The fastest way to understand In Parallel is to prepare one real meeting, let the Recorder capture it, and review the result. You do not need to configure every goal, page, integration, or AI tool before the first meeting.

Plan about 30 minutes for setup.

Until you finish onboarding, Home shows a Getting started section that walks you through these steps. You can also do each step from its usual place in the product, which is described alongside.

Select Dismiss to fold the section into an Onboarding bar that shows how many tasks are done. Select Continue to open it again. The folded state is remembered only in the browser where you folded it.

Your calendar is the one connection In Parallel needs. Connect Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook: it lets In Parallel see your meetings, lets the Recorder join them, and lets In Parallel suggest a first Workspace from them.

In Parallel asks for calendar access when you sign in. If you skipped it, select Connect in the Your next meetings step of Getting started, or connect a calendar under Settings → Personal → Integrations. See Connect your calendar, notifications, and AI tools for provider-specific guidance.

Once your calendar is connected, Your next meetings lists upcoming meetings with other people. The Recorder is set to join every meeting with two or more people; switch Recorder joins off for any meeting you want to keep private, and tell participants before the Recorder joins (step 4). By default, Notes arrive by email about five minutes after each call ends; you can change this under Settings → Personal → Notifications.

In Set up your first workspace, In Parallel suggests a Workspace when several of your meetings look like one team. Select Make it a workspace to create it, or Not a team to dismiss the suggestion. If there is no suggestion, select Create workspace manually.

You can also open the navigation menu, expand Workspaces, and select Add workspace.

Give the Workspace a clear name and a short description of the responsibility it covers. A good first Workspace is one team, project, program, account, or mission with a coherent owner and meeting cadence.

Keep the first setup small. Add only the members and context needed for the meeting you plan to capture.

Getting started also offers two extras. Slack and the intro are optional; connect Zoom if your meetings use Zoom.

Before the meeting, tell participants that the In Parallel Recorder will join and explain how your organization uses the recording, transcript, Notes, and Actions.

Follow your organization's consent and privacy requirements. If participants cannot be informed in advance, leave the meeting's Recorder switch off (Recorder not invited) until they can be.

For a recurring meeting, confirm that you are connecting the intended series rather than only one occurrence.

Confirm that the Recorder will join the meeting. On Home, the switch is Recorder joins in Your next meetings; in the Meetings timeline, the upcoming meeting shows Recorder invited when its switch is on.

The toggle is available on upcoming meeting cards. Check it again before the meeting if the calendar event, organizer, or conferencing link changes.

After processing finishes, open the meeting. Depending on what was captured, the meeting can show:

Identify one useful outcome: a decision, action, risk, question, or learning that should remain connected to the Workspace.

If a tab is empty, confirm that the Recorder joined successfully and that processing has finished before assuming the meeting contained no useful context.

Open Home and ask a question in Ask anything, or choose a suggested action such as Morning brief. Use Add context to focus the request on the Workspace you created, then follow a source link in the answer.

When the Workspace already has maintained pages, open one from its page tiles or select Pages & meetings → to browse the full library. Use About this page to understand what it draws on, then use Ask about this page or Run with AI to continue from that context.

You can add more pages, goals, meetings, and integrations after the first loop is useful. More setup is not the goal; reusable context is.