The AI Charting Assistant lets you record, transcribe, and summarize your in-person client sessions directly from your browser or mobile device, so documentation stays accurate without interrupting your time together.
In this article:
- Before You Begin
- Choosing a Summary Format
- Setting Up Your Notes Automation
- Starting a Recording
- Uploading an Existing Recording
- Stopping and Submitting a Recording
- Allowing Microphone Access
- Accessing Your Recording and Summary
- Reviewing Your Session Recording
- Editing a Transcription
- Sharing a Recording With Your Client
Before You Begin
The AI Charting Assistant must be enabled before you can use this feature.
See Getting Started With the AI Charting Assistant →
Choosing a Summary Format
Your session summary can be generated using any of the available recording summary formats. The default format applies to all sessions unless overridden at the individual service level.
🪄 If your settings look a little different, you may be included in our beta for AI Charting Assistant custom summary formats. Learn more about Customizing Your AI Charting Summary Format →
The three built-in formats are:
- Narrative notes (paragraphs): a paragraph-style summary of the full session.
- Outline notes (bullet points): key topics organized with supporting bullet points.
- SOAP notes (subjective, objective, assessment, and plan): structured sections for clinical documentation.
To set your default format:
- Go to Settings & Preferences > Telehealth & Messaging.
- Under the AI Charting Assistant section, select your preferred option from the Recording summary format dropdown.
- Click Save Changes near the top-right.
💡 If you use the SOAP format, additional placeholders become available in your note templates for each SOAP component. This is useful if your note template separates these sections into individual text boxes.
Overriding the AI Summary Format for Individual Services
You can assign a different recording summary format to specific services. For example, you may prefer a narrative summary for discovery calls and a SOAP note for follow-up consultations. Any custom formats you've created will also appear as options here.
- Go to your Practice > My Services and click Edit on the relevant service.
- Under Booking Options, select your preferred option from the Recording summary format drop-down.
- Save your changes.
💡 If you assign a custom recording summary format to a specific service, create a matching note template and notes automation to pair with it for a fully automated workflow. See Getting Started With the AI Charting Assistant →
Setting Up Your Notes Automation
With the AI Charting Assistant enabled, you can set up an automation to create session notes automatically after a recorded session is completed. This works for both telehealth and in-person recorded sessions.
You can create multiple automations to use different combinations of services and note templates. For example, you may want one automation for initial consultations and another for follow-up sessions, each using a different note template.
Learn more about Setting Up Your Notes Automation for AI Charting →
🪄 Customize your note templates with placeholders to automatically pull in the AI-generated session summary and action items.
Starting a Recording
In-person session recording is available on desktop browsers and mobile devices. Place your device between you and your client so the microphone can pick up both voices clearly.
- Book an in-person session and open it from your calendar.
- Click View on the session to go to the session details page.
- Scroll down to the Recordings section and click Start recording.
📍 Note: If it's your first time using this feature, you'll be prompted to allow microphone access. See Allowing Microphone Access below.
You’ll see the recording tool as a floating modal on your page. This modal will stay persistent on your screen even if you navigate to other pages in your portal.
Once you click Record in the floating window, the audio waves will change to indicate that voices are being picked up.
If no audio is detected after two minutes, a prompt and chime will appear notifying you that very low audio has been detected. Check that your microphone is not muted and that your device is positioned to capture both voices clearly.
📍 Note: If you and your client will be speaking a language other than English, enable Auto-detect language (experimental) in your AI Charting Assistant settings before your first session. Go to Settings > Telehealth & Messaging and check Auto-detect language under the AI Charting Assistant section. Supported transcription languages: Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Ukrainian. Summaries and action items are always generated in English.
Uploading an Existing Recording
If you have an existing audio file you'd like to use instead of recording live, you can upload it directly to the session.
- Go to the session details page and scroll to the Recordings section.
- Click the More Options menu (3 dots) next to the Start recording button.
- Select Upload recording and choose your file.
📍 Note: Audio files up to 200 MB can be uploaded.
Stopping and Submitting a Recording
- Click Pause in the recording modal to stop the recording at any point.
- Click Record again to resume if needed. Pausing and resuming produces a single continuous recording when submitted.
- Once you're ready to submit, click Submit to attach the recording to the session.
To discard the recording entirely, click Delete recording.
📍 Note: Recordings cannot be recovered after deletion.
