10 Tips to Write an Effective Meeting Recap

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Writing a meeting recap may seem easy, but doing it well can make a big difference in how effectively your team moves forward. A good meeting recap ensures everyone is on the same page, keeps track of key decisions, and outlines next steps clearly. 

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In this article, we'll share seven practical tips to help you write effective meeting recaps. Whether you're new to this task or looking to improve, these tips will guide you in creating recaps that are clear, concise, and useful for everyone involved. Let's dive in and make your next meeting recap a breeze!

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What Is a Meeting Recap, and What Does It Look Like?

A meeting recap is the summary of a meeting. This summary includes all the key takeaways from the meeting, along with the decisions that were made.

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Your meeting recap should also include any new deadlines or tasks that you assigned to your team members, as well as any newly established goals.

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A meeting recap is essentially a reference point for your team to come back to, so they can understand everything happening within the company and feel involved in the process. 

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You can send the recap in the form of an email, a chat discussion, or a briefing document. Make sure to use a compatible format for the briefing document, for which you can utilize an online PDF editor.

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Why Are Meeting Recaps Important?

A meeting recap mirrors the productivity of the meeting itself. Here is a list of things that meeting recaps — when done right — can help you with:

• Ensure the meeting wasn’t a waste of time
• Get all meeting participants on the same page
• Save a lot of time
• Hold the team accountable
• Help you prepare for your next meeting. 

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Let’s take a closer look at how you can make the most of each of these advantages.

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A. Ensure the Meeting Wasn’t a Waste of Time

No matter how well you run your meetings, there are still situations where people leave the conference room feeling confused. Things get even trickier when remote or hybrid teams are involved. 

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A quick recap of the meeting can encourage attendees to follow through and be proactive about what was discussed. A good and productive meeting means nothing if concrete actions do not follow it.

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B. Get All Meeting Participants on the Same Page

Collaboration is an essential part of any project. A busy schedule, too many meetings, overlapping hours, or even personal problems can get in the way of attendance. If someone misses a discussion, they need to have another call just to catch up.

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Meeting recaps are a great solution for keeping up with all the important details and key points addressed during team meetings. A comprehensive meeting summary can also serve as a quick catch-up for the participants who couldn’t attend.

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C. Save a Lot of Time

When you need to get up to speed, you don’t have the time to read tens of pages of protocol or browse through a high number of PowerPoint slides. That’s because not all the materials discussed in meetings are relevant for everyone involved.

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Effective meeting recaps allow you to find exactly what you while reducing the time spent going through meeting records. You can read, listen, or watch materials specific to the key moments of the meeting.

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D. Hold the Team Accountable

Sharing meeting minutes helps the entire team remember what was discussed and holds you accountable for following up on any action items you assigned during the meeting.

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Without a meeting recap, there is a chance that moving forward, you are going to completely forget the reasoning behind the aspects you agreed upon and the conclusions that you reached.

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D. Help you Prepare for Your Next Meeting

We all know that a good meeting depends on having a successful meeting agenda in place. Having the notes and the recap from your previous meeting will help you draft your agenda in no time.

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Moreover, a good meeting summary will help you put things into perspective for the entire team, so you’ll always have a bigger picture to look at if you ever get lost in details.

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10 Tips to Write an Effective Meeting Recap

When it comes to writing a meeting summary, there are various tips you can use to improve your process. 

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Here’s how to write a meeting recap:

1. Figure out your logistics for writing recaps
2. Take notes throughout the meeting
3. Send the meeting summary email right away 
4. Determine who should get the email 
5. Create the introductory email
6. Outline what was discussed during the meeting
7. Include a reminder for the next meeting date
8. Proofread and distribute to recipients
9. Use AI to create your meeting recap
10. Save your meeting recaps in one place

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1. Figure Out Your Logistics for Writing Recaps

When creating meeting recaps, begin by determining the who, when, and how of the note-taking process.

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Here’s how to do that:

• Decide the recap style: Decide on the tone and style of the notes based on your company culture. You might prefer informal summaries or more professional-looking versions, depending on your needs. To determine that, look at past meeting recaps to determine what has served your team best over time.
• Designate a note taker: Assign a specific attendee to take notes during the meeting. This ensures that key discussions are recorded. You can rotate this responsibility among team members.
• Define the timing for the recap email: Establish a timeframe within which the meeting recap must be sent after every meeting. This will help you streamline meeting operations and promote accountability.
• Decide what the meeting recap will include: A good meeting summary should cover the main points discussed, decisions made, and action items along with their assignees. However, depending on your particular field, you can decide on less usual, more specific items that must be included in every recap. 

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2. Take Notes Throughout the Meeting

Comprehensive meeting recaps begin during your meeting. If you want to learn more about meeting notes, read this article, where we teach you the ins and outs of note-taking. 

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This will not only keep the information as objective as possible but also create a reliable source of truth for the meeting summary.

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PRO TIP: It can be hard to take detailed and accurate meeting notes, so MeetGeek is coming to your rescue. Our meeting automation platform was specifically designed to allow you to fully engage in your meetings without compromising on the accuracy of your notes. 

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With MeetGeek, every detail of your meeting is securely captured. This way, when you create your meeting recap, you don’t miss out on any crucial information!

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3. Send the Meeting Summary Email Right Away

Send the follow-up email as soon as possible after the meeting. If the meeting is late in the day, and you want to wait until first thing the next morning, that's OK. However, the faster you send it, the more momentum you build. 

