Zoom calls, our lives as a video agency mean we are on a plethora of calls day in, day out. And although we can have no complaints given the current climate, note/minute-taking is one aspect that is never quite as straightforward. Fathom is an all-new tool, designed to automate notes/minutes and actively take them in the meeting, in real-time!

Fathom is free to use, and just requires signup through Google/Facebook or alike. If you use the same email address as your Zoom account, it will sync your profiles which makes life much easier in the long term. From the get-go, it was apparent that Fathom wants you to use its services more than perhaps you intended, as a way of increasing their brand. You can earn points for simply activating different settings, these points are gathered in the top right-hand corner of the dark, moody interface as coins - with animation and SFX akin to Mario - which we love. Each point you earn gives you another chance at winning Fathom’s $1,000 raffle! So the drinks are hopefully on us. We’re seeing this more and more these days, community building within specific services, and we think this is essential given our collective increase into a digital world. But back to the tool itself, Fathom uses audio and facial recognition to differentiate between call members, making sure that each person’s participation in the meeting is recorded accurately - which is pretty impressive. Watch Fathom’s tutorial to see how it achieves this. 

When you’re in a meeting, simply hit ‘Start Recording and let the meeting flow naturally, watching Fathom record every word in real-time is quite cool, not going to lie. It struggled with our accents at first but seemed to correct itself as it went, so machine-learning is understanding on Yorkshire and Scouse accents now. Not only does Fathom record your notes, but the whole video call will be recorded in general, meaning you can look back over everything in its raw form, and within the meeting, you can create ‘Highlights’ simply by clicking on a block of text and Fathom will note this as an area of importance. They’ve thought of everything. As well as all of these features, Fathom allows for positive - negative insights on a call, so you can recall the good/bad points within the meeting; and you can connect this all to Slack and other workspaces meaning you and your team are fully synced up, no loose ends. 

This service has actually blown us away, we thought it sounded like a decent concept for a service, but when using it, we’re serious, it does the job better than you can expect. And at no expense, which is remarkable. So, we can’t recommend it enough, if you need video conference recording, get Fathom. 

Fathom, you get a very very respectable 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼/5!

And lastly, it’s been a tough year for us all, so we just want to say a big thank you to everyone who takes the time out of their weeks to read our tool reviews, it really means a lot.