Zoom settings

Six account-level toggles. None are on by default, and the pipeline is dead without them.

Zoom settings

None of these are on by default. All are account-level. All can be locked so a user cannot turn them off. Flip them before writing a line of code — with the toggles off, the API returns nothing and you will debug the wrong layer.

  Account Settings → AI Companion (Meetings)        ◀── the route we take
  ├── ☑ Meeting summary
  ├── ☑ Automatically start meeting summary ....... REQUIRED, not optional
  ├── ☑ Allow users to retain transcripts
  │      generated with meeting summary ........... THE toggle
  └── ☑ Allow hosts to access and manage transcripts

  Account Settings → Recording                      ◀── fallback route only
  ├── ☑ Cloud recording
  ├── Advanced cloud recording settings
  │   └── ☑ Create audio transcript ............... OFF by default
  ├── ☐ Local recording ........................... turn OFF, and lock it
  └── ☑ Recording disclaimer ...................... consent prompt

The three that matter most

Automatically start meeting summary. Without it the transcript only exists when a host remembers to start the summary. That is the same failure mode as “someone forgot to hit Record”, which is the thing route 3 was chosen to avoid.

Allow users to retain transcripts. This is the toggle that makes GET /meetings/<meeting-uuid>/transcript return a body instead of an error.

Local recording — off. Local recordings have no API. None. If someone records to their laptop, that meeting does not exist as far as this pipeline is concerned. The fix is an account setting, not a habit. Disable it and lock it.

The one that fools people

“Create audio transcript”, under advanced cloud recording settings, is off by default. It is the single most cited cause of “the API returns no TRANSCRIPT file”. It only affects the fallback route, but if you ever fall back and it is off, you will get an empty recordings list and blame the code.

Recording disclaimer

Turn it on account-wide and lock it. It prompts every participant to consent or leave when recording or transcription starts. That converts consent from a thing people forget into a thing the product does. See Consent.

[UNVERIFIED] Whether the disclaimer prompt fires for AI-Companion-only meetings — no recording object — is not documented. Check it in the console before treating it as the consent mechanism for route 3. AI Companion does show its own in-meeting indicator regardless.

Lock them

Every setting above supports a lock at account level. Use it. A pipeline whose inputs any of five people can silently switch off is not a pipeline, it is a habit with a cron job attached.