Building a Meeting

A new meeting window will be presented. Most fields are optional although at minimum you'll want to give the meeting a Title, Purpose, Date & Start Time and Duration.

Here's a breakdown of each field, its purpose and anything unique about it...

Title: This is the title of the meeting used by Summit and is used when creating an invitation or meeting minutes.

Purpose: This is why the meeting is being held. Although this might appear to be a less important field, it's actually the most important!

What you put in this field communicates to your attendees the purpose of the meeting and why you're bringing everyone together.

In an organization that extols effective meetings, it's not a requirement for each person invited to attend. They know best how to maximize their time and whether or not they'll add value to the meeting. As such if they will not have a significant contribution to the meeting, they should decline the invite.

Additionally, the purpose is a great litmus test for your agenda. Do your agenda items align with and provide positive momentum for the purpose? If not, then you might want to reconsider your agenda items, purpose or even the meeting itself.

Location/Address: This field is used when creating an invitation as you'll have an option to include this data or not. Summit does not handle the booking of your physical rooms or locations, but it can be extremely useful to include all meeting details into your Summit meeting so that you have a single consolidated source of information for your meeting. 

Date & Start Time: This is when the meeting is scheduled on the calendar and for what time. Don't miss the disclosure triangle to quickly select a value.

Duration: This is how long the meeting is scheduled for. Don't miss the quick select (gear) button to select commonly used durations.

Time Zone Region & Time Zone City: This is where you can select your time zone region and city for your meeting. By default Summit will automatically use your current system time zone and city. If you change these values and want to return to your current system time zone and city, simply press the navigation arrow next to the fields.

You might be wondering why this information is here and why it's important. For most use cases you can leave this at the default. But if you're an administrative assistant, working with others around the world or in other time zones, you'll want to set these values to the time zone and nearest city that the meeting is being held. In doing so, Summit will be able to sort and manage meetings based upon the time zone.

Meeting Logistics: This field is where you would put the online meeting details. Although Summit does not book or run your online meetings, it can be extremely useful to include all meeting details into your Summit meeting so that you have a single consolidated source of information for your meeting.

This information will be used by Summit when creating invitations and you'll have the option to include it in the invite or not.

PRO Only: If you're using the PRO version of Summit, whether fully registered or within the 30-day trial, you can paste in your online conference details into this field and the remaining fields will automatically be filled out for you. Summit currently supports meeting details from Zoom, Google Meet, MS Teams, WebEx and GoTo Meeting.

Video Conferencing Link: Add in the URL used to connect to the meeting. Don't miss the open link button beside this field to quickly launch the meeting. As you'll be opening Summit to manage your meeting, you can then easily open your online meeting software/browser to join the meeting without the need to go to your calendar or the  software directly.

Dial-In Phone Number: Add in the details for dialing into the meeting via a telephone. If the data in this field is automatically generated via the Meeting Logistics PRO Only feature above, Summit will attempt to craft a dial-in URL if one isn't found within your online meeting details.

Be aware that under most circumstances, you'll want to use the video conference link to join the meeting and clicking the open link button will open up whatever app you might have on your computer to make telephone phone calls (e.g. VOIP app for Windows, FaceTime for Mac, etc.).

Meeting ID: This is the meeting ID used to attend the meeting. If you're joining the meeting via either of the open link buttons, then you should be joined without needing this information. Including this information can be helpful though in case you get a chat/IM from an attendee who needs this info to join the online meeting.

Meeting Password/Passcode: This is the meeting password/passcode used to attend the meeting. If you're joining the meeting via either of the open link buttons, then you should be joined without needing this information. Including this information can be helpful though in case you get a chat/IM from an attendee who needs this info to join the online meeting.

Additional Notes: Depending upon the online conference solution you're using, you might not have a field or way to include some of your meeting data, such as purpose, location/address or even an agenda within your online meeting.

This is is why Summit includes these fields and more so that it can be your one stop for all your meeting needs and a single source of information for everything about your meeting.

As an example, let's say you're creating a meeting that will be held in the office as well as for folks who are remote. You would use your company's system for booking a conference room and then also use your company's system for booking the online conference portion of the meeting.

You can then copy and paste each of these bookings into Summit to be included when you create the meeting invitation.