Guide
What Orca does, how it works, and how to get the most from it. Why Orca? It is an AI orchestration app that conducts the tools you already have, so they finally work together.
Your first 7 days
Orca is an AI orchestration app. That is where the name comes from: it conducts the tools you already have, so they finally work together. Setup takes five minutes. The rest is just using it. Here is the order that works best.
Connect your calendar and email
Open Settings, connect your Microsoft 365 or Google account. You can connect up to five accounts, so if you run multiple businesses or have separate tenants, add them all now. The connect buttons stay visible until you hit the limit, and a tenant switcher appears once you have two or more. Takes about two minutes per account.
Connect Fireflies for transcripts
Paste your Fireflies API key in Settings. This lets Orca pull meeting transcripts automatically and use them for follow-ups, contact dossiers, and pattern detection.
Let Orca prep you automatically
30 minutes before your next call, Orca reads the calendar event, looks up attendees in your contacts, pulls prior emails and transcripts, and sends a structured brief. You do not need to ask.
Try your first follow-up
Say "follow up on my call with [name]". Orca finds the transcript, extracts what was discussed, drafts an email in your voice, and queues it for approval. Review it, approve it, done.
Ask what your day looks like
Try "what's my day look like?" first thing. Your morning briefing should already be landing before your coffee. Three meetings, two flagged emails, one overdue follow-up — all in one view.
Ask who needs chasing
"Who needs chasing?" pulls your open follow-ups and missed replies. Names, context, how many days have passed. Orca drafts a chase for each one. You approve, they go out.
Check your energy batteries
The energy monitor shows where your time actually goes, split by client or project. If you are spending 70% of your week on one client, you will see it clearly here.
Run your first weekly review
Energy, pipeline, signals, status notes — all in one place. Takes 15 minutes. Most people find it replaces a full hour of fragmented end-of-week catch-up.
How to brief Orca
The more context you give, the better the output. These examples show the difference between a prompt that works and one that makes Orca guess.
Orca finds Sarah's calendar event, queries her contact profile, pulls prior email threads and Fireflies transcripts, researches Meridian via Companies House, and generates a structured brief with talking points, connection context, company activity, and suggested approach.
Orca finds the transcript, extracts commitments from both sides, drafts a threaded reply referencing the Home Office expansion specifically, and queues it for your approval.
Too vague. If you have three meetings today, Orca needs to ask which one. Give the name, the company, or the time.
Who to? About what? A name and a call reference turns this into a fully contextualised draft. Without that, you get a generic shell.
Setting up integrations
Orca works with the tools you already use. Connect them once and they run in the background.
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1
Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace
Calendar, email, and contacts. This is the foundation. Orca reads your schedule, accesses email threads for context, and sends follow-ups via Outlook or Gmail. Connect via OAuth — you stay in control of permissions at all times.
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2
Meeting transcription (Fireflies, Fathom, or Otter)
After each call, the transcript is pulled automatically. Orca analyses it for follow-ups, action items, commitments made, and new facts about the people you spoke with. No transcript means no post-meeting intelligence.
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3
Notifications (Pushover)
Push alerts to your phone. Meeting prep lands 30 minutes before virtual calls, 60 minutes before in-person. Departure reminders with travel time included. Chase reminders on Wednesdays. You can silence any notification type individually.
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4
Task management (ClickUp, optional)
Orca can create tasks from calls and emails, track pipeline movement, and pull task data for weekly reviews and board packs. Useful if you already use ClickUp; not required if you do not.
What Orca does without being asked
Most of what Orca does happens automatically. You do not need to trigger it.
Your morning briefing
Delivered at 07:00 every weekday. Everything you need to start the day, without opening your email.
When you will use this
- When you open Orca at 07:15, your briefing is already there. Three meetings today, two flagged emails, one overdue chase.
- When you have a client meeting at 09:30, the briefing highlights it with attendee names and whether prep is complete.
- When a client email has been waiting four days, it appears as a red flag with "respond today" and a draft ready to review.
Before a meeting
Orca preps you before every meeting. You do not have to dig through email threads or last month's notes to walk in with context.
When you will use this
- When you have a new business meeting, Orca researches the company (Companies House, LinkedIn, recent news), checks your prior email threads and calls, and builds a brief.
- When you have a recurring client meeting, Orca pulls what you discussed last time, what commitments were made, and what is outstanding.
- When an in-person meeting requires travel, Orca sends a departure alert to your phone with travel time factored in.
How to use it
Orca preps 30 min before virtual meetings, 60 min before in-person. Nothing required from you.
"Prep me for my meeting with [name]"
"Prep me for my call with Tom from the EdTech company. They're exploring AI for admissions."