Allowing Microphone Access
When using this feature for the first time, your browser will prompt you to allow Practice Better to access your microphone. Select Allow when prompted.
If you are using Firefox:
Click Allow in the pop-up to grant microphone access.
If you are using Chrome:
Click Allow in the pop-up that appears at the top of your browser window.
If you are using Safari:
Click Allow in the pop-up to grant microphone access. You can update this permission at any time in Safari Settings > Websites.
If you're having trouble enabling camera or microphone access, you can test your A/V devices at the links below:
Accessing Your Recording and Summary
Recordings are available shortly after your session ends, however, processing times may vary. You'll receive a notification in your portal, and an Instant Alert on your desktop or mobile device if enabled.
For Zoom meetings, the recording will appear in your portal shortly after you receive a notification from Zoom that the audio transcript of your cloud recording is ready.
You can access a recording from these places:
- The Session Details page for the relevant session.
- The client's Notes & Recordings section in their client record, under the Recordings tab.
Clicking View from the recording opens a floating recording hub in your page, which you can drag, minimize, and expand while working on notes, protocols, and other resources.
Learn more about Reviewing Your Session Recording →
Giving Team Members Access to Your Session Recordings
By default, session recordings are only visible to the practitioner who recorded them.
💡 You can control recording access on a per-team-member basis using the Advanced option in Team Member Access settings. See Understanding Team Member Access to Client Work →
To allow other team members to view your recordings, three settings must all be enabled:
- In Settings & Preferences > Telehealth & Messaging, under the AI Charting Assistant section, check Allow team members to access my telehealth recordings.
This grants other team members permission to access your recordings specifically.
- The team member must have View access for Clients: Recordings in their role permissions. (Only the Practice Better account owner or practice admin can set team member permissions).
- The team member must have Team Member Access set to include other team members, not just themselves. (Only the Practice Better account owner or practice admin can update team member access).
⚠️ Important: All three settings must be active for access to work. Enabling this checkbox alone is not sufficient if the team member's role permissions are not also configured correctly.
Reviewing Your Session Recording
Once you have your session recording open, this modal will stay open as you navigate around your Practice Better portal, like a Client Hub. This enables you to reference your recording while you work. You can have more than one session recording open at once, collapse them into the top bar, and click and drag the top bar to move the session recording hub around your screen.
Summary
The summary gives you a quick overview of the session's key themes without reviewing the full transcription. With outline-style notes, clicking a bullet point jumps to the moment in the transcription when that topic was discussed.
📍 Note: Summaries are a one-time generation and cannot be regenerated after processing.
Action Items
Action items are the to-dos you and your client discussed during the session. Click an action item to create a task for yourself or your client. For booking-related action items, you'll have the option to schedule the next session directly or click the Send invite to book icon to invite your client to book themselves.
Bookmarks
Each recording includes auto-generated bookmarks for key moments in the session. Click a bookmark to jump to that point in the transcription.
To add your own bookmark, hover over any chat bubble in the transcription and click the Add bookmark icon in the top-right corner. Click this icon again to remove a bookmark.
Viewing Recordings While Working With Notes
If a recording is linked to a note, click View recording at the top of the note page to open it. You can also access all recordings for a client through the Client Hub within the note or the client record.
Downloading a Recording
To download the audio or transcription from the Session Details page, click the More Options menu (3 dots) next to the recording and select your preferred download option.
To download from within the recording hub, click the More Options menu (3 dots) in the bottom-right corner of the hub.
Editing a Transcription
Background noise or crosstalk can occasionally affect transcription accuracy. You can edit the transcription at any time to correct names, terms, or other details.
- Open the recording and click the Edit transcription icon in the top-right corner.
- Click the portion of text you want to edit and make your changes inline.
- Click Save corrections.
- Switch between the edited and the original transcript by using the toggle to the right of the search bar within the recording hub.
To get the best transcription results from the start:
- Place your device between you and your client so both voices are captured clearly.
- Conduct your session in a quiet environment to minimize background noise.
- Avoid talking over your client, as overlapping voices make it harder to distinguish speakers.
- Use a device with a quality microphone, or an external microphone where possible.
Sharing a Recording With Your Client
Session recordings are only accessible in the practitioner portal. To share a recording with your client, download the audio file and upload it to the client's Notes or Documents section.
📍 Note: Clients do not have direct access to session recordings.