Use Zoom AI to Summarize Parent Conferences and Faculty Meetings

What This Does

Zoom's meeting summary automatically generates a summary of your meeting. key discussion points, decisions made, and action items, within minutes of the meeting ending. No more scrambling to take notes during sensitive conversations.

Before You Start

• You have a Zoom account (meeting summary is included with eligible paid Zoom Workplace plans; check with your school's IT or billing)
• You're the meeting host or a licensed user
• You've notified participants that AI features may summarize the meeting (best practice for school settings)

Steps

1. Find the AI feature

Sign in to your Zoom desktop app. In the meeting window, look for the AI icon in the meeting toolbar at the bottom of the screen (it looks like a small star/sparkle icon). If you don't see it, sign in at zoom.us, open Settings, and look for the meeting summary controls in the AI section. Zoom used to call these features "AI Companion" and dropped that name in 2026, so older help articles and colleagues may still use the old term.

2. Tell it what you need

Before starting the meeting, turn on automatic meeting summaries in those settings. During the meeting, Zoom automatically captures the discussion. You don't need to do anything, just conduct the meeting normally. If it doesn't start on its own, hover over the AI icon in the toolbar, tick the Meeting summary checkbox, and click Start Zoom AI.

After the meeting ends, Zoom sends you an email with the summary. You can also access it in the Zoom web portal under Meeting → Recordings & Summaries.

3. Review and use the result

Open the summary. It will include:

• Overview: 2-4 sentence summary of the meeting's purpose
• Key Topics: Bullet points of main discussion items
• Action Items: Specific next steps with names attached (if mentioned)

Edit to add any context Zoom may have missed, then email to the parent (for conference notes) or paste into your shared faculty Google Drive folder.

Real Example

Scenario: You just held a 25-minute Zoom call with a family about their child's repeated behavioral issues and the support plan going forward.

What you do: Turn on the meeting summary before the meeting starts.

What you get: After the meeting ends, within 5 minutes you receive: "Meeting discussed [student name]'s behavioral challenges in [classroom]. Parents agreed to implement consistent bedtime routine. School to provide weekly check-in email. Next meeting scheduled for [date].", a ready-made documentation record for the student's file.

Tips

• Always inform parents when AI features are active. it builds trust and protects you legally
• The summary is especially valuable for discipline and behavior conferences where you need documentation
• For faculty meetings, share the AI summary with absent staff so they don't miss decisions
• In Zoom's meeting summary settings, you can customize what the summary focuses on (decisions vs. action items vs. full transcript)

Tool interfaces change, if a button has moved, look for similar AI/magic/smart options in the same menu area.