The best 5 ways to save time writing meeting minutes

In professional life, there are certain tasks that are both indispensable and unappreciated. Writing meeting minutes is one of them. And yet, they are central to the smooth running of projects, the coordination of teams and the follow-up of decisions.

Well-written minutes serve as a collective memory. They make it easy to look back on discussions, verify assigned responsibilities and ensure that agreed actions are implemented. But while their usefulness is undeniable, they can be long and tedious to draw up, especially when they are entirely manual.

Fortunately, there are now ways of saving time without sacrificing quality. By combining best practices and intelligent solutions like Leexi, it's possible to automate certain steps while producing a clear, structured and immediately actionable document. Here are five approaches to transform the way you write meeting minutes.

1. create a reusable report template

The starting point for any effective report is a well-defined structure. Never start from scratch. A meeting minutes template saves you valuable time: not only does it avoid reinventing the form, but it also makes it easier to take notes during the meeting and makes the final document more readable for everyone.

Your template can include :

• Meeting title, date, time, location or videoconferencing link
• List of participants (present, absent, excused)
• Agenda in several sections
• Points discussed, with corresponding decisions
• A final table of actions to be taken, with responsibilities and deadlines.

This format can be adapted to suit different types of meeting (weekly meetings, management committees, project workshops, etc.).

Leexi and templates: The Leexi tool lets you integrate your own templates for minutes. After analyzing the meeting, it automatically divides the contents into the various sections provided. This means you start with an already-formatted document, ready to be finalized, which considerably reduces drafting time.

2. Use the agenda as a framework for writing your minutes

The agenda isn't just useful for framing the meeting: it's also an excellent basis for organizing your meeting minutes. By repeating each point identically in the final document, you make it easier to understand, ensure good coverage of the subjects discussed and avoid omissions.

A well-constructed agenda contains :

• A logical sequence of topics
• Identification of speakers for each item
• An estimate of the expected duration

This helps participants to be prepared and makes the meeting run more smoothly. For you, it also saves time when drafting: all you have to do is go through each point and enter the decisions, summarized discussions and actions to follow.

What Leexi does: Thanks to its contextual analysis capabilities, Leexi identifies the key moments of the meeting and automatically associates them with the agenda items. The minutes generated then follow the exact structure of the meeting, respecting the planned logic, without the need for manual reorganization afterwards.

3. Stop taking notes: record and transcribe automatically

Note-taking is often a real headache: chasing words, trying to get everything down without losing the thread of the discussion, wondering what you've missed... The result: notes that are incomplete, poorly prioritized and difficult to use.

Today, it's pointless (and even counter-productive) to keep writing everything down yourself.

Leexi changes all that: the tool records your meeting, whether it's a videoconference or a face-to-face meeting, then automatically transcribes it, attributing the words to each speaker. The result is an accurate, complete, time-stamped transcript that you can consult at any time. You no longer have to worry about taking notes, which frees your mind to participate fully in the exchanges.

With the help of this transcript, you'll have a solid basis on which to write accurate meeting minutes, without the risk of missing an important point.

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4. Learn to summarize... or let Leexi do it for you

Writing a report doesn't mean copying everything that's been said. The aim is to provide a useful, clear, actionable summary. This means :

• Distinguishing the essential from the accessory
• Summarize decision-making
• Identifying concrete actions to be taken
• Eliminating digressions

A good summary is concise, structured and highlights responsibilities. It must be easy to understand, even for a reader who was not present at the meeting.

Leexi facilitates this delicate stage: by analyzing the transcript, Leexi automatically extracts decisions, actions, and elements of consensus or disagreement. The tool provides you with a synthetic summary ready to be integrated into your meeting minutes. You can validate it as it stands, or add your own perspective. In both cases, you save precious time and benefit from a clear, reliable basis.

5. Share quickly to maintain momentum

Meeting minutes that aren't shared quickly lose their usefulness. If you wait several days before sending them out, participants may forget details, decisions may be called into question, and the momentum is lost.

Here are a few best practices for distribution:

• Finalize and send the minutes within 24 hours.
• Choose an accessible format: PDF, shared document, secure link
• Archive it in a common space for follow-up.
• If necessary, have sensitive points validated by the participants concerned.

With Leexi, distribution is an integral part of the process: once the document has been reviewed and validated, you can send it directly from the platform. The tool offers different output formats, compatible with your collaborative work tools. You can also consult the history of reports by project or by customer, for better tracking over time.

Conclusion: producing good minutes no longer has to be a chore

Writing meeting minutes can seem long, tedious and off-putting. But with the right methods and tools, they become a lever for clarity, management and collective performance. By anticipating the structure, following a precise agenda, recording your meetings rather than writing everything down, summarizing effectively and circulating rapidly, you move from a task you have to endure to a fluid, strategic process.

Solutions such as Leexi automate the most time-consuming stages of the process, while guaranteeing a faithful, synthesized record of all exchanges. The report then becomes a high value-added document, supporting rather than slowing down action.

Adopting this type of approach means investing in the quality of your internal communication, in the empowerment of your teams, and in the continuity of your projects. It's no longer a question of comfort, but of lasting efficiency.

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