Meeting recap: how to write one, and what Zoom, Teams and Google Meet actually keep after the call (2026)

A meeting lasts forty-five minutes. Its recap gets used for months — cited in the next call, searched when a decision is questioned, read by the person who joined the project a week later. That's the part of the meeting that does the work, and it's the part most platforms treat as an afterthought: a summary email to the host, a recording in someone's drive, a chat that scrolls away.

This guide has two halves. First, the recap itself — what it is and a template you can send in five minutes. Second, what the platform does for you: where Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet put the record after the call, who receives it, who can change it, how long it stays, and — the question their documentation answers most clearly of all — in whose language. Every vendor fact is from their public documentation, checked August 2026, linked at the end. What the assistant does during the call — speaking up on its own, acting on a request — is a different job, mapped vendor by vendor in the AI meeting assistant guide.

What a meeting recap is

A meeting recap is a short written record sent after a meeting: what was decided, who does what by when, and what stayed open. It's not the minutes (the fuller, formal record) and not the transcript (every word). It's the three things a reader needs a month later, in the order they'll look for them.

A recap that works has four parts:

1. Decisions — each one in a sentence, with who agreed. "Agreed" and "still open" are different lines.
2. Action items — owner, task, date. One per line. No owner, no item.
3. Open questions — what wasn't resolved and who's picking it up.
4. Where the record is — a link to the recording, the notes or the document, so the recap doesn't try to be all of them.

A meeting recap template

Subject: Recap — [meeting name], [date]

Decisions

• [Decision 1] — agreed by [names].
• [Decision 2] — still open; [name] to propose by [date].

Action items

• [Name]: [task] — by [date].
• [Name]: [task] — by [date].

Open questions

• [Question] — [name] to follow up.

Record: [link to recording / notes / document]. Next meeting: [date].

Send it the same day, to everyone who was invited — not only to those who attended. The people who missed the meeting are the ones who need it most.

That's the manual version. The rest of this guide is about what the platform writes for you, and what happens to it.

Zoom: AI Companion summary, Previous tab, Team Chat

The summary. Meeting summary with AI Companion produces three sections — "Quick recap", "Summary" and "Next steps" — on Zoom Workplace Pro, Pro Plus, Business, Business Plus, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus accounts. After the meeting, "meeting summaries are sent through email", appear on the Summaries page of the web portal, and can be "posted to the meeting's dedicated group chat in Chat".

Who receives it. Participants get the summary when "the host chose to share it with them"; admins choose between host only, host and co-hosts, host and invitees in the organization, or all invitees including external parties. Two documented exclusions: "unauthenticated users will not receive an email summary", and people who joined ad hoc "will not receive the summary".

Who can change it. "Only the host can edit the summary" and "only the host can delete a summary"; recipients can share it onward.

How long it stays. An admin or user setting, Auto-delete meeting summaries, moves summaries to Trash after a set number of days; the article doesn't state a default retention.

Meeting history. In the web portal, Meetings → Previous lists past meetings — "track meeting details, review participant information, and monitor your hosting activity" — with a date filter; expired meeting IDs drop out per Zoom's expiration rules. Account admins use the meeting and webinar history report for longer ranges.

Language. Zoom lists 32 supported languages for meeting summaries. The documentation doesn't state that a summary can be produced in a language other than the one spoken, or in a different language per participant.

Where the live translation layer stops on Zoom is a separate post: Zoom live translation.

Microsoft Teams: Recap in the chat and calendar

The recap. "Recaps are available after Teams events, including meetings, town halls, webinars, and calls, that were recorded or transcribed. In a recap, you can find the event recording, transcript, shared files, notes, custom summary, agenda, and follow-up tasks." The AI parts — generated summaries, speaker and timeline markers, AI notes — are intelligent recap, which requires Teams Premium or a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.

Where it lives. In the event chat (View recap or the Recap tab) and in the calendar event. "Recap notifications, notes, and content aren't currently available for ad-hoc events" — a meeting has to be scheduled, and recorded or transcribed, to have one.

Who can open the recording. Recordings are stored in OneDrive or SharePoint; invited and attending users can view them, organizers and co-organizers can download and delete. "For now, guests and external attendees can view the recording only if it's explicitly shared with them." Expiration is an admin setting the organizer can adjust or remove.

Language. Intelligent recap supports a long list of languages; the recap is generated from the transcript in the language the meeting was held in. The translated layer during the call — captions in 31 languages, the Interpreter agent in 10 — is documented as live-only: captions aren't saved and recordings keep original audio (Teams live translation).

Google Meet: "Take notes for me"

The notes. Gemini's Take notes for me will "automatically capture meeting notes organized in Google Docs and share with your team" — a summary, decisions, next steps and discussion points, with screenshots of presentations shown for 10+ seconds. The organizer gets an email with a link; the document is attached to the Calendar event and accessible to internal invitees per the configured sharing setting — all invited guests including external, internal only, or hosts and co-hosts only.

Who can use it. Business Standard and Plus, Enterprise Standard and Plus, and the Gemini Education Premium add-on (earlier Gemini Enterprise and AI Meetings & Messaging add-on purchasers keep access).

