Help
How to use Troopa
Troopa is a desktop app for Mac, Windows and Ubuntu. It helps before, during and after your meetings. Download it.
Getting started
- Download Troopa and open it.
- Choose Create account, and where your data lives: the UK, the EU or the US.
- Allow what Troopa asks for, so it hears the whole call.
- Ask Troopa asks what you do and which meetings fill your week.
- Choose Start practice for a two-minute practice meeting: ask Troopa, open a board by voice, ask privately on the pill, then Pause and Resume.
- Bring your calendar when Troopa asks, or later in Settings.
Show me around, in the menu under your name, runs it again.
Home: Ask Troopa and your calendar
- Ask Troopa is on the left. Each day it opens with Your day: what to do first, what to get ready, what to start for tomorrow and what is overdue.
- Ask about any meeting. Answers show their sources, and two follow-up questions.
- Ask for an email or a message and Troopa drafts it for you to copy. Troopa sends nothing.
- Continue in Claude or ChatGPT hands a request to your own app, naming the meetings it needs. Choose Troopa, Claude or ChatGPT in the box.
- Your meetings are on the right, by Day, Week, Month or List. Home opens as you left it, on any computer.
- New meeting adds one of your own. Troopa doesn’t send invites.
- Prepare a meeting adds its agenda, slides and documents before it starts.
- Drop files or text on a meeting, or paste text on it, to add them. Drop a meeting on another to put it in the same project.
- Each project has a colour of its own, wherever it is named.
Connecting calendars
- Open Settings, then Calendars.
- Choose Connect beside Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar, and finish in your browser.
- Choose Add for another account. Tick the calendars to show.
- Each meeting shows once, with a mark for where it came from.
- Before a meeting starts, Troopa pops up with Join & listen in.
During a call
- Join your call in Microsoft Teams, Zoom or Google Meet as usual.
- Troopa pops up. Choose Listen in. For any other call, press Start meeting on Home.
- Choose End when the call is over.
- Say “Hi Troopa” and ask. Or type it.
- Ask privately: type in the pill. Only you see it.
- Answers come from the call, your meetings and your documents.
- Say “search the internet for…” and Troopa searches the web.
- Ask for a board: a mind map, a timeline, estimation poker, a retro and more. Or say yes when Troopa offers one.
- How to play, on a board, shows what to say.
- Bring slides and PDFs. Say “show me the slide on…” or “present the deck”.
- Only you see Troopa until you choose Present and share its window.
- Pause, and Troopa hears nothing until you Resume.
- Troopa names the kind of meeting and its language at the top.
Tell the people on the call that you are using Troopa.
What the law asks where you are is in the guides below, and what the people on the call can ask of us is on the privacy page.
After a call
- The notes are ready soon after you end: the outcome in one line, then each topic and the next steps.
- Read the Notes, the Transcript, and Troopa in the call.
- Ask about this meeting, beside the notes.
- Edit the notes, then Mark as final.
- Share: add people by name or email. Who has it shows who can read it.
- Export as Markdown, PDF, CSV or JSON.
- Resume recording carries on the same meeting, up to two hours after you stop, while the notes are a draft.
Your apps, and ChatGPT & Claude
- ChatGPT & Claude: ask them about your meetings. Copy your Troopa address, paste it in the app, then sign in and Allow.
- When you Allow, tick Also let it add to your meetings, and the app can save a plan to a meeting. It asks you first.
Support
- Open Support in Troopa’s side menu and say what you need. A person replies within one working day, in the app and by email.
- Quick answers there help with permissions, sound, speaker names, missing meetings, sharing, and plans and billing.
- Share feedback from Support, or from the menu under your name.
Meeting canvases
How each board works, with an example and a template you can use without Troopa. Meeting canvases lists them by the job your meeting is doing.
- Mind map: Ideas grouped into branches around one question while people talk, for brainstorms and kick-offs.
- SWOT analysis: Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats sorted as the room weighs a move, then what to do about them.
