Create notes and upload data

There are a couple of ways to create and add notes to a project in Dovetail when starting a new project or adding data to an existing project. To do this, open the project and select the Note view. In this view, you can:

• New note: Select New note. This will open a new page for you to start typing live notes or import your data. Or;

• Quick import: Select Import to go straight to selecting and importing data into notes from your device, Google Drive, Zoom or OneDrive. If you select more than 1 video, audio or PDF document, these will be split into and housed within individual notes in the project.

Upload video and audio files to your notes by pressing + in the toolbar, where you can select to import a local file, or one from Google Drive, OneDrive, or Zoom. You can also drag and drop your file directly onto the note!

Dovetail’s built-in transcription provides a powerful way to share stories about your research and allows you to develop a repository of searchable audio and video clips.

Once you have added a video or audio file to your note, you can start generating a transcript. To do this, select Begin under the video/audio player, configure your desired settings under Language and Custom vocabulary, and press Start transcription.

You can transcribe conversations in 41 languages and receive a full a native-language transcript back. Please find a full list of supported languages below.

Automatically detect language

By selecting Auto-detect as your transcription language, Dovetail will automatically detect what language is being spoken, and generate a transcription using that detected language.

Auto-detect can support multiple languages and accents that are spoken the same file, so you won't have to worry about sections of the transcript being inaccurate if speakers are using multiple languages.

Unfortunately, Dovetail cannot automatically detect every language that we currently support at this time. If the spoken language cannot be detected, a transcript will still be generated, however, it will not be accurate.

Please refer to the list of unsupported languages below before using auto-detect.

Automatically transcribe files

Video and audio files uploaded by selecting Import have the option to be automatically transcribed by enabling the toggle before selecting your files.

Once enabled, selected files will be automatically transcribed using auto-detect.

To improve the accuracy of transcripts you can submit a list of custom words or phrases that are not found in a dictionary (for example company names or industry jargon) before starting a transcription.

Add new custom words and phrases when transcribing videos. These will automatically be saved and used for future transcriptions within the project.

To avoid having to type out the terms every time before a transcription, you can save a list of up to 100 words or phrases within an individual project, or workspace admins can create a global list of terms within workspace settings, for use in all projects.

For when you need human-level accuracy with your transcripts, or to analyze conversations in a language that we don't yet support – we've also added the option to bring your own transcript (in the form of a caption file).

We support importing any WebVTT (Web Video Text Tracks) caption file. When you upload a .vtt caption file, we'll use the caption timestamps to sync with playback with your video or audio file.

To import your own transcript, click ••• (Actions) below a video or audio file > Click Upload transcript > Select a compatible .vtt file.

Please note

• When importing .vtt files the speaker names must be formatted as <v NAME > in order for Dovetail to correctly extract the speaker name.

• If you have a non-compatible .srt caption file, you can convert this to a compatible .vtt file using Rev's free caption converter. This converter provides AI-level accuracy.

• For human-level accuracy, we recommend using Rev.com's paid captioning services who are able to supply a compatible .vtt file for use in Dovetail once one of their skilled transcriptionists finish your job. Please ensure the Output File Format selected is WebVTT (.vtt) prior to payment on their service.

Upload files from your device into notes within a project by selecting blank New note > Upload a file or Import data > Browse.

Once imported, a preview of your file will appear, allowing you to highlight, tag, comment and search text content for the following file types:

• PDFs (.pdf)

• Microsoft Word documents (.docx)

• Microsoft Powerpoint files (.pptx)

• Keynote presentations (.key)

• Apple Pages (.pages)

Note: preview won't be available for other filetypes, e.g. zip files

You can change the preview within your note to display: Full document, Single page or Card. To access these options, click on the "More" button in the preview window.

You can create multiple notes at once from a single spreadsheet. This is handy for importing data like NPS feedback, survey responses, and customer feedback to bring in to Dovetail.

The file should be UTF-8 encoded Comma Separated Value (CSV) file with a header row and have at least 1 column each for:

• Content – required, text format (300,000 character limit). This becomes the body of the note, which you can later highlight and tag.

• Created date – must be in ISO 8601 date format or YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM

• Title – text format (200 character limit)

During import, you will need to map columns from your spreadsheet to how it will be presented in your notes. For example, if you have a column for survey answers, you can add them to the body of your note by mapping this to the option ‘Content’.

If your spreadsheet contains a date column, Dovetail might have already detected it, and it’ll be green.

Any fields that have been added to notes will also be available as fields to import into.

Automatic sentiment analysis for CSV import

To speed up your work, you can leverage automatic sentiment analysis when importing a CSV document into notes.

To do this, toggle Run sentiment analysis on import and choose which sentiment analysis method you'd like to use.

• General sentiment looks for any words that have strong positive or negative sentiment.

• Targeted sentiment looks for strong positive or negative sentiment expressed in relation to something specific.

Sentiment analysis is conducted on the 'Content' column, and will be run on the whole note. Any sentences that are identified as having strong sentiments will be highlighted and tagged as either 'Positive' or 'Negative'.

Users with contributor access have the ability to import projects that have been exported from another workspace at any time.

To understand how to export projects, please visit Download project data →

When you're ready to import your project, navigate to Projects > Create new > Project from files > Import an existing project.

Once you’ve selected your file, Dovetail handles importing it for you. And based on your notification preferences, you’ll be alerted when the import is finished.

Bring in video, audio and PDF files into notes using our first-party integrations - Zoom, OneDrive and Google Drive. Find more information below on how to set these up for your account and start importing files:

• Zoom - for Zoom cloud recordings

• Google Drive - for Google Meet recordings, PDF, or Google cloud documents (sheet, slide or drawing)

• OneDrive - for Microsoft Teams cloud recordings, PDF, Word documents, Excel sheets and Powerpoints.

• Zapier - for connecting other apps like Slack, Intercom, and Google Forms to your Dovetail account