After a meeting
Orca generates a follow-up within minutes of your meeting ending. Every draft goes into a queue. Nothing goes out without your approval.
When you will use this
- When your call ends, Orca finds the transcript, extracts what was discussed and what was promised, drafts a follow-up email in your voice, and queues it.
- When there was a prior email thread, Orca threads the reply correctly, so there are no orphaned follow-ups floating in your sent folder.
- When action items come up in the call, Orca creates tasks automatically and links them to the contact.
How to use it
Follow-up generated within minutes of the meeting ending. Check your draft queue.
"Follow up on my call with [name]"
"Follow up on my call with Sarah. Emphasise the onboarding pressure she mentioned."
The draft queue
Every external action goes through the draft queue first. Emails, Teams messages, calendar events, tasks — all queued for your review. Preview each one, edit if needed, and approve individually or use "Send All". Nothing goes out without your say so.
Managing your inbox
Orca monitors your inbox continuously and surfaces what actually needs your attention. Everything else gets out of your way.
When you will use this
- When a client emails about contract amendments four days ago, Orca flags it as high priority and drafts a reply.
- When someone wants to schedule a meeting, Orca suggests three available slots from your calendar and drafts a reply with them included.
- When newsletters arrive, they are archived automatically and never surface in your flagged view.
Email templates
Stop retyping the same follow-ups. Build templates once, apply them to any draft with one click, and let placeholders fill in the details.
When you will use this
- After a meeting, you apply your "Post-meeting follow-up" template. It fills in the contact's name, references the meeting subject, and preserves the quoted email thread below.
- You have a standard introductory email for new contacts. One click inserts it with the right name and company, ready to send.
- A client needs chasing. Your "Quick chase" template drops in with their first name and a polite nudge, consistent every time.
How it works
In Settings, build templates using plain text with placeholders like {{firstName}}, {{lastName}}, {{company}}, {{email}}, and {{subject}}.
Open a draft, click Edit, then select a template from the dropdown. Placeholders are filled automatically from the draft's recipient data.
The template text sits above the quoted conversation history. Edit if needed, then send. The email threads correctly in the recipient's inbox.
Your pipeline
Every person you meet gets a profile. Every call adds to it. Orca keeps your contact intelligence current without any manual entry.
When you will use this
- When you meet someone new, Orca creates their contact profile automatically from the calendar event and any prior email thread.
- When you have a call, Orca discovers new facts (role changes, project mentions, preferences) and asks you to confirm before saving.
- When you ask "who do I know at Meridian?", Orca returns everyone you have met there with their interaction history.
Weekly review
A structured walkthrough of your week. Energy, pipeline, signals, and status notes in one session.
Five steps: energy allocation, calendar overview, pipeline movement, top signals, and status notes. Each step is guided — Orca surfaces the data, you add the judgement. Most users complete it in 15 minutes on Friday afternoon.
Energy monitor
Where is your time actually going? The energy monitor breaks your week down by client and project so you can see the real picture.
Command palette
A keyboard-driven interface for everything in Orca. Press the shortcut, type what you need, and act. Faster than navigating menus for most common tasks.
Orca Web App
A browser-based dashboard that gives you access to briefings, draft approvals, and activity monitoring from any device. No install required.
How to get the most from it
- Approve drafts on the go. The Approvals tab shows every email, Teams message, and calendar invite Orca has queued. Review the content, edit inline if needed, and approve or reject. Nothing sends without your sign-off.
- Check your briefing before your first meeting. The Home tab shows your next meeting with prep context and quick stats. Open it on your phone over coffee instead of launching the desktop app.
- Monitor what Orca is doing. The Activity tab logs every background action: inbox triage, briefing generation, transcript pulls, and scheduled jobs. If something looks wrong, you will see it here first.
- Connect accounts from any machine. Settings lets you connect Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace via OAuth. Useful when you are setting up on a new device or adding a second tenant.
- Share access with your team. The web app supports multiple users on the same Orca instance, each with their own login. Useful for EAs or team members who need to approve drafts on your behalf.
Email autopilot
Orca monitors your inbox in the background, classifies every email by priority, drafts replies for the ones that matter, and archives the ones that do not. You review and send. That is it.
When you will use this
- A client emails about a contract query and Orca flags it as high priority, drafts a reply referencing the relevant context, and queues it for your approval.
- Seven newsletters and notification emails arrive overnight. Orca archives them silently so your inbox shows only what needs action.
- A warm lead replies to your outreach. Orca scores it, drafts a contextual reply in your tone, and puts it at the top of your draft queue.
How it works
The scheduler polls your inbox at configurable intervals. New emails are classified as actionable, informational, or noise.
