Meeting minutes: template, structure and AI automation
What meeting minutes are, a 7-part structure, the 6 mistakes to avoid and a ready-to-use template. Plus how Perfony writes your minutes automatically from Teams in 3 minutes.
What are meeting minutes?
Meeting minutes are a written record of what matters from a meeting: the topics covered, the decisions made, the actions agreed and who owns them.
They are not a word-for-word account of the discussion but an operational summary that everyone can refer to afterwards. Good minutes answer three questions: what did we decide, who is doing what, and by when?
Minutes are at once a shared memory (everyone knows what was said), an accountability tool (everyone sees their actions) and an audit trail (you can trace the history of decisions). For a fuller definition, see meeting minutes: definition.
Minutes, formal minutes, transcript: what is the difference?
- Meeting minutes: an operational summary of decisions, actions and owners. A flexible format that adapts to the context.
- Formal (statutory) minutes: an official record with legal standing, used for general meetings, board meetings and employee representative bodies. Signed and archived.
- Transcript: a word-for-word record of everything said. Long and hard to use, it is only worth it for hearings or legal archives.
For the vast majority of business meetings, minutes are the right format: not too formal, not too exhaustive.
6 types of meeting minutes
The format should fit the type of meeting and its audience. Using the same template for an executive committee and a daily team huddle makes both less effective.
Executive committee minutes
Short, factual and focused on strategic decisions and trade-offs. Shared with all teams. Structure: decisions, actions, indicators. Never more than one page.
Team meeting minutes
Weekly or fortnightly. A progress check on actions and the addition of new ones, structured as RIDA (information, decisions, actions). A short, repeatable format.
Project meeting minutes
Milestone progress, issues raised, corrective actions. The actions created feed straight into the project plan. Structured around deliverables.
Audit or quality review minutes
A traceable record of findings, non-conformities and corrective and preventive actions (CAPA). They must be archived for certification audits and follow a standard format (ISO 9001, BRC). They serve as evidence.
Client meeting minutes
They show the work done, the decisions taken together and the next steps. Sent before the client gets back to the office, they are a strong signal of professionalism and rigour.
Automatic AI minutes
Generated automatically from the transcript of your Teams meeting. Summary, decisions and actions created, ready in 3 minutes with no manual writing.
A 7-part structure for meeting minutes
Minutes are not a novel. Here are the seven essential sections, in order. This structure works for most business meetings; adapt it to your context.
Header
Date, time, place (or Teams or Zoom link), attendees and apologies, chair, note-taker. This is what lets you find the minutes six months later and understand their context at a glance.
Purpose and context
One sentence on what the meeting is for. What role does it play in the wider project or process? This section anchors the minutes in their strategic context.
Review of previous actions
The status of the actions from the last meeting: closed, in progress, late. This is what keeps one meeting connected to the next. Without it, the same topics come back again and again.
Items discussed and summary
A summary of the discussion, topic by topic, not a transcript. Three to five lines per item: what was said and why, not how the conversation went.
Decisions made
A numbered list. One short, factual sentence per decision, with just enough context to understand it six months later. This is the section people go back to most.
Actions to take
The most important section, because it is what moves the work forward. Every action needs an owner, a due date and a priority.
| Action | Owner | Due | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contact the temp agency | J. Martin | 30 April | In progress |
| Prepare the recruitment brief | S. Clarke | 15 May | Closed |
| Organise the safety audit | P. Bennett | 30 May | Late |
Perfony generates and updates this table automatically.
Next meeting
Date, time, attendees, draft agenda. Set it during the meeting, not by email a week later. Minutes that end without a next meeting in the diary leave an organisational gap.
6 mistakes that make your minutes useless
The minutes arrive too late
Sent the next day or the day after, the decisions are already forgotten. Minutes should go out within the hour, ideally before attendees head home.
Writing everything down
Minutes are not a statutory record. Transcribing every exchange kills readability and puts readers off. Only decisions and actions count.
Actions with no owner or due date
"We'll do that" is not enough. Without a named owner and a deadline, an action does not exist. It will be discussed again at the next meeting, only later.
One overloaded note-taker
When the minutes rely on one person who is also chairing, they end up subjective, late and incomplete. Automated note-taking gives better results.
No review of previous actions
If you do not start with the actions from the last meeting, you lose the thread. The same topics keep coming back and nobody knows what has really moved.
Minutes sent, then forgotten
Minutes sitting in an inbox are not a management tool. Without a way to track the actions, they are an inert document that changes nothing the day after the meeting.
The minutes you will never have to write again
Writing good minutes takes time: from 30 minutes to 2 hours depending on how complex the meeting was. Multiply that by the number of meetings each week and it becomes a real burden for managers and executive assistants.
The problem is built in: to write good minutes, you have to follow the meeting closely. But to chair a meeting well, you need to be fully focused on the discussion, not on taking notes.
Perfony AI: transcript, summary and actions in 3 minutes
Perfony AI transcribes your Teams meeting in real time, writes the summary, picks out the decisions and creates the actions with owners and due dates, automatically. No manual input. See how it works on our AI meeting minutes page.
Azure AI Speech transcription
Real-time transcription inside your Teams meeting, with speaker identification. Available in many languages, including English, French, German and Spanish.
Structured automatic summary
Executive summary, decisions extracted, actions created: ready 3 minutes after the meeting ends, in a format suited to the type of meeting.
Actions in your management plan
The actions from the minutes go straight into your Perfony folder with an owner and a due date. No action gets forgotten.
Sent to attendees automatically
The minutes land in everyone's inbox before they leave the room. No chasing, no stray versions.
Frequently asked questions
Go deeper
All our articles on writing meeting minutes, templates and best practices.
How to write meeting minutes
A step-by-step guide and a template to copy
Summary of decisions: what layout?
The short form of minutes, focused on decisions
Sample minutes to send to attendees
A ready-to-use template and tips for sending it
5 tips for writing good minutes
Best practices for writing
Taking notes in Teams and writing the minutes
Using Microsoft Teams for your minutes
Executive committee minutes: an example
A worked case with structure and typical content
How to take notes for the minutes
Note-taking techniques for meetings
Content and formatting of minutes
Tips on substance and presentation
Meeting report presentation template
The ideal layout, with a filled-in example
Template for writing meeting minutes
Form, steps and useful phrases
What are meeting minutes really for?
Five concrete functions of the minutes
What if your debriefs wrote themselves?
The RIDA method and AI-assisted minutes
An action plan to follow up your SteerCo
From the minutes to an operational action plan
AI and operational management
Automatic minutes and AI agents: how it works
Your next minutes in 3 minutes
Free 15-day trial, no credit card required. Your first meeting with automatic minutes, today.
Start your free trial →