[Free Template] How To Take Meeting Minutes Effectively 📙

Meeting minutes are the written records of a conference. These are used to inform attendees and non-attendees of what was discussed in the live meeting. Taking meeting minutes helps to document important decisions and insights, and formulate the next steps. Meeting minutes enable absent team members to catch up on the content, action-items, and next steps discussed.

Which tools can help to easily and quickly take meeting minutes?

Our default it to always record our meeting with tl;dv. However, every organization is different. Some of the most common meeting minute taking tools are:

• Google Docs or Google Sheets
• The Microsoft suite: including Onenote, Word, and Excel*.
• Notion
• Apple’s Pages
• Evernote
• Notepad
• Zoho Docs
• OpenOffice

*Not many people know that Microsoft also offers free online versions of these.

Create an outline: Having an agenda-based framework (check out our templates below) makes it simple to jot down notes, decisions, and other information under each item as you go.

Mark members as they enter: If you know who will be attending the meeting, you may check them off as they come; if not, have people introduce themselves at the beginning of the meeting.

Don’t overdo it: If you try to take down the dialogue exactly, you won’t be able to keep up, so focus on writing the critical information.

Record the minutes: if you don’t want to miss any important action items, and want all non-attendees to gain full visibility into the meeting, then you can record your meeting with tl;dv. This also frees up participants from any note-taking tasks, allowing them to be more present during the meeting.

Board meeting minutes are similar to most other meetings, just with perhaps a higher level of importance. This is as often higher level company decisions are being made. For this, we recommend either recording the meeting, so no detail will be lost. Alternatively, if you prefer to manually take meeting minutes, then we recommend our robust meeting templates that enables you to quickly document agenda items, speakers and next steps. 

Three steps to adequately take board meeting minutes

#1 Plan in advance

Productive meeting minutes, require some forethought. This includes setting agenda items, a meeting goal, next steps and perhaps distributing required reading material before the meeting. Doing this, can increase the efficiency of the meeting and the number of actionable items derived from the meeting minutes.

#2 Understand the agenda and use it

Start with the essentials when deciding what should be included in the meeting minutes. Be conscious of the time, and use the agenda sheet to track whether or not the meeting is running as scheduled. You can perhaps set aside time at the end to cover questions and discussion points that was not in the meeting agenda.

#3 Clarify points and inputs

Make sure when taking meeting minutes that each next step is assigned to at least one team member. Also, clarify due dates and the resources required to complete these.

Why are board meeting minutes important?

Minutes of board meetings are significant for a variety of reasons. Board meeting minutes, first and foremost, serve as historical evidence of the board’s short and long-term strategy. Since each meeting has a specific mission and vision, the board can utilize the meeting minutes as a database for future access to see how far things have progressed.

You’re in good hands with tl;dv! Through our Google Chrome Extension, you can easily record and transcribe any Google Meet with a click of a button. Simply install the tl;dv Google Chrome Extension, and then when you’re in a live Google Meet, simply invite tl;dv to the meeting. After the meeting is finished, you’ll automatically be emailed your transcript and video with timestamped highlights. This allows you to instantly link any meeting note to the exact moment in the recording.

Many choose to store their meeting minutes and meeting notes either locally, or in an online database such as Google Drive, Notion, Dropbox, iCloud or Onedrive. Usually, this will be determined by your team and company. If you’re recording your meetings with tl;dv, your meeting video and transcript recordings will automatically be stored in your tl;dv library.