Tracking Meetings In Smartsheet

Mark Baker

I'm trying to figure out the best way to make meeting agendas, minutes and action items available to the team using Smartsheets (not necessarily *a* Smartsheet). Our group has daily stand-ups, weekly status, and other meetings, most of which will require an agenda, and any of which can produce an action item list.

 

It's not practical to make a calendar or GANTT chart entry for the stand-ups, since they occur every day, yet there are often action items which come out of them.

 

Is there any function in Smartsheet intended to deal with this? I could easily link to an external Evernote Agenda or Action Item list, but where would I put the link if I didn't want to have a line for a stand-up every day?

 

Thanks for your thoughts or stories about how you handle this.

J. Craig Williams

Here's how I do it (generally)

 

1. For each periodic meeting, there a single sheet (ie 4 meetings, 4 sheets)

2. Prior to each meeting and during the meeting sheet functions as the agenda.

3. There is a column for Assigned To so identified action items can be documented.

4. Meeting is held, sheet is updated during and shortly after the meeting.

5. After the meeting, the sheet functions as the meeting minutes.

6. Once the attendees (and non-attendee stakeholders) have had a chance to review and comment on the minutes, the sheet is exported to PDF and attached to a specific row at the bottom of the sheet.

7. The sheet is cleaned up for the next meeting:

- completed action items are moved up to be discussed/confirmed at next meeting

- incomplete action items are moved up to the "actions from previous meetings" section.

- items completed previously and discussed at the last meeting are deleted.

8. Repeat step 2-7 

 

Individiual tasks list Reports should find the meeting action items and be tracked/updated there - and updates will be displayed on the meeting sheet.

 

Previous meetings are archived with the current sheet, so always available.

I copy the topics into a discussion on the same row as the attachement so they will show up in searches.

 

For miscellaneous meetings that are not likely to need a recurring agenda, I will either have one sheet for all of them or a few as needed and the project needs demand.

 

I did not have daily sprint meetings at my last place of employment, but I was involved in up to dozen projects, weekly planning meetings with 4 groups, and my team.

 

My tasks came from these meeting sheets, project schedules, and other miscellaneous task lists.

 

I hope this helps.

Craig