- Decision matrix: Options scored against weighted criteria, with the weighted totals added up and the leader marked.
- MoSCoW: Must have, Should have, Could have and Won’t have this time, sorted as the room argues each item.
- Impact–effort matrix: Ideas placed by how much good they do against how much work they take, to find the quick wins.
- Now/Next/Later roadmap: What the team is doing now, what comes next and what may come later, without a date on every item.
- Gantt chart: A project timeline with phases, owners, dates and milestones, laid out as the room plans it.
- Estimation poker: Each person’s estimate for the story in hand, the spread and the agreed points, from what the room says.
- Sprint plan: The committed and stretch work with points and owners, and everyone’s totals, as you plan.
- Task board: The work the room agrees, as tasks in To do, In progress and Done, each with whoever is taking it.
- Stand-up board: A row for each person: done since last time, doing next and blockers, as everyone goes round.
- Retrospective board: What went well, what to improve and what to try next, with the votes, as the team goes round.
- RAID log: Risks, assumptions, issues and dependencies in four quarters, each with its owner, as the project team names them.
- Incident post-mortem: The incident’s timeline in order, its impact, the chain of causes and the follow-ups, as the team walks through it.
- Architecture diagram: The system’s parts and the calls between them, drawn left to right as the design review describes them.
- Sequence diagram: Who sends what to whom, in order, with replies dashed, drawn as the team walks through one flow.
Guides
Telling the people on a call is up to you, and in many places the law requires it. These say what the law asks where you are, and how to write minutes people use.
- How to write meeting minutes
What minutes should record, how to word decisions and actions, a template to copy, and how long to keep them, from UK company and charity rules and US practice. - Recording meetings in the UK
Whether you need consent to record or transcribe a work meeting in the UK, what people must be told, and what the ICO and Acas say, from the law itself. - Recording meetings in California
California requires everyone’s consent to record a confidential conversation. What that means for Zoom and Teams calls and AI note takers, from the statutes. - Recording meetings in Washington State
Washington needs everyone’s consent to record a private call, or an announcement that is itself recorded. What it means for meetings and AI notes, from the RCW. - Recording meetings in Germany and the EU
What the GDPR asks before a meeting is recorded or transcribed, why Germany’s criminal code and works councils matter, and what the EU AI Act bans at work.
Troopa for Zoom
Adding, using and removing Troopa for Zoom
On Zoom, as on Teams and Meet, Troopa listens in from your computer: join the meeting in Zoom as you always do, and the desktop app does the rest. Nothing needs connecting. The guide below is for an organisation that has Troopa join its Zoom meetings as a participant, which we switch on for it.
Zoom lets an assistant like Troopa into your meetings only on behalf of a person who has given it permission and is in the meeting. So each person who sends Troopa to Zoom meetings connects their own Zoom account, once. After that, Troopa joins any Zoom meeting you attend, whoever hosts it: it comes in when you are in, and it leaves when you leave.
Nothing is installed in anybody’s Zoom client.
Adding Troopa to Zoom
You need a Troopa account and a Zoom account. It takes about a minute.
- Sign in to Troopa and open Settings. Go to Connections, at the bottom of the page.
- Under Zoom, choose Connect Zoom. Troopa sends you to Zoom.
- Sign in to Zoom if it asks. Check that the account Zoom shows is yours, read what Troopa is asking for, and choose Allow.
- Zoom sends you back to Troopa’s settings, which now show your Zoom name and email and a Disconnect button. That is all.
The button opens the Zoom panel in your settings, through sign-in first if you are not signed in. If a step does not go as described, see when something goes wrong.
to be added
What Troopa asks Zoom for, and why
- View your user information (
user:read:user). Your name, email address, Zoom user id and Zoom account id. Troopa shows the name and email in your settings so you can see which Zoom account is connected, and uses the ids to delete the connection when Zoom tells us you removed the app. - Get a token to join meetings on your behalf (
user:read:token). Seconds before Troopa joins a Zoom meeting you sent it to, it asks Zoom for a short-lived, single-use token in your name. Zoom admits Troopa only with that token, and only while you are in the meeting. - Get your ZAK token (optional) (
user:read:zak). Zoom attaches this one to every app that can join meetings. Troopa does not use it, and connecting works the same with the box left unticked.
