Granola AI Tutorial: Complete Guide to AI-Enhanced Meeting Notes and Smart Productivity
A step-by-step look at Granola AI, an app that combines manual notes with real-time transcription to produce action items, summaries, and follow-up emails.
Sitting in back-to-back meetings usually means choosing between paying attention and taking usable notes. Granola AI is built to remove that trade-off by combining a person's own manual notes with a real-time transcript, then using AI to turn the two together into an organized, actionable summary once the meeting ends.
Getting started with Granola
Granola is a downloadable app for Mac or PC, found by searching for it directly and downloading it from its website. Once installed, it presents a simple interface: whenever a meeting starts, Granola prompts the user to record it and begin taking notes alongside the audio. The core idea is that you're never just transcribing or just note-taking, you're doing both at once, with the app filling in the gaps afterward.
Real-time transcription meets manual notes
During a live walkthrough, a recorded meeting is played back while Granola captures the transcript in the background. The app doesn't just log what was said, it lets the user keep typing their own shorthand notes at the same time, then reconciles the two into a fuller record once the recording finishes. After the meeting, generating the notes produces a structured breakdown: meeting context, the current progress being reported, next steps, blockers, and follow-up items, all pulled from what was actually discussed.
Turning a recording into a structured summary
Once notes are generated, Granola doesn't stop at a transcript dump. It uses GPT-4 to enhance the raw notes into a proper summary, and the app can also list out action items directly, draft a follow-up email based on what was discussed, or compile the questions and answers that came up during the meeting. In one example, a note-taker who mentioned working on training a GAN model got back a specific summary of next steps: continue training the model and complete the inference runs, pulled straight from what was said out loud rather than typed manually. That's the practical payoff of pairing transcription with generation: someone who steps away from a meeting, or wasn't even present, can still see exactly what needs to happen next.
Templates for different meeting types
Granola supports switching between different note templates depending on what the meeting actually needs. Options include capturing background and pain points, budget or timeline details when they come up, an existing product demo, or a general topic summary. Choosing the right template changes what the AI pulls out and prioritizes, so a sales demo and a team stand-up don't get forced into the same generic format.
Sharing notes and generating follow-ups
Once notes exist, sharing them is built into the workflow. Users can copy a shareable link, copy the note text directly, send it by email, or post it to Slack, which matters given how many organizations already run their day-to-day communication through Slack. The same GPT-4 layer that generates summaries can also draft the follow-up email itself, so the step of writing "here's what we discussed and what's next" doesn't have to start from a blank page.
Works across every meeting platform
Granola isn't tied to one video tool. It works across Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams, and can also be used to record standalone calls, including something as simple as a WhatsApp call, by starting a new note and switching on recording. It also supports multiple accounts, so a work account's notes stay separate from personal ones, with additional hub and settings options for managing the workspace. The tool is free to start, with more advanced features requiring an upgrade.
Key takeaways
- Granola pairs manual note-taking with real-time transcription rather than replacing one with the other.
- After a meeting, it uses GPT-4 to generate structured summaries covering context, progress, next steps, blockers, and follow-up items.
- It can draft follow-up emails and list action items automatically, pulled from what was actually said in the meeting.
- Switchable templates (pain points, budget or timeline, product demo, general summary) tailor what the AI extracts for different meeting types.
- Notes can be shared as a link, copied as text, emailed, or sent to Slack directly from the app.
- It works across Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and standalone calls, with a free tier and paid upgrades for advanced features.
Try it yourself
Anyone who sits through a lot of meetings and struggles to keep notes organized afterward is the natural audience here. A free trial is available directly from Granola's website, and Humanitarians AI has published a step-by-step guide on GitHub for anyone who wants a written reference alongside this walkthrough.
