Sending the Meeting Minutes

There are three ways to generate the meeting minutes...

1. From the Meeting Summary dialog

2. By reopening a completed meeting from the Meeting Organizer and pressing the Create Minutes (notes) icon.

3. Select the meeting from the Meeting Organizer and press the Create Minutes button beneath the list of meetings. Using this method you do not need to reopen the meeting.

The Create Minutes dialog will appear. First select the email ecosystem that you're using via the Email & Calendar Apps popup menu. Next determine which options you'll want to have enabled...

Meeting Attendance Included: You can decide to include your tracked attendance in the meeting minutes or not. For some meetings, whether or not someone shows up isn't important. But for most meetings, tracking attendance can help make the difference between being a meeting novice and meeting PRO.

Tip: Why is this important you might ask? There are several reasons you'll want to include attendance in your minutes.

The first is that it captures who was present and who wasn't. If someone was truly needed in the meeting but didn't attend, having a slight bit of public exposure might ensure that they attend the next time around.

Secondly, the attendance list gives everyone a legend for who to ask follow up questions to. Many times this will be the facilitator, but other times, especially if you're working with remote teams, across time zones or even across work shifts, it will be someone else.

The final reason to include attendance is for performance management. No one likes managing someone else's performance, but in business sometimes it's called for in order for a project, deliverable or company to succeed. Having easily captured records of who participated in the meeting can be extremely helpful, especially if there are discussions with someone who isn't attending and should be. And all of this might not be at all bad if the lines of communications are opened. You might come to find out that Sam hasn't been attending because his wife just had a baby and his out of office email notification isn't working.

PRO Only: If you're using the PRO version of Summit, whether fully registered or within the 30-day trial, this switch will be enabled. Otherwise this switch will be disabled and you will not be able to include attendance with your meeting minutes.

Meeting Notes Reformatted: You can decide to have the meeting notes included with the exact styling you specified when you took the notes. Unfortunately this styling doesn't always translate well to email/calendaring apps so there's an option to reformat the notes. Under most circumstances, you should enable this option.

Now use the buttons on the right to copy data from Summit to your clipboard for pasting into a new message within your favorite email program. The buttons copy the following information...

Copy Email Addresses: Summit will generate email addresses based upon the attendees you've invited to the meeting within Summit. Email address formats vary from one app to the next which is why you should select the proper email app from the popup menu on the left.

Copy Minutes Title: This will copy the meeting's title to your clipboard.

Copy Minutes Body: The minutes body will include the meeting purpose, attendance if enabled, meeting notes and any captured decisions, actions required and bin list items.

How does all this work in a step-by-step fashion? It's easy...

1. Press the Copy Email Addresses button to copy the addresses to your clipboard.

2. Switch to your email app and paste the addresses into the address field of a new email message.

3. Return to Summit and press the Copy Minutes Title button.

4. Next go back to your email app and paste the title into the subject field of the email message.

5. Return to Summit and press the Copy Minutes Body button.

6. Finally return to your email app and paste the body into the body section of the email message.

7. Make any final adjustments to the email and then send it.

Are you more of a visual person? Press the Show Me How button within the Create Minutes dialog to view a short video on this process.