Meetings · Orbital manual

A meeting opens at your notes

Click a meeting anywhere, on the Timeline, in a search, in a mention or in your pins, and its page opens: the meeting's title, who can see the meeting, who was invited, and under them your notes for it. Just start typing. Nothing is made until your first word; then Orbital makes a note for this meeting in Tana that only you can see, and the line over it says so, with a lock: only you can see them. Your notes are not shared with the meeting's attendees.

Your notes are an ordinary Tana document of yours. Opened in Tana, their first row links back to the meeting; Orbital leaves that row out on the meeting's page, where you already are. If you share them in Tana, they stay this meeting's notes, and the line says Shared notes and with whom, with no lock.

The 1-1 with Sam meeting page with your notes under it, and the Graph pane beside it

Title The meeting's own title, as the calendar has it.
Open in Tana The Tana logo opens the meeting in Tana's web app. Hover over it, or reach it with ⇥, and it says “Open in Tana”.
Visible to Who can see the meeting itself. Click it to change who can see it.
Notes | Summary Shown once Tana has written the meeting up: the write-up, or your notes in its place.
Who sees this For your notes, “only you can see them” with the lock, or “Shared notes” and with whom. On Summary, who can see the write-up.
Your notes An outline like any page, made the first time you type.
Pinned Documents and chats pinned to the meeting.
Outcomes Tasks that came out of the meeting.
References Other notes written in the meeting.

Notes and Summary

After a meeting, Tana writes it up: a short summary, the key takeaways and the decisions, in a document of its own. A meeting that has one opens on its Summary, with Notes | Summary over it, on the same page, and the line says who can see the write-up, as Tana has it for the write-up itself. Read and edit it like any page, if Tana lets you; a write-up you may only read says read only.

Notes shows your notes in its place, and Summary takes you back. Whatever you typed is saved to the document you typed it in before the other one takes its place, your caret is back where it was in your notes, and looking at the summary never makes notes. The meeting remembers which one you chose until you quit.

The meeting opens on its write-up; in Notes, the first words make your notes; Summary again.

A meeting on Tana's side is a calendar event with no content of its own, so your notes are a document of their own, kept inside the meeting and pinned on it: in Tana you find them on the meeting, and only you can open them there, on meetings someone else organizes too. Unpin them in Tana and they stay unpinned. Who can open them is Tana's own sharing, restricted to you when they are made, which Orbital reads back from Tana before it writes your first words. The line over them shows who Tana says can see them.

⌘K→ type Timeline →↩, click any meeting under Upcoming meetings, and type a first line.

What the meeting page tells you

Attendees

Attendees lists the people on the invitation. Colleagues are links to their profile; anyone not in Tana shows the name or address the calendar gave, greyed, with the same person glyph and no link. Rooms and equipment are left out. After five people the list stops at And 3 more. Click it, or press ↩ on it, to see everyone.

An invitation says who was asked, not who came. For that, see the meeting you are in now.

Five attendees, then And 3 more opens the rest.

Join call

When the meeting has a video link, ⌘K on its page offers Join call, with the link as its hint. It opens the call in your browser. Orbital takes the first web link in the meeting's location, or else the call link Tana keeps for the meeting.

Open in Tana opens the same meeting in Tana's web app, as the Tana logo beside the title does.

⌘K showing Join call with the meeting's link — **Join call** names the link it will open.

The Graph pane opens with ⌘K Show graph, or the graph button at the top right of the page. On a meeting it lists Pinned, Outcomes, Proposals (what Tana's AI proposed in the meeting's chats), References, where the meeting is mentioned, and its Changes. See Windows, panes & the Graph.

Change the time, place and people

If you organise a meeting, you can change it from ⌘K on its page. These rows appear under Current node, each with what it would change as its hint: Change time … shows when it is now, Change location … where, Add attendee … how many people are on it, and Edit meeting details takes the time in your own words. Tana sends the change on to your calendar.

On a meeting someone else organises, these rows are not there, because Tana would refuse the change. Change time … and Edit meeting details are also missing on an all-day meeting, which Tana cannot move to a clock time. A meeting you make in Orbital, from Create new … or “/”, asks for its name and then shows when it will be before anything is made: now, for 30 minutes, unless you type another time (the When page). Made from Create new …, the meeting opens; from “/”, the row becomes a reference to it.

Change time …

Type a day, a time, or both. The row under the field shows exactly the time ↩ will set, so you see it before anything changes.

14:00 keeps the day and the length
tomorrow 9:30 moves both
fri 10:00-11:30 sets the start and the end
tomorrow keeps the time of day

Days are read the way Pin to date … reads them: weekdays, "in 3 days", "next week", dates.

Moving Leadership sync to tomorrow at 9:30. Open Change time … again and its hint shows the new time.

