Top Easy Ways to Take Minutes During Online Meetings
Meeting minutes are important for businesses because they capture all the ideas, actions, and queries raised in the heat of the moment that can quickly be forgotten after an hour of discussions. It’s vital that they’re recorded to ensure business success and keep staff accountable for responsibilities and company updates.
However, taking minutes during online meetings can disrupt your flow or be too tricky to jot down fully before the conversation moves elsewhere. This helpful article will share our top easy ways to take minutes during an online meeting held on platforms such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams.
Continue reading to learn more and boost your meeting productivity.
Use OCR Technology
An OCR tool is a great way to help transform hand-written minutes into a PDF or other document. OCR stands for optical character recognition. It’s a simple piece of software that works by scanning hand-written text and digitising it into a document format. This way, a staff member can jot down hand-written minutes during an online meeting and then use the OCR tool to transform them into an editable and professional digital document, without losing any of the accuracy or wasting time copying all the notes out from scratch manually.
It also saves the trouble of colleagues trying to decipher particular handwriting styles or spelling errors. If you have a sudden idea or contact detail to jot down, you can scribble it on paper mid-meeting, before shaping it up into professional minute formatting afterwards without missing a beat. This nifty piece of technology will elevate your online minute-taking game to the next level, so try it out after your next meeting.
Use AI Transcription
Platforms like Microsoft Teams and Zoom have excellent inbuilt transcription tools, which will listen to staff members’ voices and automatically transcribe what is said, whether in an executive board or ad strategy meeting. You can also add bots to meetings which provide transcriptions in real-time.
However, it is worth noting that AI transcription in video conferencing software is not entirely accurate, and can lead to errors such as getting names wrong and misinterpreting language. They also cannot convey tone, sarcasm, rhetorical questioning and enthusiasm.
For AI-transcribed minutes, it’s best to have a human edit them for accuracy and correct any mistakes while the conversations of the meeting are fresh in mind. This will still significantly cut down on the time compared to creating minutes from scratch, and allow all meeting participants to stay fully focused during the meeting.
Formally Document Key Decisions
While some staff may have excellent memories, others may quickly forget what decisions were made in an online team meeting. Creating written records of the minutes enables team members to accurately reference those key decisions that were made at a specific point throughout a project or financial quarter. Meeting minutes also help teams maintain accountability and can be helpful to reference later in a project or task.
However, these minutes in note form may be harder to understand a few weeks or months later when the memory of the meeting has faded to provide fuller context. Ensure that everybody can reference online meeting minutes beyond the immediate time frame by keeping them in a designated space as a central source of truth, such as a shared team folder or project management platform. Store the most important decisions and agreements as formal documents to avoid misunderstandings or missed notices.
Consistent Formatting For Clear, Group Understanding
After the online meeting, ensure that you take fifteen minutes to review and summarise your minutes, whether they were handwritten or generated by an AI transcription service. Use different headings, bullet points and clear formatting structures to ensure the information is easy to read and navigate. If you’re using a collaborative note tool during your online meeting, make sure to organise the notes in a way that’s clear and accessible to everyone.
Compiling all the online meeting minutes and agendas in the same way can help provide essential context to the conversation in the event that somebody is ever out of the office and looking to catch up on what progress the team made in their absence.
How To Take Better Online Meeting Minutes
However you take minutes during online meetings, having a strong template will make your minutes more effective and actionable. Follow this ‘PAD’ structure, featuring the main components to include for every meeting you’re responsible for taking meetings for.
Points of discussion
Start your online minutes template by listing each agenda item. This helps structure your minutes and ensures that you don’t miss notes on any important topics that will be covered during the meeting.
Action items
Clearly identify any action items that arise during the online meeting. Note down the task to be done, who is responsible, and the due date. This helps ensure that everyone on the team is aware of their responsibilities and next steps. Using a project management tool like Asana can help you assign and track these action items effectively across the team after the meeting.
Decisions, ideas and takeaways
Record key decisions, ideas, and important takeaways from the meeting. This part of the minutes will serve as a reference or starting point for future meetings, and help various stakeholders stay informed of updates. Highlight any major breakthroughs or pivotal moments.
Making Meeting Minutes Just Got Easier
This helpful article has shared some key tips for taking minutes for online meetings, whether you work as a management consultant or in social media management.
We’ve discussed using OCR tools to transform hand-written minutes into a document format, as well as using high-quality video conferencing software with in-built transcription utilities or external transcription bot capabilities. We’ve also shared how to prepare, construct and format meeting minutes so you’re best equipped to record them in the future.
And remember to utilize the PAD structure for note-taking wherever possible, and to make the most of specially-designed tools to boost your future online meeting minutes. Making a habit of integrating these tools and practices can help ensure minute keeping becomes second nature to you in due course.
