The first step to prepare a meeting with AgreeDo is to create an agenda and send it to the attendees of the meeting. During the meeting, you can add new items and comments, so you have your meeting minutes ready at the end of the meeting.

Usually, the next step is to create a follow-up meeting (there’s a button on the top of each agenda to do this). This allows you to take the items from your meeting minutes to the agenda of a new meeting. So you can keep the points which should be followed-up or discussed again, and you can drop the issues which are resolved or don’t need further discussion.

One very important thing to know is that tasks created in one meeting and copied to the follow-up meeting are linked to the two meetings. So if you add comments to the task or change its progress, it will show up in both meetings. This even works if you have a task in more than two meetings in a row. You will always see the latest status of a task.

So here’s how you can handle your recurring meetings within AgreeDo:

1. Prepare your agenda with all the important topics once
2. During the meeting, take your meeting minutes
3. After the meeting minutes are finished, create a follow-up meeting, import all topics to be discussed regularly
4. Continue on step 2.

When you schedule a meeting, you can invite the attendees to your meeting by pressing the “Send Invitation” button. This email contains a so called ICS attachment. You can open this attachment in GMail to import the meeting into your Google Calendar (see screenshot below).

In case you want to schedule a AgreeDo meeting using Google Calendar just follow the steps below:

1. Create a meeting in AgreeDo and copy the url for this meeting from the browser window. The URL of the meeting looks similar to this: https://www.agreedo.com/MeetingApp.html#meeting;id=00000
2. Now create a meeting in Google Calendar and paste the URL of your meeting into the invitation body of your calendar entry.

If you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.

November/2012

In This Issue

• AgreeDo: Over 100.000 items in Meetings!
• AgreeDo gets featured in the Chrome Web Store!

AgreeDo: Over 100.000 items in Meetings!

More than 100.000 items have been written down in meeting minutes by the growing community of AgreeDo users!

The above image reveals all numbers as of 11/1/2012. For over 7000 meetings you created meeting minutes with AgreeDo! Thanks for the great numbers! If you like AgreeDo don’t hesitate to “like us” on facebook

AgreeDo gets featured in the Chrome Web Store!

Google featured us in Octobre on the Chrome Web Store! Over 1900 google users already added AgreeDo as a chrome app to their browser.

Vote for us on the Chrome Web Store! Or Google+ us !

Know your meeting type!

The right type of meeting minutes depend on the type of your meeting. Whether it’s the summary of a board meeting or a brain storming, makes a huge difference in what to write down!

Know your audience!

Be sure for whom you write you meeting minutes. Know their culture and their expectations. Whether they are used to a more narrative style or a more terse style (just facts). If you ask me, I am more on the short and to the point style side

Keep it short !

If you rewrite the current status too often the meeting minutes get useless. So try to only write those points down which are nearing their deadline and are currently most important. leave out all the others or group them together under another topic.

Keep the focus!

When meetings lose their focus it’s likely that their minutes also have no focus. So try to remember the purpose and the targets of the meeting. Take this as a starting point for deciding what items (i.e. decisions, tasks, important info) should be part of your minutes.

Know your people!

An important part of meeting minutes are tasks, due dates and their assignees. You need to be carefull of whom to send a reminder (in the meeting minutes). People who are well organized don’t need reminders. Therefore sending them a reminder could run you in problems! On the other hand you will have attendees and tasks assignees who regularly need reminders on their tasks. Remind them, and make sure they know they are constantly tracked.

There are lots of other good hints for perfect meeting minutes in the above mentioned discussion on linked in. So drop in and read of all it or even add your comments!

If you’re already using our Chrome-App, please consider rating our App or writing a review!