AI meeting notes: Teams, Meet and tl;dv compared

Give the existing system the first trial

Your business needs minutes with controlled access. For AI meeting notes, I would start with the meeting software already approved in your business: Teams in a Microsoft environment, Meet in a Google environment. Consider an additional service such as tl;dv only when a shared repository across meeting platforms justifies the extra administration.

Compare three things: where the results live, who can read them and how they are removed. That decision comes before the review of decisions and tasks in Google Meet, described in our German guide. A polished summary answers none of those access questions.

Start with one type of internal meeting, a named owner and fictional project details. The selection rules, checks and figures below are editorial proposals, not measured customer results.

Three outputs need separate rules

The summary is only part of the stored conversation. A transcript contains speech converted into text; a recording also captures audio and potentially video. Copied tasks, emails and downloaded files add further storage locations. List these separately before setting a deletion deadline.

Teams Intelligent Recap requires transcription; text-based features remain available without a video recording. Users need Teams plus Teams Premium or an appropriate Copilot add-on license. Google provides separate controls for recording, transcription and AI notes. Turning video off therefore does not mean that no conversation data is processed.

Document the purpose, permitted meeting types, recipients and deletion procedure in advance. The European Data Protection Board explains the need for a suitable legal basis, information for participants and purpose-based retention. In Germany, unauthorized recording of privately spoken words can also be a criminal offence under Section 201 of the Criminal Code. An on-screen recording notice does not settle these questions.

Teams uses OneDrive and channel permissions

Teams keeps recordings within the Microsoft environment. Ordinary meetings use the organizer’s OneDrive; channel meetings use SharePoint. Transcripts are also stored in OneDrive or SharePoint. According to Microsoft’s storage and sharing documentation, internal invitees automatically receive recording access for ordinary meetings; external participants require a separate share.

Channel meetings inherit channel permissions. Someone who missed the conversation may therefore still be able to view its recording. For a restricted project group, I would choose an ordinary scheduled meeting and then inspect the actual file permissions.

The default expiry is 120 days for recordings and transcripts; administrators can change it. Expired files first move to the recycle bin. Microsoft Purview retention policies, the service’s managed retention rules, can preserve copies beyond that point. A recycle bin is not a privacy policy. Ask the responsible administrator to identify the rule applying to your meeting and explain what happens to an exported summary.

Meet saves notes as a separate Google document

Meet saves AI notes in the organizer’s Drive. The current Google help page specifies a Google Meet folder with a subfolder for each meeting. The document is linked to the Calendar event. Instructions for finding new notes should therefore no longer rely on the old Meet Recordings folder name.

Google lists Business Standard and Business Plus among the eligible Workspace editions for small businesses. Scheduled meetings default to sharing notes with internal invitees. Administrators can instead select all invitees, including external people, or only hosts and co-hosts. The current sharing settings determine access, rather than the attendance list.

Drive retention rules apply by default; additional Meet rules in Google Vault, its retention management service, must be enabled separately. Google says notes remain subject to Drive rules even then. There is consequently no universal deletion deadline for every business. Have the applicable Vault rules and retention holds reviewed together. A visible Calendar attachment proves neither reading permission nor permanent deletion.

tl;dv adds another repository

A separate assistant creates another storage location. With tl;dv, recordings, transcripts and notes are available in the associated tl;dv account. Its help describes automatic sharing with internal meeting participants; paid Pro users can change that default. Do not assume a new recording is private.

For Free recordings, tl;dv specifies scheduled deletion after three months, processed in monthly batches. For paying users, its privacy policy gives account deletion as the retention boundary. A business needing shorter periods must establish a verifiable deletion procedure. The public help pages reviewed do not establish a configurable automatic expiry for paid plans.

The same policy distinguishes storage in the European Economic Area from selectable AI processing in the EU or US. European storage alone therefore does not describe the entire data journey. Its help says manually deleted recordings cannot be recovered; that does not establish deletion of exported copies. My recommendation is to consider an additional service only if someone will manage its repository, sharing and deletion responsibilities.

Five checks turn the comparison into a practical test

An access test tells you more than a checkbox. Run the same fictional project meeting in your preferred tool. Two internal people should be able to read the draft; another colleague and an external guest should have no access to that internal draft. For each row, record the expected result, actual result, evidence and responsible person.

• 1. Capture: Before starting, record whether AI notes, transcription and video are individually enabled or disabled. Afterwards, compare that list with the files actually created.
• 2. Storage: Record the owner and location of each file. Include automatically sent emails and copies in connected tools.
• 3. Access: Open each result link using the designated test accounts. Forwarding a link must not give the excluded colleague or guest access.
• 4. Deletion: Remove only the approved test material. Document the recycle bin, any retention hold and remaining copies separately.
• 5. Handover: Approve a corrected task list. Include cover for the usual owner: another responsible person must be able to find the file owner and deletion date.

Follow-up work determines the cost

The license is only part of the calculation. Our hypothetical month contains twelve meetings: previously 20 minutes of follow-up work each; with AI, an assumed eight minutes of review each plus 30 minutes in total for access and deletion management. That is 240 minutes before and 126 afterwards, a calculated release of 114 minutes.

At an assumed internal hourly value of €40, that time is worth €76. If the additional solution costs a hypothetical €60 per month, the calculated benefit is €16. Add 90 minutes of setup in the first month and that month’s result is minus €44. The €60 is a modeling assumption, not a listed price for any of these providers.

An eligible license already paid for does not create a second license charge, but review still takes time. Released working time is not automatically cash saved. Our four-week plan for small businesses explains how to compare the old and new workflow. Include failed summaries and work that has to be redone manually.

Three questions lead to the next step

Your business needs the smallest workflow it can reliably manage. Which tool wins? Start with the system you already administer, provided its features and access controls fit. I would choose another service only when sharing across platforms improves a specific working process.

Is an automatic summary enough? As a draft: decisions, owners and deadlines still need confirmation before distribution. How long should we keep it? Set the period according to the meeting’s purpose and applicable retention duties, separately for raw material and the approved outcome; do not simply adopt a provider default.

Pick one internal meeting series and fill in the five test rows. Without business approval for AI processing, use fictional test content or the manual workflow already approved by your business. For connecting the approved result to task lists or existing systems, our business AI workflow services describe the next step we can work through together.