In this feature, the Collab Collective’s Craig Durr meets Freddie Timmins, Product Manager at Cisco, live at WebexOne 2025. The discussion explores the latest innovation from Cisco’s collaboration portfolio: the AI Notetaker, introduced as part of RoomOS 26. Freddie demonstrates how this feature extends AI-powered transcription and summarization beyond virtual calls to in-person meetings, transforming how teams capture, manage, and distribute meeting notes.
Craig Durr: Hey, everyone. This is Craig Durr, Chief Analyst and Founder of the Collab Collective. I am here live at WebexOne 2025. This is one of those really fun events because the Webex team brings out their best game and always announces some great products and solutions. And I've got some that I want to be able to introduce to you. Now, tied to their RoomOS 26 is a lot of great features, but within this inbox booth, right now, I'm going to have the product manager walk us through one of my favorite features, which is AI notes. So why don't you come with me, and we're going to meet Freddie Timmins, come on in.
Freddie Timmins: Hey, Craig
Craig Durr: How are you doing?
Freddie Timmins: I'm great. How are you?
Craig Durr: Good. All right, Freddie, I told everyone about this feature being one of my favorites, but I haven't had a great walk through as of yet. So do me a favor, tell me a little bit about AI notes and the use case and what we're doing here.
Freddie Timmins: Happily. So today in hybrid meetings, we have an AI assistant that will transcribe your meeting and provide you with action items and summaries post meeting. What we want to do is introduce those capabilities for in-person meetings. So when you and I are in the same room, instead of one of us having to take notes, we want to use the device to do that for us. So what you'll see now when you enter a room is this poster, which lets you know that the AI notes is available on the device, and then I'll go to my navigator to actually take action. So here I have my new AI Notes button.
Craig Durr: Oh yeah, and this is in the beautiful new UI, by the way.
Freddie Timmins: Exactly. And these will remain in sync, so as I start the AI notes, I'll see updates here on my OSD as well. In the context of a larger room, if there's people down the back, they'll still have an idea about what's going on despite the fact that they can't see the navigator.
Craig Durr: And this doesn't require us necessarily to be in a call in itself. This is you and I, face to face, leveraging the devices in the room, right?
Freddie Timmins: Exactly. So here I'll go through the setup, so I take AI notes. What we have here is an option to book the room. The thinking here is—if we're brainstorming something important for 30 minutes and we want to use the assistant to transcribe the meeting, let's make sure we don't accidentally get kicked out of that meeting room because we didn't book it.
Now, of course, depending on your scenario, you can always skip, but let's book the room for 15 minutes. What we'll do now is, any users who are proximity-paired or have face recognition-enabled will appear automatically on the list here. So Abbott Lynch is proximity-paired.
Craig Durr: This is Abbot Lynch, by the way.
Freddie Timmins: This is Abbott Lynch on our desktop here. So we need to select a host so that they'll receive the transcript and summary after the meeting.
Craig Durr: Got it. So then, one person is the person that will receive it, manage it, distribute it, and what have you.
Freddie Timmins: Exactly. So I select Abbott as my host, and I start AI notes. What you'll see here on the OSD, we still want to drive home the capabilities of the device that are relevant for an in-person meeting. So I want to be able to share my screen…
Craig Durr: Mirror cast Webex, perfect!
Freddie Timmins: Absolutely. But what you'll also see is this assistant panel that's now open on the right hand side, and this is giving me information that the assistant is active, and it's creating notes for me. So what we've also implemented is a two minute timer. So as we generate content, our action items will appear on screen automatically.
Craig Durr: Interesting. So if I get, say, an action item like, “Freddie, I think you really need to give me a tour of the London office.” Can you be part of that?
Freddie Timmins: I'll take the action to give you a tour of the London office. Yeah, so what you'll see here on the navigator as well is we have three options. We have a “pause” option. If there's something we want to discuss that we feel doesn't need to be captured, we just pause the transcript, speak whatever we need to speak about, and then I can resume.
We also have a “catch me up” capability. So if someone joins late, they want to know what we've been discussing, we just hit the “catch me up button.” It means I don't have to repeat everything I've just said. They'll get a synopsis of the meeting up until this point that they can catch up. Doesn't have to interrupt our conversation, but there's context there for them if there's anything they need to discuss. And then, what I'll also do is hit the “action item” button, and this will show us any action items we've generated so far.
Craig Durr: Now, what I love is that this is available in this group experience, but this does come back to me in my Webex app experience, right? And then from there, it's incorporated into all the other AI goodness that I have.
Freddie Timmins: Exactly. So once we're finished with our conversation, I'll just end the meeting, and then I'll navigate to my Webex app. Here in the meetings tab, I have this meeting recap tab, and here I'll see Abbott Lynch. So just in a moment or two, the meeting summary and transcript will appear here.
Craig Durr: I love this. This is part of the RoomOS 26, right? And when does it plan on being GA?
Freddie Timmins: We hope to have this in customers hands by the end of the year for testing.
Craig Durr: Fantastic! So next time I probably talk to you guys in person at ISE, I'll have a chance to see some really great customer stories behind this.
Freddie Timmins: Exactly
Craig Durr: Freddie, thank you so much for everything. I appreciate it.
Everyone, this is Craig Durr, Chief Analyst and Founder of the Collab Collective. We're still here at WebexOne 2025 to bring you some more insights into some of these great new features. Stay tuned.