Meeting minutes and action log

Purpose

Turn spoken or written meeting evidence into a compact record of what was discussed, decided, assigned, deferred, or left unresolved.

Scope

Capture meeting title, date, participants, agenda items, evidence-backed discussion points, decisions, action owner, due date, dependency, status, and questions requiring follow-up.

Excluded: attributing an opinion not supported by the source, inventing attendance, changing project records, and sending minutes or reminders.

Data basis

• Transcript, meeting notes, agenda, and referenced presentation or decision paper.
• Existing action register and prior minutes when supplied for continuity.
• Project, budget, or policy documents cited during the meeting.

Result

A minutes document and action-log sheet with one row per decision or action, source timestamp or page, owner, due date, status, and dependency.

Quality criteria

• Decisions are separated from suggestions and questions.
• Each action has an explicit owner and due date or is marked unassigned/date unknown.
• Every material statement points to a timestamp, speaker, page, or agenda item.
• Conflicting statements appear as unresolved, not silently merged.
• Existing actions are updated only with evidence from the current meeting.

Instructions

Use the agenda order and preserve the meeting’s terminology. Treat “we should” as a proposal unless the source records agreement. Do not infer an owner from who spoke. Normalize dates only when the meeting date and timezone make the result unambiguous. Keep one action row for each distinct deliverable and name dependencies exactly as discussed.

Adapt before use

The action register is the authoritative deliverable for follow-up, while minutes preserve context and dissent.

• Set the minutes format, action statuses, owner naming convention, and due-date convention.
• Add prior minutes, action register, and any decision-paper templates.
• Define whether timestamps, speaker names, or page references are mandatory citations.