Actionable emails are scored by sender relationship, thread age, and content urgency. Noise emails are archived automatically.
High-scoring emails get contextual draft replies that include the quoted thread history. Drafts appear in your approval queue, ready to review and send.
Scheduling autopilot
Every meeting on your calendar gets automatic preparation. Briefings, departure alerts, and conflict detection all happen without you lifting a finger.
When you will use this
- You walk into a meeting with a new business contact. Orca has already pulled their Companies House profile, LinkedIn activity, and any previous email threads, and assembled a one-page briefing.
- You have a meeting across town at 14:00. Orca sends a departure alert at 13:10, factoring in transit time and your 15-minute buffer.
- Two meetings are booked back-to-back with no gap. Orca alerts you so you can reschedule before it becomes a problem.
How it works
Orca watches your connected calendars and identifies meetings that need preparation.
For each meeting, Orca generates a briefing with attendee profiles, CRM data, previous meeting notes, and relevant context from your email and transcript history.
Departure alerts are sent via your notification channel. Calendar conflicts and tight turnarounds are flagged so you can address them proactively.
How Chris uses it
These are real prompts and what Orca does with them.
Integration guides
What each integration connects, and why it matters.
Microsoft 365
Calendar, email (Outlook), Teams, and contacts. Orca reads your schedule to trigger prep. Accesses email threads for context on contacts and deals. Sends follow-up emails via Outlook. Posts Teams messages. Supports up to five tenants simultaneously, so if you run more than one business, connect each tenant via Settings and use the tenant switcher to filter or view all accounts together.
Google Workspace
Calendar and Gmail. Same capabilities as Microsoft 365 but via Google's APIs. If you use Google Calendar and Gmail as your primary account, this replaces the Microsoft 365 integration. Both can be connected if you operate across both environments.
Fireflies / Fathom / Otter
Meeting transcription. After each call, Orca fetches the transcript automatically and analyses it for: follow-up actions, commitments made by both parties, new facts about contacts, and themes for social content. Without a transcription service, post-meeting intelligence is not available.
ClickUp
Task management. Orca creates tasks from emails and call transcripts, tracks pipeline stages, and pulls task data for weekly reviews and board packs. If you do not use ClickUp, this is optional — Orca manages tasks internally without it.
Pushover
Push notifications to your phone. Meeting prep alerts arrive 30 minutes before virtual meetings and 60 minutes before in-person ones. Departure reminders include estimated travel time. Chase reminders go out on Wednesdays. You control which notification types are active.
Getting more value
Orca's standard configuration handles most use cases. Here is how to extend it.
Skill upgrades
Additional capabilities configured for your specific needs. Examples: sector-specific research monitoring, bespoke scoring models for opportunity pipelines, custom proactive jobs that run on your schedule.
Bespoke features
Custom integrations with systems Orca does not connect to by default, bespoke report formats, or workflows specific to your business model. Discussed and scoped on a case-by-case basis.
AI advisory
Strategic guidance on using AI across your business, not just within Orca. What to automate, where AI adds real value in your sector, how to bring your team along. Sessions are focused and practical.
FAQ
Does Orca send emails on my behalf?
Not without your approval. Every email, Teams message, and calendar event goes through the draft queue. You review, edit if needed, and approve before anything is sent. Nothing leaves your account without your say so.
What happens if a tool fails?
Orca tells you. It never fabricates data or pretends an action succeeded. If your calendar API is down, it says so and does not generate a prep brief based on incomplete information. Errors are surfaced clearly, not hidden.
Can Orca access my emails?
Yes, with your permission via OAuth. It reads emails for context — who said what, when, what was promised — but never shares your data externally or uses it to train any AI model. You can revoke access at any time through your Microsoft or Google account settings.
What data does Orca store?
Contact facts, meeting briefs, work items, and drafts are stored in a private Supabase database dedicated to your account. Your emails and calendar events stay in Microsoft or Google. Orca queries them live and does not duplicate them into its own storage.
Can I use Orca on my phone?
Yes. There is an Android app with voice-first interaction, CRM access, and push notifications. Meeting prep and follow-up alerts go to your phone automatically via Pushover. An iOS version is in progress.
What if I have more than one business?
Orca supports up to five Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace accounts at the same time, in any combination. Go to Settings, click the connect button for each additional account, and label them however makes sense to you. A tenant switcher appears in the title bar once you have two or more connected, letting you filter by account or view everything together. Each account is scoped separately, so calendar events, emails, and contacts from each business are kept distinct and attributed correctly.
Ready to see it working?
Book a call and we will walk through a live demo using your actual calendar and workflow. No slide decks. Just the system running.