I want your next meeting to be a smashing success.
So in this video, I'm going to show you how to create a great meeting agenda and notes right here within Google Docs, and then link it back to your meeting event.
So not only you and your attendees can use it now, but you can also reference it in the future. We're going to get started here within Google Docs.
And you may have noticed these quick links here at the top of a new Google Doc. The first one is actually called meeting notes, and that's what we're going to take advantage of today.
But what if you don't see those helpful links here? Well, all you need to do is select the at symbol on your keyboard, and we will be brought up with a menu with a number of smart things, which we can include.
And down below the building blocks header, we want to select meeting notes. Now, when you first select meeting notes, it's actually going to give us a list of our up coming meetings within Google Calendar.
Now, this is very helpful if we want to create an agenda or take notes for something that is happening soon.
But what if your meeting isn't listed here? Well, don't worry, just start typing in the keywords or the title of that meeting and we will find the meeting that you're looking for here.
I typed in the word budget and it's going to bring back everything that I'm looking for, but the particular meeting I'm looking for is happening later today. It's this one here, interview a new virtual assistant.
So I'm going to select it. And the great thing about using this feature is not only does it bring over all of those relevant details, including the date, the name, and our attendees, these are more than just text on a screen.
You can see here, if I hover over this, I have a direct link to that meeting within Google Calendar. And here, these are actually my contact cards. So if I need to see more information about any of these individuals, I can do so.
I'm also going to have the ability to email this agenda or these notes directly right here from within Google Docs.
Now, on the right hand side, you'll see that there's a small dialogue here that says, do I want to share these meeting notes? Do I want to share and attach these meeting notes to my Google calendar?
And I'm going to say yes. Now, of course, this comes down to personal preference, but in our example, I want to take advantage of this. I want to make sure that these notes, whatever I add in advance or after the meeting, are accessible to both me and to those who are attending. So I'm going to say share and attach.
Now, if you do have other attendees in your meeting, you need to determine if you want to give them editing access, commenting access, or just viewer access. And I'm okay if they want to add some further comments. So I'm going to say commenter. In this particular case, I'm going to say share.
And just like that, we've created a link back to our Google calendar. If I come over here and select this calendar event here, you can see we have a direct link to those notes. If I open - This in full screen mode, you can see here within the description, we are just one click away from accessing these notes.
Let's go back to our Google doc and let's maybe fill in a few notes.
Now, keep in mind, you can edit anything here within the document. This doesn't have to stay as notes. It could be agenda items, maybe that's what we want to call this.
And then down below we can start to add whatever we want. We're going to review the budget, we're going to address the cold temperature in the office. Maybe that's been an issue. And we're also going to discuss buying some new desks for everyone.
So these are the things that we're going to address in the meeting. Down below, we have an action items area, which is pre-populated with a checkbox. Now, in most cases, you're not going to add these action items until during the meeting or maybe shortly after the meeting.
But let's go ahead and just add a few as an example. Maybe there's going to be two or three tasks that we want to accomplish, and we want to make sure that people commit to this. So the other great thing about using this within Google Docs is that we can pull up that at symbol one more time, and I can make an assignment to any of these tasks.
So maybe I'm going to take on task number one here. I can assign myself directly to this task so I can stay accountable. We can make others accountable as well. And as things get crossed off, you can come here and check them off within the document as well.
When I'm finished adding all of my notes and making other changes here, I can go ahead and email these notes or this agenda to everyone who is attending without having to jump back into Google Calendar or without having to open up Gmail itself.
I'm going to come up here and select this email meeting notes link. And over on the right hand side, it's going to bring a small pop-up dialogue, which of course already has all of the attendees included. I don't have to add anything further.
I can edit the subject if I want. And here within the body of the email, we have all our agenda items and the action items. Anything that we would have included here within the document.
The benefit now is that either before the meeting, everyone can come in here and review the agenda, but in addition, this link to this doc is always going to remain here. So if we need to come back, maybe a few days have passed and someone wants to say, what was it exactly we discussed, or what were the action items from that meeting on Monday?
They can always come in here and see this live document where we can update one another with our different tasks.
Lastly, as a bonus, if this happens to be a recurring meeting, we don't have to create this all from scratch. In fact, we can keep all of our notes in the same doc here beside our email meeting notes. We want to select these more actions, and you'll see there's an insert, another instance. So here's our upcoming meeting.
I'm going to select that, and now I can add new notes for our upcoming meeting while still tracking the things that we created this week.
Now, if you enjoy today's video on getting the most out of Google Calendar and Google Docs, why not join the SimpliVity newsletter? Simply click the link on the screen or go to simplivity.com and subscribe for free.
Thank you so much for watching. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
