Session summaries
Turn the content of Whereby sessions into meeting notes, clinical documentation and educational material with the power of AI.
Session summaries are derived from session transcriptions and provided as json responses available through the customer portal or via the API.
In order to produce a summary from a Whereby session you need to first create a session transcript. You can get a live transcript directly from the session or you can transcribe any recording, which was saved in Whereby-provided storage. Learn more about transcribing sessions.
Once you have the transcript you can create the summary using the desired summary template.
You can use Whereby session summaries manually through the customer portal, or programmatically with the combination of API requests.
Summary Templates
The summary template determines the structure of the summary as well as the type of information that will be derived from the transcript. You can choose from summary templates designed to be used for Whereby sessions being run in different contexts.
The following summary templates are currently available:
General BulletedGeneral NarrativeSOAPExtended SOAPEducational LectureEducational Tutoring
General context
This is the default summary template designed for use in any context and in session with two or more participants. Works great for business or internal company meetings. The summary contains session agenda, key points discussed, follow up action items and a short summary. The content of each section is organised into bullet points, with the exception of the short summary, which comes as a single paragraph.
Sample output
"summary": {
"summary": "Agenda\n- Discussion of current goals and ongoing projects\n- Addressing audio issues during the meeting\n- Planning for follow-up meetings and action items\n\nKey Points Discussed\n- The team page has been updated with archive information from the past two quarters.\n- Goals for the current and next quarter were discussed, including ensuring the Progressive Web App (PWA) responds to changing network conditions, improving audio reliability, and reducing infrastructure vendor costs.\n- Audio issues during the meeting were addressed, suggesting possible electromagnetic interference.\n- The RTP quality score project is ongoing, aiming to make decisions in meetings based on connection quality.\n- The audio-only mode is being tested internally, with plans to make it automatic.\n- Infrastructure cost reduction efforts are in progress, with a knowledge-sharing session scheduled.\n- Challenges with the team include knowledge concentration, keeping the team on track, and unplanned work from business-critical customer issues.\n- Ongoing projects include glitch-free reconnect, RTP quality score, audio-only mode, audio improvements, and live captions.\n- Test DevLab is used for testing media performance, but its utility is being evaluated.\n- A new quality of service metric is being considered for Posthog.\n\nFollow Up Action Items\n- Schedule a meeting to focus on the RTP quality score project details.\n- Investigate the source of audio issues during the meeting.\n- Review and possibly revise the placement of the audio-only mode toggle for embedded customers.\n- Consider what metrics to track for the audio-only mode project.\n- Discuss resource allocation for the live captions project and RTP quality score project.\n- Attend the knowledge-sharing session on infrastructure cost reduction.\n\nShort Summary\nDuring the meeting, the team discussed the goals and ongoing projects, including improving the Progressive Web App's response to network conditions, enhancing audio reliability, and reducing infrastructure costs. Audio issues experienced during the call led to a discussion about potential electromagnetic interference. The team also talked about the RTP quality score project, which is in progress and aims to improve meeting experiences based on connection quality. Challenges faced by the team were highlighted, including knowledge concentration, staying on track, and unplanned work. Ongoing projects were reviewed, with a focus on glitch-free reconnect, audio-only mode, and live captions. Test DevLab's role in testing media performance was discussed, and a new quality of service metric for Posthog is being considered. Follow-up action items were set, including scheduling detailed project meetings, investigating audio issues, and attending a session on cost reduction."
},This is the default summary template designed for use in any context and in session with two or more participants. It provides a detailed summary of the session in the narrative form containing a few paragraphs. The structure of the paragraphs is derived from the content of the transcript.
