Amazing things can happen in meetings. Whether remote, hybrid or in-person, meetings are often where incredible ideas are formed, incubated and turned into the foundation for the – next – big – thing! Knowing how to take minutes for a meeting is essential if you want to make sure none of that magic gets lost.
What You'll Find in this Meeting Minutes Guide
However, much like a very profound conversation with friends late into the night, those little gems of insight, those sparks of creativity and genius, well…they’re prone to getting lost in the maze of our minds. Our memories are unreliable – especially when it comes to complex, technical or detailed information. Without noting down a meeting’s key take-aways or action points, you risk losing all those fruitful insights to the void.
Nobody wants that. Not documenting a meeting is a missed opportunity to collect, store and share insights. You need meeting minutes, and good ones. Most importantly – you need kick-ass methods of taking minutes for a meeting!
Say goodbye to jotting down notes in your paper pad, only to loose them forever. Wave adieu to capturing random bits of information, but forgetting the context, or not knowing how to share the insight across your organisation.
We’re going to explain how you can take notes which are:
- Rich with context
- Clear as day
- Captured efficiently
- Searchable
- Connected with the meeting
- Transparent
- Democratized
- Instanly accessible to everyone
But, before we get started…
What are meeting minutes?
Meeting minutes are the official and written record of what was discussed and decided in a meeting. They help ensure that both meeting participants and absent stakeholders are on the same page. They need to summarise the decisions made, conclusions reached, and insights gained. Most importantly, action points arising from the meeting should be documented.
Sounds simple enough, right? It can be… but only if you know how to take them the right way.
Traditionally, one person at a company was typically tasked with taking minutes at a meeting. This person would be a passive listener and efficient typer. They’d collect the notes, type them up into the correct format, and then be responsible for sharing them with relevant stakeholders.
These days, anyone might be called upon to take responsibilty for note taking Technology has simplified and improved the practise of taking meeting minutes. Although some my still choose to document minutes with hand-written notes, it’s now easier than every to take them online, for example with a Zoom notetaker app or Google Meet notetaker add-on.
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The key thing to remember is that it’s all about context, clarity, accuracy and transparency. This way, none of the important takeaways get lost, and there’s no crossed wires over what was said and meant.
When taking notes, it’s important to be as concise as possible. This means that you should only include the key points that were discussed in the meeting, and leave out anything that is not relevant.
Meeting minutes should make it easy for anyone to revisit what was discussed in a matter of seconds, thereby reminding themselves of action points and learnings.
How to take in-person meeting minutes
At face-to-face meetings, note-taking can be a little more daunting. There’s rarely a recording to revert back to, and you won’t be able to make use of virtual meeting software. But don’t worry! There are plenty of tips you can follow to take your in-person note taking skills to the next level.
To make it a bit easier, we’ve broken it down into a step-by-step guide:
1. Start by noting down the basics: who, what, where and when
This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s important to get the basic information down first. This will help to give your notes some structure and ensure you don’t forget any key details. Note down who is in attendance, the date and time of day of meeting, and where it is taking place.
2. Write down a brief overview of what was discussed in the meeting
Again, this may seem uneccessary but it’s important to write down a brief overview of the main topics that are discussed in the meeting. Copy down the formal agenda, and make sure to add information about any non-agenda items discussed too. You may want to begin by outlining the purpose of the meeting – why are these topics being discussed, and what objectives should be acheived by the end of the meeting?
3. Note down any actions that need to be taken from the meeting
This is the most important part of taking minutes, as it ensures everyone knows what needs to be done and by when. Be as specific as possible when noting down the action points and deadlines, and make sure you can assign each point to a specific person or team.
4. Transcribe any key quotes
If there are any particularly memorable or important remarks from the meeting, make sure to transcribe them verbatim in your minutes. This will help to capture the essence of the discussion by express insights in the words of the attendees.
5. Edit and format your minutes as needed
Once you have all of the above information noted down, it’s time to edit and format your minutes as needed. You may want to make use of a template (we’ve even added some to the bottom of this article for you!).
