Create notes and import data

Managers and contributors can create notes by opening a project and selecting Notes. From there, you can select one of the two options:

• New note: This will open a blank note ready for you to add whatever you're working on.

• Import: This will allow you to upload your files as separate notes in bulk. Selecting and importing data into notes from your device, Google Drive, Zoom, or OneDrive. If you select more than one video, audio, or PDF document, these will be split into and housed within individual notes in the project.

When you open a note, you'll see its body, the editor toolbar at the top, and a sidebar with icons to the right. In the sidebar, this is where you'll find and quickly navigate to your note's magic summary, highlights, tags, fields, and comments.

You can also collapse the sidebar from view. To do this, hover over the border and click the arrow to Hide sidebar. The sidebar can be re-opened at any time with the same action.

Rename your note

You can change the title of a note by clicking on it in the toolbar at the top of the note and entering a new name.

Bring in video, audio, and PDF files into notes using our first-party integrations - Zoom, OneDrive, and Google Drive. Find more information below on how to set these up for your account and start importing files:

• Zoom - for Zoom cloud recordings

• Google Drive - for Google Meet recordings, PDF, or Google cloud documents (sheet, slide or drawing)

• OneDrive - for Microsoft Teams cloud recordings, PDF, Word documents, Excel sheets and Powerpoints.

• Zapier - for connecting other apps like Slack, Intercom, and Google Forms to your Dovetail account

Dovetail’s built-in transcription provides a powerful way to share stories about your research and allows you to develop a repository of searchable audio and video clips.

• To generate a transcript for your audio or video file, you must first import your file into a note.

• Once imported, select Begin under the video/audio player. Configure your desired settings under Language and Custom vocabulary, and press Start transcription.

You can transcribe conversations in 41 languages and receive a full native-language transcript back. Please find a full list of supported languages below.

Automatically detect language

By selecting Auto-detect as your transcription language, Dovetail will automatically detect what language is being spoken and generate a transcription using that detected language.

Unfortunately, Dovetail cannot automatically detect every language that we currently support at this time. If the spoken language cannot be detected, a transcript will still be generated; however, it will not be accurate.

Please refer to the list of unsupported languages below before using auto-detect.

Automatically transcribe files

Video and audio files uploaded by selecting Import can be automatically transcribed by enabling the toggle before selecting your files.

Once enabled, selected files will be automatically transcribed using auto-detect.

To improve the accuracy of transcripts, you can submit a list of custom words or phrases that are not found in a dictionary (for example, company names or industry jargon) before starting a transcription.

• To do this, upload your file, select Begin, and navigate to Custom vocabulary.

• From there, enter words or phrases into the textbox and select Start transcription when complete.

Share a custom vocabulary across the workspace

To avoid entering terms every time before a transcription, workspace admins can save a global list of up to 100 words or phrases at ⚙️ Settings > Transcription > Workspace custom vocabulary. This will apply to all transcripts users create across all projects in a workspace.

For when you need human-level accuracy with your transcripts or to analyze conversations in a language that we don't yet support – we've also added the option to bring your own transcript (in the form of a caption file).

We support importing any WebVTT (Web Video Text Tracks) caption file. When you upload a .vtt caption file, we'll use the caption timestamps to sync with your video or audio file playback.

• To import your own transcript, click ••• (Actions) below a video or audio file > Click Upload transcript > Select a compatible .vtt file.

Please note

• When importing .vtt files, the speaker names must be formatted as <v NAME > for Dovetail to extract the speaker name correctly.

• If you have a non-compatible .srt caption file, you can convert this to a compatible .vtt file using Rev's free caption converter. This converter provides AI-level accuracy.

• For human-level accuracy, we recommend using Rev.com's paid captioning services who can supply a compatible .vtt file for use in Dovetail once one of their skilled transcriptionists finish your job. Please ensure the Output File Format selected is WebVTT (.vtt) prior to payment on their service.

Upload files from your device into notes within a project by selecting blank New note > Upload a file or Import data > Browse.

Once imported, a preview of your file will appear, allowing you to highlight, tag, comment and search text content for the following file types:

• PDFs (.pdf)

• Microsoft Word documents (.docx)

• Microsoft Powerpoint files (.pptx)

• Keynote presentations (.key)

• Apple Pages (.pages)

Note: preview won't be available for other filetypes, e.g. zip files

You can change the preview within your note to display: Full document, Single page or Card. To access these options, click on the "More" button in the preview window.

You can create multiple notes at once from a single spreadsheet. This is handy for importing data like NPS feedback, survey responses, and customer feedback to bring in to Dovetail.

The file should be UTF-8 encoded Comma Separated Value (CSV) file with a header row and have at least 1 column each for:

• Content – required, text format (300,000 character limit). This becomes the body of the note, which you can later highlight and tag.

• Created date – must be in ISO 8601 date format or YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM

• Title – text format (200 character limit)

During import, you will need to map columns from your spreadsheet to how it will be presented in your notes. For example, if you have a column for survey answers, you can add them to the body of your note by mapping this to the option ‘Content’.

If your spreadsheet contains a date column, Dovetail might have already detected it, which will be green.

Any fields that have been added to notes will also be available as fields to import into.

Automatic sentiment analysis for CSV import

You can leverage automatic sentiment analysis when importing a CSV document into notes to speed up your work.

To do this, toggle Run sentiment analysis on import and choose which sentiment analysis method you'd like to use.

• General sentiment looks for any words that have strong positive or negative sentiment.

• Targeted sentiment looks for strong positive or negative sentiment expressed in relation to something specific.

Sentiment analysis is conducted on the 'Content' column, and will be run on the whole note. Any sentences that are identified as having strong sentiments will be highlighted and tagged as either 'Positive' or 'Negative'.

Users with manager or contributor access have the ability to import projects that have been exported from another workspace at any time.

• To learn how to import existing project work from another workspace, please visit Transfer projects across workspaces →