How to Take Meeting Notes Using Asana and Fellow

It’s another Monday afternoon and your schedule is packed with meetings. You enjoy connecting with your colleagues but have noticed that meetings have become more frequent and are robbing you of precious time during your workday. While each session seems productive, you and your teammates often forget what was discussed once the meeting ends. Sometimes you even need to schedule a second or third meeting later in the week to review timelines and deliverables. 

If your team spends more time chatting about action items than working on them, effective meeting notes could be your solution. Read on to see how you can combine Asana with Fellow to take great meeting notes that will improve your meeting productivity and save you time. 

• What is Asana?
• What are the benefits of meeting notes?
• How to take meeting notes with Asana and Fellow
• How to integrate Fellow and Asana
•  Best practices for meeting productivity using Asana

What is Asana?

Asana is a collaborative project management software for teams. It’s an ideal tool for groups looking to manage remote work and projects, track progress, and organize processes. The tool has many task management, communication, reporting, and team management features and is built to support any workflow. 

Using Asana, you can create lists and boards to host projects. From there, you and your team can break these projects into tasks and subtasks to manage them, delegate tasks to specific colleagues, assign start dates and due dates, create reusable templates, create rules to automate processes, and more. 

What are the benefits of meeting notes? 

Taking thorough meeting notes has many advantages. Meeting notes provide structure to your meeting and detail the plan of action for employees after the meeting ends. Notes also document the most important points discussed during a meeting and provide a record of the discussion to which the group can refer later. Additionally, organized notes can help employees recall facts, decisions, and attendees; assist the group in measuring progress; and create a starting point for future meetings that will save everyone time. 

How to take meeting notes with Asana and Fellow

• Create a meeting agenda in Fellow
• Use a meeting template
• Invite only the necessary attendees
• Take real-time notes
• Note clear outcomes and decisions
• Track action items in Asana with the Fellow integration

1Create a meeting agenda in Fellow

A meeting agenda will help you and your colleagues prepare for and guide you through important discussions. Start taking effective meeting notes with Fellow. Build a collaborative meeting agenda and encourage attendees to add their own talking points. Set time aside in your calendar to plan out your agenda topics, objectives, and time frames. Encourage others to do the same so each attendee has an opportunity to raise topics that are of importance to them. 

2Use a meeting template 

Don’t start from scratch! Head to Fellow’s template gallery to explore our 500+ ready-to-use meeting agenda templates. From initial one-on-one conversations to project kick-off meetings, we have distilled everything you need for any kind of meeting into templates that will help you kickstart essential discussions. Our templates can shorten your meeting preparation time, simplify the creation of documents, and even increase efficiency and employee engagement during the meeting. 

3Invite only the necessary attendees

Think carefully about who should attend the meeting. When sending meeting invitations, ask yourself, “Will each attendee on this list be able to contribute meaningfully to specific topics and agenda items?” Only invite those who will directly benefit from the conversation. A good rule of thumb is to invite no more than eight employees if the group will be using the scheduled time to solve a problem or make a decision. 

Need another reason to limit the number of attendees in a meeting? Try our meeting cost calculator to find out how much it costs to bring your team together. 

4Take real-time notes 

During the meeting, the group should take collaborative notes in real time that summarize what is discussed. Notes should include a date and time, names of all participants, notes for each agenda item, action items with deadlines, and next steps for the group. 

You should also assign meeting roles to ensure your session runs smoothly. The eight common meeting roles include the meeting organizer, host, notetaker, time-keeper, decision maker, voice of the customer, optional attendees, and informed participants. Keep in mind that not every meeting will require all eight roles.

5Note clear outcomes and decisions 

All meeting attendees should leave each session with a clear understanding of their next steps. In your meeting notes, jot down what each person is responsible for once the meeting ends. Cover the three Ws for each action item—what it is, to whom it’s assigned, and by when it must be completed. Your meeting notes should also document decisions so attendees can refer back and see what options were considered, who made the decision, and any associated risks. 

6Track action items in Asana with the Fellow integration 

Did you know you can use our integration with Asana to sync action items from your meeting notes in Fellow to Asana projects? Automatically send action items generated during your Fellow meetings over to Asana to streamline your team’s task management. When you combine the best meeting app with a terrific project management tool, no task gets left behind. Use our integration to keep everyone in the loop about the completion status of each piece of your project. 

How to integrate Fellow and Asana 

You can integrate Fellow and Asana in a few easy steps. Start by visiting User Settings on your Fellow account and selecting Integrations. Click on the Asana card and follow the prompts from there to log in to your Asana account. Once you’re in Asana, create a Project. Now that you’re connected, you and your team can decide whether to sync individual action items, specific streams, or all of your action items in one spot to improve your meeting notes. 

Best practices for meeting productivity using Asana

• Stay organized using projects
• Be as clear as possible 
• Review your action items before a meeting
• Share any important context before the meeting
• Mark tasks as incomplete if necessary

1Stay organized using projects 

Projects are one of Asana’s main features and allow users to organize all tasks related to a specific initiative. Create a project in Asana by selecting Project and decide whether you want to use a template, import a spreadsheet, or start a project from scratch. If you select Blank project, you’ll be able to fill in your project details manually, select a layout, and choose your privacy settings. There are a handful of available actions you can take to customize your project once you create it so that it aligns with your team’s needs. 

2Be as clear as possible 

Aim to be as clear as possible when writing each action item’s description. Action items in Asana should include a defined deadline, description, and the name of the assigned individual. Note that action items are usually part of a list related to a specific project or initiative, and be sure to assign due dates that reflect the timelines you discuss during the meeting. 

3Review your action items before a meeting 

Action items help capture to-dos associated with decisions made during meetings. Before each meeting, review the action items you’ve completed, are currently working on, and will complete in the future. Your colleagues and project manager may want to view your progress, so ensure you’re able to speak to each item so you can give updates during the meeting if called upon. 

4Share any important context before the meeting 

Adding additional context will provide meaning and clarity to your meetings. Share important information with meeting attendees within your Fellow meeting agenda or Asana project. Send a copy of the meeting agenda at least 24 hours in advance of the scheduled session so all attendees have a chance to add talking points. Include documents, videos, or links to other relevant information online in the agenda if necessary. 

5Mark tasks as incomplete if necessary 

Productive teams can quickly adapt to new plans with ease! Often, more work is needed for specific tasks than project managers and employees initially think. If a task needs to be adapted to accommodate changed plans, mark it as incomplete in Asana, reassign it to the task owner, and jot down any new details regarding expectations. Remind teammates to review their tasks often to view changes, especially if you haven’t had a scheduled meeting in a while. 

Parting advice 

It’s Monday afternoon and your schedule will be filled with meetings. Luckily, since your team started using Fellow and its Asana integration, your days have freed up. This afternoon’s meetings will include a brainstorming and decision-making session, as well as a project kickoff meeting. You know that each meeting will have notes that outline talking points, action items, and meeting outcomes. In fact, your manager has already sent along a few agendas for today’s sessions, which allowed you to prepare in advance. You’re confident that you and each participant will leave every meeting knowing exactly what to do next!

Great meeting notes can make the difference between an effective meeting and an unproductive one. Start leveraging Fellow with Asana to take notes that motivate all attendees to take action.