Make sure to proofread your minutes for typos or errors, and format them in a way that is easy to read and understand. If you need to double check any detail, ask someone who participated – but do so quickly, before it slips their mind too.
And that’s it!
You can then save, print or share the meeting minutes as needed. Wherever you end up saving them, you should be doing so in a relatively organized fashion, and perhaps set up a naming convention to ensure that the right document can be found at the right time (by anyone who needs to see them).
For any meetings that happen AFTER this original meeting, make sure you’ve shared the previous meeting minutes to attendees so they have a reminder of what happened.
Taking minutes for a virtual meeting
For a virtual meeting, these steps can also be followed – but thankfully there’s a much easier way!
There is no point in having one person assigned to writing a blow-by-blow account of a virtual meeting when the entire call is recorded. That’s simply not an efficient use of time. By letting all participants jot down the take-aways and action points relevant to them within the virtual meeting itself, there’s no risk of anything getting overlooked.
This is where a tool like tl;dv comes in. This AI note taking tool integrates into the Zoom, Google Meet or MS Teams and automatically generates meeting minutes from your meeting. That’s right. No human intervention whatsoever.
If you really want to manually highlight a specific moment, you can make use of tl;dv’s meeting moments which gives you that manual control, otherwise you can simply focus on your meeting.
Once the meeting is over, a new tab in your browser will open with the AI notes for that meeting.
If you’ve set it up beforehand, every meeting participant will also receive those meeting notes.
Using the “ask tl;dv” feature, you can leverage AI to extract any insight from your meeting, ask for a summary or for AI to get you that moment when someone mentioned a cat.
Benefits of using tl;dv to take meeting minutes
Leverage AI
Leveraging the power of AI, tl;dv transforms the mundane task of taking meeting minutes into a highly efficient and insightful process.
This AI Meeting Assistant not only records, transcribes, and summarizes your team’s discussions but also intelligently captures the essence of every conversation.
By recognizing each speaker and accurately tagging participants’ names, tl;dv ensures that no detail is missed. Furthermore, its capability to create customized topic trackers and generate topic-clustered notes streamlines the review process, allowing teams to dive directly into the most relevant insights.
tl;dv elevates the meeting experience by enabling users to ask anything about their meetings and derive multi-meeting insights, making it an indispensable tool for businesses looking to harness the full potential of their discussions.
Time Stamps
As well as providing an accurate transcription, tl;dv lets you attach meeting minutes to your recorded call in the form of timestamps.
This is incredibly useful if you need to refer back to a specific point in the discussion or want to share a particular moment with others. Even better, you don’t need to be an admin or a boss to add these, everybody has access to this feature and can create their own timestamps for relevance and context. This works for both Zoom recording timestamps and Google Meet timestamps.
Timestamps will be visible to everyone in the call in real-time. To view them afterwards, simply visit the link to the recorded meeting. The timestamps will be displayed alongside the transcription, making it easy to scroll through and find the relevant section.
You add timestamps manually, and can do so anytime you want to flag a particular issue or highlight something that is relevat to revisit in another meeting. To do this, simply type your meeting minutes or notes in the tl;dv Highlights interface. The timestamp will be added to the meeting minutes, and function as a video bookmark.
Tagging
Tagging is another great feature of tl;dv that allows you to highlight important parts of the meeting for others. This is particularly useful if you need to share the minutes with someone who wasn’t able to attend the meeting.
To tag somone in the meeting, simply type @ into the tl;dv interface, followed by the name of the colleague you want to loop in. You can also add these tags in retrospect, by going to a specific moment in the recording and clicking ‘Add Timestamp’ and performing the same action then.
It could be a good idea to write a short comment that summarizes why their input or awareness is needed. Your colleague will get an email that alerts them to the fact that they’ve been tagged in a specific call moment. The tagged section will be highlighted in the meeting minutes, making it easy for others to find.
Multilingual
tl;dv can translate notes into over 30 languages. This makes conducting international business meetings a breeze, as everyone can access the meeting notes in their own language afterwards.
Async friendly
One key difference of taking meeting minutes digitally, for example with tl;dv, is the reduced need for live attendance. You don’t NEED to be at the meeting to take the minutes. You can easily add meeting minutes in retrospect.
