Meeting minutes template
Trippi Notes team · facts checked on 2026-10-01
One page, five parts, no filler. Copy it into Word, Google Docs or any Markdown editor, fill it in five minutes, and send it the same day. Below the template there is a filled example and a short way to skip most of the typing.
The template
Copy it into any editor that understands Markdown. The headings and the table come through as they are.
# [Meeting name] — [date] **Present:** **Absent:** **Note taker:** ## Decisions - ## Action items | Task | Owner | Due | |------|-------|-----| | | | | ## Open questions - [question] — [who will find out] ## Next meeting [date] — [goal]
For Word or Google Docs
The same template as plain text. Paste it into a new document, then turn the first line and the section names into headings if you like. There is no file to download: you paste it, and it is yours.
[MEETING NAME] — [DATE] Present: Absent: Note taker: Decisions - Action items Task — Owner — Due - Open questions - [question] — [who will find out] Next meeting [date] — [goal]
What each part is for
Header
Meeting name, date, who was there and who was not. Absent people need the minutes most.
Decisions
One line per decision, in the past tense: "Agreed to move the launch to 20 Oct." Not the discussion that led there.
Action items
Task, one owner, one date. A task without a name in the owner column will not be done.
Open questions
What nobody could answer, and the person who will find out. This stops the same debate next week.
Next meeting
Date and one goal. If there is no next meeting, write that.
This follows an old rule from Robert’s Rules of Order: minutes are "a record of what was done at a meeting, not a record of what was said." Most teams do not need formal rules, but the idea saves every note taker an hour.
How to fill it in five minutes
- 1Before: Write the header and turn each agenda item into an empty decision line.
- 2During: Write decisions and tasks only. Not the discussion.
- 3Every task gets one owner and one date: "The team" is not an owner.
- 4After: Read it once, cut every line nobody will act on, and send it within the hour.
A filled example
Website relaunch — 6 Oct 2026
Present: Ana, Bruno, Kenji · Absent: Lea · Note taker: Ana
Decisions
- Launch moves to 20 Oct.
- Old pricing stays for current customers.
Action items
Update release plan — Bruno — 8 Oct
Email top 3 clients — Kenji — 9 Oct
Open questions
- Who writes the help article? — Ana asks support
Next meeting
13 Oct — launch checklist
Three mistakes that make minutes useless
- A transcript is not minutes. Nobody reads forty minutes of talk to find one date. Minutes are the five things above.
- Names in the decisions, not in the debate. "Bruno thinks we should wait" is gossip. "Agreed to wait until 20 Oct" is a decision.
- Sent two days later. By then people remember the meeting their own way. Send it the same day, even if it is short.
More on the format: how to write meeting minutes, and minutes in English when English is not your first language.
Let it fill itself
Trippi Notes listens to the meeting tab in Chrome — Google Meet, Zoom in the browser or Microsoft Teams in the browser — after one click on its icon, and writes the transcript with speaker names and times. It has no built-in meeting minutes template. What it has is a box for your own request, up to 1,000 characters, that tells the summary what to look for. Paste this:
Write this as meeting minutes. Decisions in the past tense, one line each. Every action item with one owner and a due date if one was said. List open questions with the person who will find out. Note the date and goal of the next meeting if it was mentioned. Leave out the discussion itself.
The general summary in Trippi Notes already has the core of minutes: decisions, tasks with owners and open questions, plus a short overview. It does not fill a Present line as a field: the transcript shows who spoke, not who listened in silence, so check that line yourself. The summary still comes back in its usual parts — overview, decisions, tasks with owners, open questions — so you move them into the template above, or export Markdown or plain text and edit there.
Summary templates other than the general one, and your own request, are part of the paid plans. It only hears calls in the browser, not desktop apps or phones. Nothing joins the call, so nobody sees a bot in the list of people. Tell them you are taking notes anyway — how to ask.
FAQ
Asked about this.
What must meeting minutes include?+
Date, people present, decisions, and action items with owners. The rest is optional.
Who should take the minutes?+
Not the person running the meeting. Or nobody, if a tool writes the draft and one person checks it.
Should minutes record who said what?+
Usually not. Record what was decided and who owns each task. The exception is formal votes, where the result is recorded.
Are board minutes different?+
Yes, they often need motions and votes. Use the board meeting template.
Can I download this as a Word file?+
There is no file to download. Copy the plain-text version and paste it into Word or Google Docs; it keeps the line breaks.
Read next
Let the notes fill themselves.
Trippi Notes is in the Chrome Web Store. One click on the icon when the call begins, and nothing before that.