Your Meeting Is Already Online. Paste the YouTube, Granicus, or Swagit Link and Get Draft Minutes.

I've been a board clerk. For most public bodies, the recording of last night's meeting is already sitting on the internet by the time you sit down to write the minutes. It is on the township's YouTube channel, or in the Granicus archive, or on a Swagit video page that residents use to watch from home.

And yet the usual first step in writing minutes is still: find the file, download two gigabytes of video, wait, and upload it somewhere else.

That step is gone. If your meeting is posted on YouTube, Granicus, or Swagit, you can paste the link into BoardBreeze and get draft minutes back. Nothing to download. Nothing to upload.

Where the idea came from

Both of the newest additions came from clerks who asked.

One clerk wrote to say her select board's meetings live on YouTube, and could she just give us the link. One working day later, on October 5, 2026, YouTube links went live.

That same afternoon, I tried a meeting link from a township whose planning and zoning meetings are posted on Swagit, and got a polite "not supported." By that evening Swagit links worked. The first real meeting through it was a zoning board hearing of 2 hours 14 minutes. The recording was a 2 GB video, and BoardBreeze pulled it from the video page in about a minute.

Granicus links have worked since August.

How to do it, by video source

Everything starts in the same place: the From a Link tab on your BoardBreeze dashboard.

If your meetings are on YouTube

1. Open the meeting video on YouTube and copy the link.
2. Paste it into From a Link.
3. Tick the box confirming it is your own organization's public meeting, and that you own the recording or have the owner's permission.
4. Click Transcribe Meeting.

Two things to know. The video has to be public or unlisted; a private video cannot be fetched. And this is for your own organization's public meetings only: town halls, councils, boards, commissions. It is not a tool for transcribing other people's videos.

If your meetings are on Granicus

1. Open the meeting's video page in your Granicus archive.
2. Copy the address from the address bar and paste it into From a Link.
3. Click Fetch Recording, then Transcribe.

Legistar meeting links that lead to a Granicus video work the same way.

If your meetings are on Swagit

1. Open the meeting's video page. The address will contain swagit.com.
2. Copy the address and paste it into From a Link.
3. Click Fetch Recording, then Transcribe.

Dropbox and Google Drive share links work too, if that is where your recording lives.

Then make the minutes yours

A transcript is not minutes. Two more steps turn it into something you can bring to your board.

Add your agenda. Upload the meeting agenda as a PDF and the minutes follow it: same item numbers, same section titles, in the same order. For a planning or zoning board, that means each docket gets its own section, with the motion, who moved and seconded, and the vote. More on that in how agenda-aware minutes work.

Click Format Minutes, then read the draft. This part matters, so I will be plain about what you get:

• It is a first draft. Names are spelled the way they sounded on the recording. Expect to fix a few.
• Where the recording was not clear, such as a roll call vote where two members spoke at once, the draft says so in brackets instead of guessing.
• Action items are pulled out at the end, with the owner and the deadline when one was stated.

When it reads the way your office writes minutes, export to Word or PDF, or save it to Google Drive.

What if my link does not work?

Sometimes a video page will not hand over the recording. If that happens, download the recording from your video page and use the Upload Recording tab. BoardBreeze takes audio files and MP4 or MOV video directly, including long meetings.

Zoom links are not supported yet. For a Zoom meeting, download the recording from your Zoom account and upload the file.

A word about the recording

Clerks ask this before anything else, and they should. Recordings and transcripts are deleted automatically after 4 days. The recording does its job and goes away. Your approved minutes are the record.

Try it on a meeting you have already held

You do not need to wait for the next meeting. Pick one that is already posted, one you have already written minutes for, and compare.

The trial is 15 days, no credit card, and includes 3 hours of meetings, which covers one typical council or board meeting. The step-by-step walkthrough is in the How-To guide, and there is more for city and township clerks on our municipalities page.

As always: AI drafts, you approve. That final read is yours.

Grace