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Think of the meeting recap as an extension of the meeting, and deliver it when the discussion is still fresh in everyone's minds. Set time aside directly after the meeting to complete this task.

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4. Determine Who Should Get The Email 

Before you start writing, think about who you want to send the follow-up email to. Besides the meeting attendees and any relevant stakeholders, you should also include any employees or clients who were unable to attend.

If you don't have an attendance sheet, contact the meeting host or your supervisor to get contact information for everyone who was invited to the meeting.

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5. Create the Introductory Email

Usually, meeting recaps are delivered via email. Hence, it is essential to come up with a professional introduction for the email. This should include thanking everyone who attended the meeting and actively participated in the conversation.

You can also provide the names of everyone who attended the meeting. A strong introduction email will also notify team members about the meeting's scheduling and purpose. 

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To set the correct tone for the meeting recap, keep things formal and respectful, yet friendly and concise.

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6. Outline What Was Discussed During the Meeting

When you write a meeting summary, remember to include relevant information from the entire meeting in it. Any key information suchas tasks, deadlines, solutions, ideas, and plans you may have established with your team should be listed in the written summary. 

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Keep in mind that the information must be concise and that it should be formulated for the right people. If the person who receives it doesn’t need to know all the topics brought up in the meeting, you can just cover what is relevant for them.

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After the introduction, go through the applicable parts of the meeting agenda, point by point. 

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Here’s what you can include in your meeting recap: 

• Meeting details
• People/departments involved
• Updates
• Decisions
• Action items/key discussion points/important details discussed
• Deadlines
• Next steps
• Ideas set aside for future reference
• Any supporting documents and relevant resources (links, files, materials).

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7. Include a Reminder for the Next Meeting Date

At the end of most meetings, the participants get to decide on the time and location for the upcoming meeting. This information should be included in the meeting recap and distributed to the entire team.

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Remember to specify the meeting's time and location, as well as the objectives and agenda. This section of the meeting recap should also include the names of the next meeting’s attendees. 

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8. Proofread and Distribute to Recipients

After you’re done writing the meeting recap email, make sure to add your signature. Check for any spelling, grammatical, or clarity errors with writing tools like Grammarly. Keep the meeting recap email short, avoid buzzwords, and concise. 

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After you've proofread the document, send it to the meeting organizer for approval — if you’re not the team leader yourself. Once it’s approved, you can distribute the document to the appropriate recipients.

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9. Use AI to Create Your Meeting Recap

Meeting notes are the baseline of any good meeting recap. However, keeping notes manually comes with its challenges. The note-taker must identify the right content that needs to be highlighted.

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They spend time interpreting the situation and creating notes. Whenever they misunderstand information or fail to describe it accurately, the meeting notes end up being imprecise.

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But since AI has taken center stage over the last couple of years, the entire process of recording meeting notes is a *lot* easier. With a meeting automation platform like MeetGeek, you can automatically record, transcribe, summarize, analyze, and share your meetings. You can also consider using a rewording tool to draft your recap sections and also bring improvements to existing ones.

Here’s how MeetGeek can streamline the process of writing meeting recaps:

• Automatically joins and records all your scheduled virtual meetings
• Provides accurate and word-by-word transcripts for your meetings in +30 languages
• Uses AI to identify tasks and isolate action items mentioned in the conversation
• Sends automated meeting recap emails to all meeting participants within minutes after your meetings
• Allows you to customize the AI meeting summary based on your preferences, allowing you to choose which of the highlights to include in your recap
• Offers a centralized repository for all your meeting recordings and information
• Integrates with 5000+ apps to help you take productivity to new levels
• Is also available in mobile version to automate your meeting recaps for in-person meetings as well

10. Save Your Meeting Recaps in One Place

Saving all your meeting recaps in a centralized repository is a smart way to keep everything organized and easily accessible for your team. Consistent documentation reduces the risk of losing critical details over time. 

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To save your meeting recaps in a centralized repository, start by choosing a platform that suits your team’s needs, such as MeetGeek, Google Drive, Dropbox, SharePoint, or a project management tool like Asana or Trello. 

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Next, create a clear and organized folder structure, such as a main folder for meeting recaps with subfolders for different projects or departments. Use a consistent naming convention for your files, like “ProjectX_MeetingRecap_2024-07-01,” which makes it easy to identify and sort files by project and date. 

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Regularly update your repository by adding new meeting recaps and archiving older ones as necessary.

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Meeting Recap Templates

Depending on the type of meetings you’re hosting, your meeting recaps can vary greatly in structure and tone. That’s having a couple of meeting recap templates readily available at all times can be a game changer. Here are a couple of templates you can use as inspiration!

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A. Standard Team Meeting Recap Template

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B. Formal Team Meeting Recap Template

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Meeting Recap Examples

If you’re still a bit confused, we turned the templates above into actionable examples that you can use to refine your meeting recaps even further!

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A. Standard Team Meeting Recap Example

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B. Formal Team Meeting Recap Example

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Meeting Recaps: Are They Worth the Effort?

Whether you work for a small company or a larger corporation, in an office or remotely, it’s likely that a great deal of communication happens through meetings.

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Planning projects, deciding on actions, attributing tasks, brainstorming, or any other type of collaborative work becomes much simpler once a live discussion takes place. 

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Regardless of how you decide to do meeting summaries, there is no denying that they are indispensable for efficient team collaboration! Try MeetGeek for free to change the way you do future meetings.