Productivity - Setup Guide

How to set up tl;dv

Otto's honest, no-fluff walkthrough. Every step here is what we'd actually do if we were sitting at your keyboard. Real gotchas first, real steps second, and a link to the personalized version at the bottom.

Read these before you start

• Custom vocabulary/jargon handling is weak even at premium tiers, if the client's meetings involve significant industry-specific terminology, set realistic expectations that manual correction will be needed, this isn't a minor edge case for technical fields (Source: user reviews via WebSearch summary, 2026)
• Speaker identification degrades noticeably in larger, overlapping-conversation meetings, works well for 1:1s, less well for group calls with interruptions, test with the client's actual typical meeting format before promising accuracy
• Confirmed reports of Pro-tier users unable to export transcripts despite it being an advertised feature, with refund difficulty when this happens, test the export function directly during evaluation rather than trusting the feature list (Source: user reviews via WebSearch summary, 2026)
• The recording bot itself has been described as intrusive by some users, occasionally failing to join calls properly or creating confusion, this is a shared characteristic across most AI meeting-bot tools, not unique to tl;dv, but worth setting expectations about

The 7-step setup

1. 1

   Create your tl;dv account

   Sign up at the link below. Free tier available - no card required. Use your business email so you can invite teammates later.

   Open tl;dv signup
2. 2

   Complete the initial onboarding

   Skip the marketing questionnaires when you can. Fill only the fields that actually configure the product - name, timezone, your first workspace or project. If tl;dv pushes you into a setup wizard, take it - it usually accelerates the first productive session.

3. 3

   Connect your existing tools

   Wire tl;dv into the rest of your stack. The integrations that most people set up first: Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack.. Do these before importing data - clean integration first, data second.

4. 4

   Import your existing data (only what you'll actually use)

   Do NOT bulk-import everything. Import the last 30 days of the ONE workflow you're moving over first. Prove it works. Then import more. Big-bang migrations are how tl;dv deployments die in month 3.

5. 5

   Set up your first real workflow

   Pick the single most-frequent task you'll do in tl;dv - the daily-driver workflow. Configure it end-to-end. Use it live for a week. Do not touch any other feature yet. Adoption failure comes from teams trying to use everything on day one instead of the one thing that actually pays.

6. 6

   Add your team (if applicable) and set access

   Once your solo workflow works, invite one teammate at a time. Watch them use it. The friction points you missed are the ones they hit. Fix those before scaling to more users. Never invite 20 people at once - you'll get 20 confused people and 0 useful feedback.

7. 7

   Compound with the right pairings

   Recommend tl;dv for budget-conscious teams wanting unlimited meeting recording with basic AI summaries, especially for mostly structured 1:1 or small-group calls. Set clear expectations about jargon-handling weaknesses for technical clients and speaker-ID limitations for larger meetings. If the client specifically needs reliable transcript export, verify this works directly during a trial before recommending, given the documented reports of this feature not working as advertised for some Pro use...