That is the whole list. Troopa cannot list, schedule, start or change your meetings, and it cannot read recordings, contacts, chat history or account settings.
Using Troopa in a Zoom meeting
- Join or start your Zoom meeting as you normally do, signed in to the Zoom account you connected.
- In Troopa, on Home, paste the meeting’s Zoom link under “Send Troopa to a meeting” and choose Send Troopa.
- Troopa comes in once you are in the meeting. If it gets there first it waits for you, trying again every twenty seconds for up to fifteen minutes. If the meeting has a waiting room, the host admits it.
- Troopa appears in the participant list as “Troopa”, or the name your organisation chose, with its video tile up.
- Troopa asks the host for permission to record, which is the next section. Until the host allows it, Troopa captures nothing, and the meeting’s page in Troopa says it is waiting for the host.
- Once the host allows it, Troopa posts a notice in the chat saying what it is doing and how to object, its video tile says it is transcribing, and it starts taking notes.
- Say “Hi Troopa” to ask it something. It answers out loud and shows the same answer on its tile.
- Troopa leaves when you leave, when the meeting ends, when the host removes it, or when you choose Leave now on the meeting’s page in Troopa.
to be added
Afterwards, the transcript and the minutes are on the meeting’s page in Troopa, for the people in your organisation who are allowed to see that meeting.
The recording permission Troopa asks the host for
Troopa listens to the meeting’s audio in order to transcribe it, and Zoom requires any app that does that to ask first. So when Troopa joins, the host sees Zoom’s own prompt saying that Troopa is asking for permission to record. Until the host allows it, Troopa captures nothing, posts no notice and says nothing. If the meeting is already set to let Troopa record, Zoom skips the prompt and shows its indicator straight away.
- The host chooses Approve. Zoom shows its recording indicator to everybody in the meeting for as long as Troopa is capturing. Troopa posts its notice in the chat and starts taking notes.
- The host declines, or nobody answers. After fifteen seconds without an answer, or straight after a refusal, Troopa posts one line in the chat: it cannot take notes without permission, the host can still allow it, and otherwise it will leave within two minutes and keep nothing from the meeting. Zoom closes its own prompt after a minute, so Troopa asks once more, and it asks a host who joins later. After two minutes without permission Troopa leaves, and the meeting’s page in Troopa says whether the host declined or nobody answered.
- The host wants Troopa to stop. Removing Troopa from the meeting stops it at once, and so does Leave now on the meeting’s page in Troopa. Moving Troopa to the waiting room stops the capture too. If the host lets it back in, Zoom remembers the earlier approval and does not ask again.
to be added
Zoom calls this recording because Troopa receives the audio. What Troopa keeps by default is the written transcript and the minutes made from it, and no audio or video file. What is kept, where and for how long is on the privacy page.
Removing Troopa from Zoom
Either way works, and you do not need to do both.
From Troopa
- Sign in to Troopa and open Settings, then Connections.
- Under Zoom, choose Disconnect and confirm.
- Troopa tells Zoom to cancel the permission you gave it, and deletes your connection.
From Zoom
- Sign in to your Zoom account and open the Zoom App Marketplace.
- Choose My library, which lists the apps you have added.
- Open the menu at the end of Troopa’s row, the three dots.
- Choose Remove.
- Zoom tells Troopa that you removed it, and Troopa deletes your connection when that message arrives.
to be added
What is deleted when you remove it
Deleted, whichever way you remove it: everything Troopa holds from Zoom about you. That is your Zoom user id, your Zoom account id, your name and email address as Zoom gave them, and the encrypted token. Troopa holds nothing else from Zoom, so nothing else is left.
