What Are Meeting Minutes and Why Are They Important? 

Meeting minutes are simply meeting notes that are recorded during the meeting. They serve the purpose of highlighting key topics that are discussed, decisions that are made, and people that attend. People take meeting minutes to keep a record of the discussion and decisions for the future. It is useful when attendees or even non-attendees can access meeting information after it is finished. Usually, it is a dedicated person who acts as a notetaker who has to decide what was important and summarize it. 

Meeting minutes are really important in meetings because they contain significant information that meeting attendees may need. They are directly linked to the success of meetings overall. Without meeting minutes, the agenda and main key points would not be clear, and meeting information lost. This would lead to unproductivity and wasted time. Meeting minutes save information that may need to be retrieved, measure project or meeting progress, and allocate accountability to people. 

There are three types of meeting minutes. Action minutes include only the decisions that were made during the meeting. They give a summary of what was achieved and what actions should be taken further. Verbatim minutes are records of the whole discussion and all decisions. It includes every single word said during the meeting. They are a challenge for the note-taker due to the amount of information and focus on each individual’s comments. Discussion minutes are records of all discussions that lead to the decision. They are recommended because they focus on summarizing the main points of discussion and are easier to do. 

Steps to Taking Notes Manually 

The first way of taking minutes is taking notes by yourself with the help of a notebook or notes app. These include a good amount of planning and preparation. There are certain steps that you have to follow to be able to take efficient minutes. You start off by getting access to the meeting agenda. It obtains the objectives of the meeting, issues that have to be discussed, and results reached. This document helps you remain productive in taking notes because it works as a template for your meeting minutes. You also keep track of the discussions happening, address all participant concerns and assign tasks. Another step is to provide a template from the agenda to all attendees with a summary of the previous meeting and a place to take notes themselves. After this, you can already start taking notes in real time. You have a significant responsibility to follow the discussion and record all important information. Focus on writing down the overall discussion, any tasks, and decisions that are made. Taking minutes of every word may be too complicated and not reachable. After the meeting ends, you should go through your meeting minutes. Scan everything that you wrote and expand in places where a longer summary is needed. When this is done, it’s time to distribute the meeting notes to all attendees and people who may need them. 

AI Digital Meeting Assistants for Automated Minutes 

The second and more advanced way to take minutes in an online meeting is with AI digital meeting assistants. They are better because these solutions automate your note-taking process and increase productivity. You don’t have to think about the whole meeting if you catch each detail and can put your full attention to listening to other participants. This automation drives your meeting process from agenda and discussion record to post-meeting summary of the discussion.  

A great example of an AI digital meeting assistant for online note-taking is isLucid. It manages your meeting information from the start of the meeting to the end. You can pick or create a custom agenda template to follow the discussion points in the meeting. When the meeting starts, turn on isLucid main feature of real-time transcription, and get the whole recording of the meeting transcribed. Together with this, you can create tasks and connect them to the software you want or highlight important details through bookmarks and voice commands. isLucid allows you to stop writing down the whole discussion, main issues, and even tasks. Even better, after the meeting ends, your meeting minutes are automatically generated into a meeting summary. You can access them anytime in the meeting history and edit tasks or create new ones.  

AI digital meeting assistants such as isLucid can change your whole experience of taking minutes. Forget about setting up your own agenda, writing down the whole meeting in your notes, and trying to remember what was important. isLucid turns tedious note-taking of minutes into an automatic, fun, and productive experience. 

If you are interested in AI digital meeting assistants, get isLucid for MS Teams and try it out for free: isLucid Download Page 

You can also book a demo and get a walkthrough: Book a Demo