Turning customer conversations into insights does not need to be slow. In Aha! Discovery, you can quickly capture key learnings, quotes, and answers as structured highlights directly from an interview's transcript. Then, organize them with tags and link them to upcoming work so decisions reflect actual feedback. Use AI to speed identification or highlight text yourself when you want more control. Either way, you build a durable research record the team can trust and revisit as strategy evolves.
Click any of the following links to skip ahead:
Overview
Highlights are key learnings, quotes, and answers captured from customer research. They help teams focus on the most impactful parts of the conversation. You can create highlights yourself, or ask Elle to create them from an interview or research file using a custom prompt.
After Elle creates or reviews highlights, it can suggest relevant Aha! records to link. You review the suggestions first, then save only the links you want. A single highlight can link to more than one record when the same evidence supports several roadmap decisions. This helps tie what customers said to the work it should shape.
You need a transcript to create highlights from an interview. Upload a VTT file from your meeting service to add a transcript to an Aha! Discovery interview. If a transcript is not available, upload a video or audio file and use the AI assistant to transcribe it. Saved highlights appear in the Highlights side panel, where you can filter by type, review details, and add links.
Highlights toolbar
The highlights toolbar appears when you highlight text in a transcript. It offers several options for capturing key insights, organizing them, and linking them to your product strategy:
|
AI summary Use AI to summarize the highlighted text |
|
|
Clip Create a video or audio clip from a transcript. |
|
|
Learning Distill what you learned from what a customer told you during the interview. This can be a core customer need, problem, or behavior observed in the conversation. |
|
|
Quote Capture what an interview participant said in their own words |
|
|
Response Identify the responses to your interview questions, then select the question from the study's script to link it to |
|
|
Tag Add labels for a flexible way to organize or categorize key information. Use global tags that you can use across any interview or study, or study tags that are unique to each study. You can use tags to organize and report on highlights. |
|
|
Record link Link text in a transcript to a specific record in your Aha! Roadmaps or Aha! Ideas account. If you are using Aha! Discovery as a standalone product, you will not have this option. |
Save highlights manually
Open an interview's details.
Highlight text in the transcript where you want to point out a specific insight. Then, select a highlight type from the toolbar.
The highlight saves to the Highlights side panel. If the highlight is a Learning, you will add a title and description to distill what you learned. You can tag any highlight or link it to an Aha! record from the Highlights side panel.
Capture highlights with Elle
Use Elle when you want to move from raw research to usable evidence faster. You can ask Elle to create highlights from an interview or research file based on a custom prompt, review what it found, and keep the highlights that support your product decisions.
You can start from the Elle menu at the top of the transcript, or open Elle in the interview or research file.
Open an interview or research file, then open Elle. You can also open the Elle menu at the top of the transcript.
Enter a prompt that describes the type of highlights you want. For example, ask Elle to find quotes about pricing confusion or create highlights that marketing can use in launch materials.
Choose the scope for the analysis when available. You can review the current interview or file, or expand to broader study context.
Review the proposed highlights in the Highlights side panel. Save the highlights you want to keep, and remove the ones you do not need.
Ask Elle to suggest records to link to those highlights. It will propose matches and explain why each link fits.
Review the proposed links and save only the ones you approve.
If you want feature-specific details about other AI analysis options, read our AI-assisted transcript analysis article.
Link highlights to Aha! records
Once you have captured highlights, you can link them to records in Aha! Roadmaps or Aha! Ideas. Those links appear on the related record's Research tab, so the team can see the customer evidence behind the work.
You can create links manually, or use Elle to suggest them for you. In both cases, one highlight can link to multiple records when the same evidence supports more than one initiative, epic, feature, requirement, or idea.
Hover over a highlight in the Highlights side panel.
Click the Aha! icon in the upper right, then select Link to an Aha! record.
If you are linking manually, search for the records you want and click the + icon next to each one.
If you are using Elle, review the suggested records and the reason for each suggestion.
Select every record you want to connect to the highlight, then save the links.
When linking a highlight to an idea, you can also add study participants as subscribers to that idea. Subscribers receive portal notifications.
https://aha-videos.wistia.com/medias/7fv6ag9wfu
Report on highlights
Capturing highlights is just the first step — analyzing them is where the real insights take shape. There are several ways you can report on highlights to surface themes across interviews and quantify how often needs arise:
Pull highlights into a study or interview-focused insights report.
See a concatenated view of all highlights across all interviews and studies in the highlights list report. From here, you can add highlights to a whiteboard to visualize them in different ways.
Response highlights are included in highlight reports, so you can filter for Responses and compare how participants answered the same interview question.