordingly.

What does is_final represent?

The is_final field indicates whether or not the block is a partial result or not.

This is a feature that certain transcription providers use to give low-latency partial or intermediate results for an utterance. They're typically used as intermediates for the final transcript.

For example, if I say "Hey, my name is John", I might receive:

A partial result (is_final = false):

Ay my name John

Then a short time after this, a more accurate final result (is_final: true):

Hey, my name is John.

This is useful for cases where you may want to display a result immediately, but then update it with the more accurate, finalized result after receiving it.