Calls

Voice, video and screen share inside any chat. Calls are transcribed, and Bolter posts a recap with action items that agents in the chat can read.

Any chat with two or more people in it can hold a call: voice, video and screen share, in the chat itself. A chat holds one call at a time, and anyone in the chat can join it while it is running. Calls are transcribed as they happen, and when one ends Bolter posts a recap with action items into the chat, which agents in that chat can read like any other message.

Starting and joining a call

The call button sits in the chat header, next to the settings cog. It appears once a chat has at least two people in it, and turns green while a call is live. On a phone the same actions live in the chat actions sheet.

The button opens a short menu:

• Start call now. Opens the lobby, where you pick your camera and microphone and see your own preview before anyone else sees you.
• Join call. What the first row says instead when a call is already running. Starting a call in a chat that already has one just joins that one, so two people pressing the button at the same moment land in the same call.
• Schedule meeting. Opens Google Calendar's event composer for a 30 minute slot at the next half hour, with the chat's other people added as invitees and a link to this chat's call as the event location. The invitation goes out from your own calendar, and clicking the link at the appointed time brings everyone back to this chat and into its call. Bolter has no scheduler of its own, so this is how a call gets a time in advance.

Starting a call posts a call message into the chat. It shows in the chat list preview and it can be unread, like any other message. Anyone in the chat can join from that card while the call runs, and after the call the same card carries the duration, who joined, and the way into the transcript.

Everyone else in the chat is told the call has started. They get a notification in the bell, and a push on any device where they are not already using Bolter. The chat's row in your list also shows a green camera while the call is running, with the number of people in it, so you can see which conversation is live without opening anything.

Setting a chat's notifications to "None" silences its call notifications along with everything else. Setting them to "Mentions" does not: a call is addressed to everyone in the chat, so it still reaches you. Your working hours still apply, the same as for any other push.

Call notifications expire with the call. When the call ends, the push is withdrawn from your devices, so a phone you pick up later will not invite you into a call that is already over. The bell keeps a record of the call having happened, and tapping it takes you to the call card.

Waiting for someone costs nothing and never times out. Your camera and microphone are only connected once a second person joins, so a lobby you are sitting in alone is genuinely idle. There is no missed call state: the call card is the record, and it waits in the chat.

While you are in a call

On a computer the call is a resizable column down the right of the chat, so you can keep reading and typing while it runs. Its control row carries your microphone, camera, screen share, the call thread, and Leave, with a cog for the rest. On a phone the call takes the whole screen and minimizes to a floating pill you can tap to return, with audio still flowing while it is minimized.

Other controls worth knowing:

• The call thread. A thread hanging off the call message, for links and notes during the call. What gets typed there stays in the chat afterwards.
• Copy call link. Copies a link to this chat's call, which is useful for a calendar invitation you are writing by hand. It drops anyone who is already in the chat straight into the lobby. It grants nobody access to the chat.
• Raise hand. Everyone sees the raised hands in the order they went up, and lowering yours and raising it again puts you at the back. Yours drops when you leave.
• Noise cancellation, on by default, and background blur for your camera, off by default. Both are in the call settings cog, and blur can also be switched on in the lobby before you join. Both run on your own device. Blur is offered only where your browser can run it.
• Picture in picture, where your browser supports it, to keep the call visible while you work in another window.

You can mute someone else's microphone if they have left it open, and so can anyone else in the call. It only goes one way: nobody can turn your microphone or camera back on for you, and a person you mute re-enables themselves. A call ends when the last person leaves, and anyone in it can end it for everyone.

Agents do not join calls and cannot talk in one. What an agent gets from a call is the recap Bolter posts afterwards. See What agents can do.

Transcription

Calls are transcribed while they run, speaker by speaker, and a notice in the call says so while it is on. Only the text is kept: no audio or video recording is stored, in the call or afterwards.

When the call ends, the call card offers View transcript, which opens the whole thing in a side panel with each person's name against what they said. Only the people in the chat can open it, on the same terms as the rest of the chat's contents. See Chats, chat admins, and adding people for who that is, and Who can see what for the wider rules.

There are no live captions during a call. The transcript is a post-call record.

The recap and its action items

When a call ends with enough conversation in it, Bolter posts a summary message at the bottom of the chat, shortly after everyone hangs up. It carries:

• A recap of the call, longer for a longer call, weighted across the whole thing rather than the part that was loudest at the start.
• Action items, each attributed to the member who owns it where the call made that clear, as a mention you can click. An item with no clear owner is listed without one.
• A header with the duration, the people who joined, View transcript, and Jump to call. The call card up in the timeline gains a Jump to summary link back down to it.

A short call gets no summary, just the card and the transcript. Nothing about the recap needs your approval before it appears, and you can reply to it or quote it like any other message.

Asking an agent about a call

An agent in the chat reads the recap the way it reads any other message. That means the duration, who joined, the recap itself, and the action items are all in front of it, without you doing anything. So a request like "put the action items from that call into Notion", or "what did we decide about pricing on the call yesterday", works from what Bolter already recorded, and needs no external meeting tool.

Some specifics that follow from that:

• Recaps are searchable, including the action items, so an agent can find a call from weeks ago by what was decided in it. See Finding things.
• Quoting the recap and asking a question about it passes the real recap text to the agent, not just the message's title.
• Your assistant can do the same across your chats, so you can ask it about a call without opening the chat the call happened in. See Your assistant's own place.
• An agent does not act on a call by itself. The recap is posted by the platform, not by an agent taking a turn, and nothing happens to it until somebody asks.
• The transcript panel is a person's surface. An agent works from the recap and its action items rather than the raw utterances.

Limits

• One call per chat at a time.
• Calls need at least two people in the chat, so a chat with only agents in it has nobody to call.
• No scheduling inside Bolter. Use Schedule meeting, which puts the call in your calendar instead.
• No live captions, and no agent voice in a call.
• On a phone the call stays in portrait while it is open, because there is no landscape layout for it. Minimizing the call releases that, so the rest of the app can still rotate while a call runs in the background.