Full transcript(auto-generated, with timestamps)
[0:00]Guys, my name is Balak. I am one of the TAs for the course. Today we are going to be discussing the guide to Granola. This guide is also present on GitHub under the class repository. Granola is AIdriven note by designed to help you navigate backto-back meetings with ease by combining manual notes with AI enhanced transcripts. Granola ensures that FD meeting results in well organized actionable summaries. Few key features of granola are realtime transcription, AI enhanced notes, customizable templates, GPT4 integration which not just takes notes, it works for your meeting after after the meeting itself and also helps you draft follow-up emails, summarize key objectives, generate action list and
[0:48]Also answer your specific queries like what is the next step. Other feature is seamless sharing and privacy and security. There are different uses of Tonola as we discussed for professional meetings, client interactions, team collaboration, freelancers, for freelancing and consulting for education as well. One way you can access this platform is by just simply searching granola AI and then you'll be headed to this website where you can simply download this app on your Mac or your PC. After you download this app, you'll be able to open this app. So you'll see something like this after you open the app. So this is how the app looks like.
[1:47]So basically what happens is whenever you have a meeting, granola suggests to record it and take notes of it. So let's say you know today I had a meeting so I recorded it and took notes of it. So what it did for me is it took all the notes. It provided me the sum. Yeah, this is these are the enhanced notes. Apart from that, we can ask for listing action items. We can write up a follow-up email based on my notes or we can list the question and answers. So as you can see the questions asked by the TA in the meeting are presented here
[2:37]So that easiest easier for us to you know later on look at the notes and see how we can answer in the meeting next time. So it really helps in that case. Um today I'm just going to show you how it works. So let's say this is one of the recorded meetings that I have. So I'm just going to simply go back here add a new note. Let's say um today's meetings today's data which has me and then I can simply start the transcript. Right? So it has already started here. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to go back and play this
[3:38]So I'm going to keep playing this in the background and then quickly we can see what notes would be appearing there. right now. I am also working on creating the I think that's
[5:14]Okay. So this was the meeting that I had played and it had uh you know taken notes from whatever was playing in the background. So you're just going to see that right now. Right. So I'm just going to generate the notes based on what the speakers were speaking. So as you can see the meeting context the current progress so I was giving the report on current progress. So these were the points that I was speaking in the meeting apart from that next steps blockers and questions and follow-up items. Right? So this is how it takes the notes and also gives you the summary in that
[6:02]Case. Right? So you can see here again you change the type of notes that you need here the background pain points questions budget or timeline if discussed any right um existing product demo. So let's say a person who's you know about to give a demo in a meeting you can you can take notes based on the right questions um that you should ask in the meeting later on or the summary based on um the topic. So there are different templates that you can select right. So it gives you the right context in that sense. Apart from that you can also share your notes by copying this link or you can
[6:58]Copy the text as well or you can send an email or slack someone. So it really helps you know because many organizations use slack. So you can quickly slack someone in the meeting notes that you took during that day. Um or you can ask action items you know. So as I was discussing in the meeting that I am you know working on a GAN model and trying to train it. So it sees that you know the next steps that I need to take is to continue training the GAN model complete the inference runs on the GAN model. So it really gives you an idea of how you should proceed or you
[7:37]Know even when you're not present in the meeting you can quickly take in the notes and then later on see what is the next thing that you should be working on or do do you need to write any follow-up email or something like that. So it really helps in that case. So I think I would say it's a great platform if you have a lot of meetings during the day. So yeah, I I took notes for other meetings as well. So yeah, this was for my today um today's presentation meeting. This was the meeting that I had just played. Apart from that, you can also record
[8:20]Your calls. So let's say you took you take a call on WhatsApp. Um you can simply switch on recording here with granola right so you take a new note you let's say call it a WhatsApp call WhatsApp call with let's say Alex right and then you can simply you know take the notes in and then later on review whenever needed so it helps with uh mostly all the platforms so whenever you're on GME or Zoom or even Microsoft Teams. It helps you to um take the notes and also suggests um during the readings as well. So yeah, I think this is a really helpful platform in that sense. Apart from that
[9:12]You if you want you can switch the accounts as well based on let's say you have a work account so you can take the notes in that particular account. Apart from that hub center settings, these are the common options that get um yeah so this is how the platform looks like and I think you should really give it it a try. So this is a free trial for now but I think later on for other advanced options you need to upgrade. So yeah you can check that out as well. I think that's it for today's meeting.
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