Using Dot, and using it on Zoom

Adding Dot to Zoom

You need a Dot account and a Zoom account. It takes about a minute.

1. Sign in to Dot and open Settings. Go to Connections, at the bottom of the page.
2. Under Zoom, choose Connect Zoom. Dot sends you to Zoom.
3. Sign in to Zoom if it asks. Check that the account Zoom shows is yours, read what Dot is asking for, and choose Allow.
4. Zoom sends you back to Dot’s settings, which now show your Zoom name and email and a Disconnect button. That is all.

What Dot asks Zoom for, and why

• View your user information (user:read:user). Your name, email address, Zoom user id and Zoom account id. Dot shows the name and email in your settings so you can see which Zoom account is connected, and uses the ids to delete the connection when Zoom tells us you removed the app.
• Get a token to join meetings on your behalf (user:read:token). Seconds before Dot joins a Zoom meeting you sent it to, it asks Zoom for a short-lived, single-use token in your name. Zoom admits Dot only with that token, and only while you are in the meeting.
• Get your ZAK token (optional) (user:read:zak). Zoom attaches this one to every app that can join meetings. Dot does not use it, and connecting works the same with the box left unticked.

That is the whole list. Dot cannot list, schedule, start or change your meetings, and it cannot read recordings, contacts, chat history or account settings.

Using Dot in a Zoom meeting

1. Join or start your Zoom meeting as you normally do, signed in to the Zoom account you connected.
2. In Dot, on Home, paste the meeting’s Zoom link under “Send Dot to a meeting” and choose Send Dot.
3. Dot comes in once you are in the meeting. If it gets there first it waits for you, trying again every twenty seconds for up to fifteen minutes. If the meeting has a waiting room, the host admits it.
4. Dot appears in the participant list as “Dot”, or the name your organisation chose, with its video tile up.
5. Dot asks the host for permission to record, which is the next section. Until the host allows it, Dot captures nothing, and the meeting’s page in Dot says it is waiting for the host.
6. Once the host allows it, Dot posts a notice in the chat saying what it is doing and how to object, its video tile says it is transcribing, and it starts taking notes.
7. Say “Hi Dot” to ask it something. It answers out loud and shows the same answer on its tile.
8. Dot leaves when you leave, when the meeting ends, when the host removes it, or when you choose Leave now on the meeting’s page in Dot.

Afterwards, the transcript and the minutes are on the meeting’s page in Dot, for the people in your organisation who are allowed to see that meeting.

The recording permission Dot asks the host for

Dot listens to the meeting’s audio in order to transcribe it, and Zoom requires any app that does that to ask first. So when Dot joins, the host sees Zoom’s own prompt saying that Dot is asking for permission to record. Until the host allows it, Dot captures nothing, posts no notice and says nothing. If the meeting is already set to let Dot record, Zoom skips the prompt and shows its indicator straight away.

• The host chooses Allow. Zoom shows its recording indicator to everybody in the meeting for as long as Dot is capturing. Dot posts its notice in the chat and starts taking notes.
• The host declines, or nobody answers. After fifteen seconds without an answer, or straight after a refusal, Dot posts one line in the chat: it cannot take notes without permission, the host can still allow it, and otherwise it will leave within two minutes and keep nothing from the meeting. Zoom closes its own prompt after a minute, so Dot asks once more, and it asks a host who joins later. After two minutes without permission Dot leaves, and the meeting’s page in Dot says whether the host declined or nobody answered.
• The host wants Dot to stop. Removing Dot from the meeting stops it at once, and so does Leave now on the meeting’s page in Dot. Moving Dot to the waiting room stops the capture too. If the host lets it back in, Zoom remembers the earlier Allow and does not ask again.

Zoom calls this recording because Dot receives the audio. What Dot keeps by default is the written transcript and the minutes made from it, and no audio or video file. What is kept, where and for how long is on the privacy page.

Removing Dot from Zoom

Either way works, and you do not need to do both.

From Dot

1. Sign in to Dot and open Settings, then Connections.
2. Under Zoom, choose Disconnect and confirm.
3. Dot tells Zoom to cancel the permission you gave it, and deletes your connection.

From Zoom

1. Sign in to your Zoom account and open the Zoom App Marketplace.
2. Choose Manage, then Added Apps, or search for “Dot”.
3. Choose the Dot app.
4. Choose Remove.
5. Zoom tells Dot that you removed it, and Dot deletes your connection when that message arrives.

What is deleted when you remove it

Deleted, whichever way you remove it: everything Dot holds from Zoom about you. That is your Zoom user id, your Zoom account id, your name and email address as Zoom gave them, and the encrypted token. Dot holds nothing else from Zoom, so nothing else is left.

Not deleted: the transcripts and minutes of meetings Dot already attended. They belong to your organisation, not to the Zoom connection, and are kept for as long as your organisation has chosen. Somebody with the right to can delete a meeting in Dot, and the transcript, the minutes and everything made from them go with it. You can also write to us and ask.

After removal Dot can no longer join Zoom meetings on your behalf. You can connect again whenever you like.

When something goes wrong

Questions