Not deleted: the transcripts and minutes of meetings Troopa already attended. They belong to your organisation, not to the Zoom connection, and are kept for as long as your organisation has chosen. Somebody with the right to can delete a meeting in Troopa, and the transcript, the minutes and everything made from them go with it. You can also write to us and ask.
After removal Troopa can no longer join Zoom meetings on your behalf. You can connect again whenever you like.
When something goes wrong
Troopa has not come in, and its meeting page says it is waiting for you
Zoom lets Troopa in only while the person who sent it is in the meeting, signed in to Zoom with the account they connected. Join the meeting, and check that the Zoom account you joined with is the one shown under Settings, Connections, Zoom.
Troopa tries again every twenty seconds, so it follows you in shortly after you join. After fifteen minutes it stops waiting and the meeting page says so. Send it again once you are in.
Troopa is in the waiting room
The host admits it, like any other participant. It is listed under the name your organisation gave it, which is “Troopa” unless somebody changed it.
Troopa is in the meeting, and its page says it is waiting for the host to allow recording
Troopa is in the room and is not listening yet. Zoom is showing the host a prompt asking whether Troopa may record, and Troopa captures nothing until the host chooses Approve. The prompt is easy to miss behind a shared screen.
Zoom closes a prompt nobody touches after a minute. Troopa then asks once more, and it also asks a host who joins after it did.
Troopa joined and then left within a couple of minutes
The host declined its request to record, or nobody answered it within two minutes. Troopa says why in the meeting chat before it goes, and the meeting’s page in Troopa says which of the two it was. Ask the host to choose Approve when Zoom shows the request, and send Troopa again.
Troopa says the link is Zoom’s page about the meeting, not its join link
The address copied from Zoom’s web portal, the one with “/meetings/” and “invitations” in it, names the meeting and cannot be joined. Copy the invite link instead, the one containing “/j/” and the meeting number, and send Troopa to that.
Settings says “Zoom could not be connected”
The reason is on the same line. The usual ones: you chose Decline on Zoom’s screen, the request sat open for too long before you chose Allow, or you were signed in to Troopa as somebody else when you came back. Choose Connect Zoom again.
If Zoom itself says the app needs approval, your company’s Zoom account only allows apps its administrator has approved. Ask your Zoom administrator to approve Troopa in the Zoom App Marketplace, then connect again.
Settings says “No longer accepted by Zoom. Connect again to resume”
Zoom has withdrawn the permission you gave: you removed Troopa in the Zoom App Marketplace, or Zoom expired it. Choose Connect again. Nothing else is lost, and meetings Troopa already attended are not affected.
Questions
Does everybody in my company have to connect Zoom?
Only the people who send Troopa to Zoom meetings. The permission is a person’s, not the company’s, because Zoom admits Troopa alongside one named person. People who just attend a meeting Troopa is in do nothing at all.
Do the other people in the meeting need an account, or anything installed?
No. Nobody else installs anything or needs an account. When Troopa joins as a participant, they see it in the participant list, read its notice in the chat, hear it if it speaks, and can ask for it to be removed.
Can Troopa join a Zoom meeting I am not in?
No. Zoom admits it only while you are in the meeting, and it leaves when you leave.
Can Troopa see my other meetings, my recordings, my contacts or my chats?
No. The permissions above are all it has. It cannot list, schedule, start or change meetings, and it cannot read recordings, contacts, chat history or account settings.
Where is the permission kept?
Zoom gives Troopa a refresh token when you connect. It is encrypted before it is stored, kept in the region your organisation chose, never shown to anybody, and used for one thing: asking Zoom for the join token described above.
Is there anything to download?
Only Troopa itself: the desktop app for your Mac, Windows PC or Ubuntu computer, from the Downloads page. Nothing is installed in your Zoom client, and nobody else in the meeting installs anything.
Reaching a person
If this page did not answer it, write to support@troopa.ai. We reply within one working day. How support works, and what to put in the message so we can find your meeting, is on the support page.
Last reviewed 22 October 2026.