Sample output
"summary": {
"summary": "Introduction: The meeting involved a discussion on various tasks related to the accessibility and functionality of a project interface, with a focus on keyboard navigation and the behavior of UI components. The participants aimed to refine tasks and ensure a clear understanding of the changes to be made to the codebase, with an emphasis on compliance with WCAG guidelines and intuitive user experience. The meeting concluded with plans to continue the discussion the next day and to document decisions regarding behavior changes for accessibility features. The participants also discussed the importance of distinguishing between mandatory accessibility fixes and nice-to-have features. The meeting involved Speaker 0 (Andres), Speaker 1, Speaker 2 (James), and Speaker 3 (Sarah Rose), with Speaker 0 leading the discussion on specific tasks and proposed solutions. Speaker 1 provided clarifications and suggestions, while Speaker 2 and Speaker 3 contributed insights and raised questions about the consistency and documentation of the changes. Key topics discussed included accessibility improvements, button behavior, and keyboard shortcuts. The team agreed on the behavior of the Enter and Space keys in different contexts and discussed the need for a public documentation page for accessibility features. Additionally, the team planned to start working on accessibility tickets the following Monday and aimed to refine the tickets for efficiency in development. The meeting ended with the decision to continue the discussion the following day and to potentially document behavior decisions asynchronously. Four key topics from the meeting are summarized below. Accessibility Improvements: Speaker 0 discussed adding details to tasks for accessibility improvements, such as mapping attributes to roles like 'role=heading' and using H1, H2 tags or the role attribute to maintain styling while improving accessibility. Button Behavior and Keyboard Shortcuts: The team discussed the behavior of buttons and keyboard shortcuts, proposing that the Space key should open context menus while the Enter key should perform default actions. This behavior would align with native HTML select elements. Speaker 2 (James) raised concerns about maintaining quick toggle functionality, suggesting keeping the Space key for primary actions and using Enter for context menus. Documentation and Consistency: Speaker 3 (Sarah Rose) questioned whether the decided behaviors should be standardized across the platform. Speaker 1 expressed reluctance to create a documentation page for internal use, fearing it could become outdated, but suggested a public page detailing accessibility features. Speaker 2 (James) emphasized the importance of documenting key behavior decisions. Pre-Call Device Setup: The team identified an issue where hitting Enter on the pre-call screen would inadvertently join the meeting instead of allowing the user to select a different camera or microphone. They agreed that Enter should not skip the pre-call unless the join meeting button is in focus, and planned to create a ticket to address this behavior.",
},Medical context
This template is designed for use in medical sessions involving two participants (usually a doctor and a patient). It provides the summary in the SOAP format commonly used for clinical documentation (refer to the SOAP template) expanded with additional fields: Chief Complaint, Medications and Allergies.
Sample output
Educational context
Manual Session Summaries
Go to "Transcriptions" page of your customer portal to access all existing transcriptions of Whereby sessions. Find the transcription of a session that you want to summarise and select the template which you want to use for the summary.
The processing time, especially for longer sessions, may take up to a minute. Once the summary is generated, you can download it in the form of a .json file.
For each session transcript, only one summary can be created at a time. If you want to summarize the session using a different template, you must first delete the existing summary of the transcript. Only the most recent summary is stored and available for download.
Programmatic Session Summaries
If you want to automate the process of summarising Whereby sessions, you can do so with a combination of API requests.
Select the transcript to summarise
Summaries are derived from session transcriptions, so you need to find the transcriptionId of the session to be summarised.
You can get the transcriptionId of an individual session from the transcription.finished webhook event. Alternatively, you can fetch the list of all transcriptions with a GET /transcriptions request.
Trigger the summary process
In order to summarise the transcript, send a POST request to /summaries endpoint with the transcriptionId and the desired summary template in the request body:
The "template" field is optional, and - if not set - the "General Bulleted" template will be used by default.
You expect a 201 Created response with the summaryId:<id> content.
For each session transcript, only one summary can be created at a time. If you want to summarize the session using a different template, you must first delete the existing summary of the transcript. Only the most recent summary is stored and available for download.
Fetch the summary
You can fetch an individual summary with a GET /summaries/{summaryId} request.
Alternatively, you can fetch all summaries with a GET /summaries request, witch returns a paginated response containing 25 items per page.
The summarisation process is running in the background and usually takes about a minute to complete. There is no webhook event sent when the summary is finished, so you need to poll the endpoint and read the state field of the response.
For state: in_progress the summary field is empty. Once the process is completed, the state field changes to ready and the summary field contains the desired content.
Delete the summary
Session summaries are stored in Whereby database until you delete them.
You can delete a summary with a DELETE /summaries/{summaryId} request where you expect a 204 No Content response.
Known limitations
Session summaries are only compatible with Whereby-hosted transcriptions. It will not be possible to trigger session summaries for transcriptions stored in your own Amazon S3 bucket.
Session summaries are currently not considered to be HIPAA compliant. Avoid using Session Summaries in order to maintain HIPAA compliance of your Whereby sessions. Learn more about Whereby HIPAA compliant setup.
Last updated
Was this helpful?