Edit meeting details

One field: say when, the way you would say it. tomorrow from 3-5, an hour later or thursday at 10 for 45 minutes. Press ↩ and the AI reads the words; while it does, the row thinks. What it read is shown as a row beside the meeting's time now, marked read by AI, and only pressing that row changes the meeting. Words typed after the reading are read again.

A day you leave out is today. A bare 1 to 6 is the afternoon, so 3-5 is 15:00 to 17:00; a time you spell out, like 03:00 or midnight, is kept.
A length you leave out is the meeting's own.
Times are yours: on your Mac's clock. A meeting kept in another time zone says so under the row, and a zone you name, like 9am New York time, is used as named.
When the words are not enough, the AI asks back in the same field ("Which day next week?").

The AI reads only the time. It cannot add people, change the place or send anything. It is your Quick AI (⌘K Choose models), and it needs a ChatGPT sign-in or an API key (AI and agents).

Edit meeting details with tomorrow from 3-5 read as tomorrow 15:00 to 17:00, beside the meeting's time now — **tomorrow from 3-5**, read by the AI, waiting for `↩`.

Change location …

Type a room, an address or a link, and press ↩ on Set location to "…". With the field empty, the page shows the current location and offers Remove location.

Add attendee …

The page lists the people you meet with most, then your colleagues. Whoever is already invited is left out. Type to narrow the list, or type a full email address to add someone from outside. The page stays open, so you can add several people in a row.

The field says it: New attendees may get a calendar invite. If your calendar can send one, it will.

The Add attendee page listing Dana Brooks — Suggestions come first. Everyone already on the meeting is left out.

On a meeting you organise: ⌘K→ type time →↩→ type tomorrow 9:30 →↩

Put things on the table: pin to a meeting

Pinning a document to a meeting puts it in the meeting's Pinned list, for everyone at the meeting. Use it for the agenda, the deck you will discuss, or a task you want to raise.

Pin to current meeting

In a call right now? ⌘K Pin to current meeting pins the page you are on to the meeting you have joined. Its hint names that meeting, says Checking… while Orbital asks Tana, or says No active meeting when you are in no call.

Pin to meeting …

Pin to meeting … lets you pick any of your meetings from a week back to a week ahead. The next one is at the top, then the rest still to come, then those that are over. Type to narrow the list, and press ↩ to pin.

You can also drag a row onto a meeting's row, on the Timeline or in any list. The meeting's row lights up while you hover, and dropping pins the row to it.

⌘K showing Pin to meeting and Pin to current meeting — Both rows, with the meeting you are in as the hint.

The Pin to meeting page with meetings next-first — **Pin to meeting …** lists the next meeting first.

To take a pin off again, use ⌘K Edit pins, which lists everywhere the page is pinned, meetings included. Pins & dates has the rest.

On any task: ⌘K→ type pin to meeting →↩→ pick a meeting →↩

The meeting you are in now

The top of the Timeline is about today. Under Upcoming meetings are the meetings still to come, earliest first, each with its time and faces for who else is on it. The Tana glyph after a title (Join in Tana) opens that meeting in Tana, where you join the call. Above them, a line says how much free time you have before the next one.

Upcoming meetings on the Timeline, each with its time and attendees — Today's meetings still to come, on the Timeline.

On the record

Once a meeting starts, it moves into the Timeline's history at its start time, with its length and who else is in it. While somebody is in its call and Tana is transcribing or recording it, its marker turns blue and a blue ring pulses out of it. The ring goes when the last person leaves or the call goes off the record.

Being in the call is also what Pin to current meeting uses to know which meeting you mean.

A meeting under way on the Timeline with a blue recording marker — A meeting under way whose call is being recorded.

A meeting that is over and has no write-up is drawn faint on the Timeline: there is nothing to read yet.

Tasks that came from a meeting

When Tana's AI takes tasks out of a meeting, it files them under that meeting. Those are the meeting's Outcomes, and each one keeps a way back to where it came from.

The meeting glyph on a row

In any list, such a task has a small grey calendar glyph among its facts. Hover over it to read which meeting it came from, for example "From Leadership sync · Wed 30 Sep". Click it to open that meeting. Your caret stays in the row.

A task row in the Library with a meeting glyph after the assignee — The calendar glyph after the assignee links back to the meeting.

The meeting button in the header

On the task's own page, a calendar button joins the buttons at the top right. It shows while your pointer is over the page, and its tooltip names the meeting. Click it to open the meeting.

From a task to the meeting it came from: the calendar button at the top right.

Open a task from a meeting → move the pointer over the page → click the calendar button at the top right

Keys in this chapter

Action	Keys
Open the rows for this meeting (Change time …, Join call, Pin to meeting …)	`⌘K`
Run the highlighted row; confirm the time, place or person typed	`↩`
Back to the command list from a meeting page	`esc`
Give a row such as Join call a key of its own	`⇧⌘K`
Show the rest of a long attendee list (on And 3 more)	`↩`