If two stakeholders need a quick meeting, and others can’t make it – no sweat! The recording and transcript will ensure nothing gets lost.
Integrations
tl;dv integrates with a number of popular tools and CRMs, such as Slack, Google Docs, HubSpot and Salesforce. This allows you to quickly and easily share your meeting minutes with others, without having to add them manually.
To set up an integration, simply click on the ‘Integrations’ button in the tl;dv interface and select the tool you want to use. Follow the instructions to connect tl;dv to your account and you’re all set!
There are multiple benefits of integrating a video meeting tool and minute taker with CRM systems such as HubSpot and Salesforce, for example:
Save time
You no longer have to schedule and attend multiple meetings to get updates from different team members working on the same project. With the tl;dv video meetings and minute-taker integration, you can view a recording of the entire meeting along with key points and action items in one single place. This means that you can save time by not attending unnecessary meetings and quickly getting updates when needed.
It also means that you don’t have to spend a whole load of time writing up notes, or transferring any details into your CRM. With just a simple click, your video clips and timestamps get pulled into your collanborative platform, where you and your team can access the call, transcript and timestamps at any time.
Better customer service
With video meetings and minutes stored alongside customer data in your CRM, your customer service team will be able to provide a better experience for their customers. They’ll have all the information they need to hand to answer any queries, follow-up effectively, deal with issues and generally provide a five-star service.
Increased transparency and accountability
By integrating video meetings and minute-taking into your CRM system, you can improve transparency and accountability within your organization. This is because all team members will be able to see a recording of the meeting, which makes it easier to follow up. Additionally, this integration will also allow you to track the progress of projects and tasks, as well as identify any areas where improvements need to be made.
Improved team collaboration
Integrating video meetings and minutes into your CRM system will also improve team collaboration. This is because team members will be able to share meeting recordings and minutes with each other, which will make it easier for them to work together on projects. Additionally, this integration will also make it easier for team members to stay up-to-date on each other’s work, for example if a colleague is OOO and someone else needs to step in.
Meeting minutes templates
Level 1: simple meeting minutes template
For simple meetings, or if you want an additional written supplement to your meeting recording, we recommend this simple template.
Want to download this template? Here are all the formats available:
- Google Sheet meeting minutes template. Copy this to transfer it to your favorite notetaking tools such as Notion, Evernote, Google Docs, and so forth.
- PDF (.pdf) template.
- Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) template.
- Comma-separated values spreadsheet (.csv) template.
- OpenDocument spreadsheet (.ods) template.
Level 2: intermediate meeting minutes template
This meeting template focuses on the next steps, and who is responsible for these. Additional information you might like to note are expectations and due-dates.
Want to download this template? Here are all the formats available:
- Google Sheet meeting minutes template. Copy this to transfer it to your favorite notetaking tools such as Notion, Evernote, Google Docs, and so forth.
- PDF (.pdf) template.
- Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) template.
- Comma-separated values spreadsheet (.csv) template.
- OpenDocument spreadsheet (.ods) template.
Level 3: the robust meeting minutes template
If you want all of your bases covered, you may want to opt for our robust meeting minutes template.
Want to download this template? Here are all the formats available:
- Google Sheet meeting minutes template. Copy this to transfer it to your favorite notetaking tools such as Notion, Evernote, Google Docs, and so forth.
- PDF (.pdf) template.
- Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) template.
- Comma-separated values spreadsheet (.csv) template.
- OpenDocument spreadsheet (.ods) template.
Excellent minutes mean better follow-ups
There’s a reason why big businesses and corporations have traditionally always had someone assigned to take minutes during important meetings: it works.
Being able to follow up on what was discussed helps keep everyone aligned and focused, while removing the risk of ambiguity and forgetfulness. The beauty of effective meeting minutes lies in the follow up, which is why tl;dv functions as a simple and async follow up tool for businesses of every size.
If you want to increase productivity and get better results, start taking minutes more effectively in your next meeting. And be sure to use a tool like tl;dv, because you’ll get so many added benefits – for minimum effort!
So…ready to take some kickass meeting minutes?