Language. English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish — and "this feature supports one language at a time. Multiple languages spoken in the same meeting aren't currently supported." Google's speech translation during the call (English ↔ five languages, one pair per meeting) is unavailable in recordings (Google Meet live translation).

The axis the three share

Put the three side by side and the same shape appears: the platform writes a record, delivers it to the host (and, on the host's decision, to some of the others), keeps it as long as an admin allows — in the one language the meeting was held in. Google says so outright ("one language at a time"); Zoom and Teams document a summary of the spoken transcript. A meeting held in English by a team that reads in Portuguese, Polish and German produces an English record; everyone else works from memory or a second-hand summary. We wrote up the whole axis, vendor by vendor: how much of your meeting still exists in your language a week later.

InterMIND: the recap as the meeting's own record

We build the recap as the thing the meeting leaves behind, so here's ours on the same questions:

• What it contains. A summary — overview, points marked agreed, open or disputed with the speakers attached, action items with owners, open questions — plus the recording when the session was recorded, on one page. Each line keeps the timestamp it came from. A complete example: /features/recap.
• How it's produced. Ending the call produces it. "There's no note-taker bot in the participant list and no per-meeting toggle to remember."
• Who receives it. Signed-in members of the meeting get the link by email, in the meeting's chat, and in the calendar event — the link is minted when the meeting is scheduled and stays the same for every session. Opening it requires signing in; forwarding it to someone who wasn't in the meeting grants nothing. A participant who joined as a guest without an account gets the full translated meeting live but no recap afterwards — the account is free, and it's what makes the record reachable.
• Who can change it. Any signed-in member can edit the summary; every edit becomes a revision with author, timestamp and a word-level diff. The host can delete a session's artifacts — summary, transcript, recording and their translations — permanently.
• How long it stays. Channels keep the recap of every past session; ad-hoc meetings keep the latest session's, mirroring how their chat is purged after each call. The host can also BCC every recap to extra addresses — a CRM inbound address, for instance — after a one-time confirmation.
• In whose language. The recap is displayed in the reader's language — the summary is translated for each member on demand, whatever language the meeting was held in. The chat history of the channel reads the same way (multilingual chat).
• Where it runs. The summary runs on the AI gateway your organization selects, in an EU region, with zero data retention and no training on your content; the provider doesn't store the transcript (where one InterMIND meeting actually runs).

The comparison, in one table

See it instead of reading about it

• Open the example recap — a complete recap rendered by the same code that writes yours, timestamps included.
• Try the live demo — no signup; speak, and hear the room translated per listener in any of 23 languages.
• Start your first meeting — guests join by link, each in their own language.
• See the benchmark — per-pair, monthly translation quality on real traffic, with the methodology public.

FAQ

What does "meeting recap" mean?

A short written record sent after a meeting: the decisions made, the action items with owners and dates, and what stayed open — with a link to the recording or notes. It's shorter than minutes and far shorter than a transcript; its job is to be read a month later by someone who needs the outcome, not the conversation.

How do I write a meeting recap email?

Four blocks, in this order: decisions (each with who agreed, "still open" as its own line), action items (owner, task, date — one per line), open questions (with who follows up), and where the record is. Send it the same day to everyone invited, including the people who missed it. The template above fits in one screen.

How do I see my Zoom meeting history?

Sign in to the Zoom web portal, open Meetings and click the Previous tab — past meetings with details and participants, filterable by date. Expired meeting IDs drop out per Zoom's rules; account owners and admins use the meeting and webinar history report for account-wide history. AI Companion summaries live separately, on the Summaries page.

How do I find a Teams meeting recap?

Open the meeting's chat and select View recap (or the Recap tab), or open the event in your Teams calendar. A recap exists for scheduled meetings that were recorded or transcribed; ad-hoc meetings don't get one. The AI summary and notes inside it need Teams Premium or a Copilot license.

Does Google Meet make a meeting summary?

With Take notes for me, on Business Standard and Plus and Enterprise Standard and Plus editions: a Google Doc with summary, decisions and next steps, emailed to the organizer and attached to the calendar event. It works in eight languages, one language per meeting — "multiple languages spoken in the same meeting aren't currently supported".

Which platform keeps the recap in each participant's language?

Among the four above, the vendors' documentation describes Zoom's, Teams' and Meet's records as produced from the spoken language — Google states one language per meeting. InterMIND displays the recap in each reader's language, translated on demand, alongside a channel history that reads the same way.

Do guests get the InterMIND recap?

A participant who joins by link without an account gets the meeting live, fully translated, and nothing afterwards — recaps are members-only and require signing in. The account is free; it's what makes the recap and the history reachable.

Sources: Zoom — Using Meeting Summary with AI, Zoom — Enabling or disabling meeting summary with AI, Zoom — Supported languages for Zoom AI features, Zoom — Viewing your Zoom meeting history, Microsoft — Recap in Microsoft Teams, Microsoft — Start, stop, and find meeting recordings in Microsoft Teams, Microsoft — Use live captions in Teams meetings, Google Meet — "Take notes for me" in Google Meet, Google Workspace Updates — "Take notes for me" in seven additional languages, Google Meet — Learn about Speech Translation. Vendors change plans, features and language lists over time; check their pages for the current state. All facts checked August 2026.