You’re at the start of your workday, and your boss comes in with an urgent assignment. How do you keep track of this, while still getting everything else done? It’s time to take some meeting notes! The following article explains how to take meeting notes like a pro with Google Calendar and Meet, so that you can always be prepared in case your boss asks you what was discussed. Or if you want to impress your peers, why not use this method during your next team meeting? You’ll have the best meeting notes of all time! Let’s get started… How to take meeting notes like a pro with Google Calendar and Meet
Part 1: Creating your calendar
Table of Contents
To get started, you’ll need to create your calendar. Open your Google Calendar or create one if you don’t have it yet. To do so, click on My Calendars in the left-hand column under Your calendars (unless you’ve disabled that feature—this is new in 2015). Click on New calendar, give it a name, select how often you want it to update (i.e., every day), and enter what time zone you are working in. In our example we entered note_meetings. Click Create calendar. From now on when someone invites you to a shared event through Meet, they will send that request directly to your new calendar.
Part 2: Invite attendees
Once you’ve decided who will be at your meeting, it’s time to get them on board. In most cases, that means sending an email. For internal meetings, use your company’s shared calendar—Meet can pull in calendar invite information automatically and add it to your meet note. If you’re using an outside calendar (like iCloud), simply send out invites as usual. To learn more about organizing attendees, visit our Meet support center . Part 3: Create a new Meet: When you create a new Meet, we’ll ask for some details about what type of meeting you’d like to schedule. This is where you’ll select Meeting from our list of options. You’ll also have an opportunity to enter some basic info about your event—name, date/time, etc.—and choose whether or not other people can join via link or dial-in number.
Part 3: Create a new event
To take meeting notes, create a new event in your calendar. Be sure to give it an appropriate title—like Next Meeting, Team Call, or Strategic Planning—so you’ll be able to identify it later. It’s also important to make sure that your calendar is set up so you can easily see all of your events at once. For example, you can create an agenda for each team (or project) call where you put the attendees’ names in boldface type and their topics/responsibilities for that day in italics under their name (so they show up onscreen as boldfaced items). When it’s time for your meeting, invite everyone from that team or project into one event called Meetings so you can see everything in one place.
Part 4: Add topics
Create categories for your tasks. (Good to have 3-5 topics. Examples below.) Set deadlines: Select how long you want each task to be worked on. (You don’t have to set a deadline, but it helps) Track your progress: When you’re working on an assignment, move it into In Progress. When you finish it, move it back into Backlog until you start another one! Add tags: Tags are like keywords – they can help keep things organized! Create sets of them as needed and add them to tasks as appropriate.
Part 5: Take notes
If you’re in a meeting or collaborating on a project, it can be easy to get distracted by other people talking. To prevent that from happening, set up your phone so that it sits at eye level. Also, when you look down at your screen, take note of what is going on around you. Is someone else making an important point? You might want to jump in right then and make sure you don’t miss it. Alternatively, if there’s something that makes sense as an action item—like asking someone who said they’d get back to you on Tuesday about their plan—you might put them on your own agenda for Monday morning.
Part 6: Share your agenda/notes
The shared agenda/notes will be due before class time on Sept. 23. Please share your slides via T-Square as well as your notes in one of two ways: 1) A short, 1-2 sentence description of what you presented, including links to all materials used or 2) The entire deck for viewing. If you present using Keynote or PowerPoint, please do not publish your slides online. Instead, put them on your personal Google Drive or OneDrive folder so that we can access them without having to go through any registration processes. Please share your supporting documentation as well: these may include agendas, handouts, and other materials that support your discussion.