Meeting Notes on Teams: Best Practices

Taking detailed, organized meeting notes is crucial for productive collaboration, yet easy to overlook when using Teams.

Luckily, Teams has robust built-in note-taking features that make capturing information simple. With some planning and best practices, you can easily implement an efficient note-taking workflow for any type of meeting.

In this post, you'll learn everything about taking meeting notes in Teams - from leveraging AI-powered features to exporting and organizing notes across Microsoft 365 apps. You'll find tips to structure notes for sales, marketing, engineering, and other teams. Finally, we'll explore governance policies to ensure compliance.

Introduction to Meeting Notes on Teams

Taking comprehensive meeting notes within Microsoft Teams can greatly enhance productivity, collaboration, and knowledge sharing across distributed teams. The integrated Meeting Notes feature allows participants to automatically capture notes, action items, decisions, and key highlights right within the Teams platform.

Understanding Microsoft Teams Meeting Notes

Microsoft Teams Meeting Notes provide AI-powered automatic note-taking capabilities during online meetings and calls. Available directly within the Teams desktop and web apps, Meeting Notes generate shareable summaries of the discussion, listing important details, decisions, and next steps.

The automated notes sync across Teams channels and chats for broader access. They also integrate with other Microsoft 365 productivity tools like OneNote and Planner for extended functionality:

OneNote - Meeting notes can be exported to OneNote for more detailed note-taking and organizing. OneNote notebooks can also be brought into Teams meetings for real-time collaborative note-taking.
Planner - Action items captured in Meeting Notes can be synced to Planner tasks for easy assignment and tracking.

The Importance of Virtual Meeting Notes on Teams

Comprehensive meeting notes on Teams lead to enhanced productivity and team collaboration in several key ways:

Increased efficiency - With automated note-taking, less time is wasted manually capturing notes. Summaries allow faster review of key discussion points.
Improved alignment - Note summaries ensure all participants understand important decisions and action items for quick alignment.
Centralized knowledge - Storing meeting notes centrally within Teams channels builds a searchable knowledge base over time.
Better accountability - Shared action items and decisions logged within notes keeps all stakeholders accountable.
Faster onboarding - New employees can quickly get up to speed by accessing archived meeting notes.

In today's remote-first work environment, taking quality meeting notes in Teams is essential for organizational success.

How do you add meeting notes in Teams?

Adding meeting notes in Microsoft Teams is easy. Here are the steps:

Access your Teams Calendar and select the past meeting you want to edit or add notes to.
Click on the meeting to expand the details.
Under the meeting details, click on "Notes".
A notes panel will open on the right side where you can enter your meeting notes.
Type your notes and highlights from the meeting. You can format the text with Markdown.
When done, click Save to store the notes with the meeting details for future reference.

The notes are now attached to the meeting and accessible anytime from your Teams calendar. Your notes are private by default and only visible to you. However, you can choose to share notes with meeting participants if needed as well.

With the built-in notes feature, Microsoft Teams makes it simple to capture key discussion points, decisions, action items and takeaways after your meetings. This helps drive alignment across your team and ensures important information is documented for future use.

What happened to meeting notes in Teams?

I understand your frustration with trying to find the meeting notes in Teams. Microsoft recently moved the location of meeting notes to streamline the user experience.

Here is where you can now find your meeting notes:

During an active meeting, click on the "Show conversation" button in your meeting controls. This will open up the conversation pane on the right side where you can view or add meeting notes.
After a meeting concludes, click on the "Recap" tab in your meeting chat. Here you will find a summary of your meeting notes and conversation history that you can refer back to later.

The notes are still kept within Teams, just in a different location than before. I'm glad I could clarify where to access them! Let me know if you have any other questions.

Where are meeting notes stored in Teams?

Teams stores meeting notes in a few different places depending on the type of meeting and who created the notes.

For scheduled meetings

If you create notes during a scheduled Teams meeting, they are saved to your personal OneDrive account in a folder called Microsoft Teams Data > Wiki. You can access your meeting notes there anytime after the meeting.

For Meet Now meetings

If you create notes during an instant/ad-hoc Teams meeting (Meet Now), they are saved to a hidden folder in your local file storage rather than OneDrive. You can find these notes by going to:

C:\Users\<yourname>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Teams\meeting-notes

Meeting recordings

If you record your Teams meeting, the meeting recording and transcribed captions will also be saved to Stream or OneDrive, depending on your org settings.

So in summary:

Scheduled meetings: Notes saved to your OneDrive > Microsoft Teams Data > Wiki folder
Meet Now meetings: Notes saved locally to your hidden AppData folder
Recordings: Saved to Stream or OneDrive

Knowing where Teams stores your meeting artifacts can help you easily organize and retrieve your notes later for follow-ups.

What are the AI meeting notes on Teams?

Teams now offers AI-powered meeting notes to help capture key discussion points, decisions, and action items from your meetings.

Here are some key things to know about the AI meeting notes:

They provide an automated summary extracted from your meeting recording and transcription.
Notes are only available for meetings longer than 5 minutes that were transcribed in English.
To use this feature, your meeting must be recorded and transcribed.
The formatting of notes may vary slightly depending on the transcription language used.

The AI meeting notes feature is currently in public preview. The main use cases are:

Before your meeting:

Create an agenda to give the AI model context for the discussion topics.

During your meeting:

The AI will analyze the conversation and pull out the key discussion points.

After your meeting:

Review the generated notes and easily create follow-up tasks and assignments.

The automated notes focus on capturing factual, objective details from the meeting rather than subjective opinions or commentary. They serve as a helpful starting point, but may require some human review and editing to ensure accuracy.

Overall, AI meeting notes help boost productivity by extracting the most vital info from your sessions so you can consume meeting knowledge more efficiently.

Setting the Stage: Preparing for Effective Note-Taking

Taking comprehensive, organized meeting notes in Microsoft Teams is key to driving productivity, alignment, and follow-through across your team. By setting up the right systems and tools ahead of meetings, you can ensure your team fully captures all relevant information, decisions, and action items during each discussion.

Here are some best practices for preparing for effective note-taking in Teams meetings:

Prep before your meeting: Create an agenda with a Teams meeting minutes template

Create a shared OneNote notebook or Word document in a Teams channel to collate notes.
Set up a meeting agenda with topics and share files/links.
Designate 1-2 note-takers for each meeting.
Create a meeting minutes template to standardize notes.
Share relevant documents beforehand so note-takers can reference.

Selecting the Right Note-Taking App for Teams

Use Teams Wiki for open collaboration and searchability.
Try Microsoft OneNote for multi-user editing and media embeds.
Enable Meeting Notes for auto-generated notes and tasks.
Evaluate 3rd party apps like Word, Evernote, Google Docs.
Consider security, formatting, integrations, notifications.

Schedule a Meeting with Integrated Note-Taking Features

Enable Meeting Notes when scheduling a meeting.
Add a OneNote notebook before meeting to auto-save notes.
Share an editable Word doc or Wiki page for open notes.
@mention note-takers and set expectations beforehand.

Microsoft Teams Public Preview & Targeted Release: Exploring Upcoming Note Features

Meeting Notes now links notes to Planner tasks.
New smart suggestions surface relevant files and data.
Live reactions and in-meeting task assignment coming soon.
Upcoming integrations with Miro, Mural, Asana, Jira.

With the right preparation and note-taking tools, your team can optimize Teams meetings to drive productivity. What practices have you found most effective?

Capturing Meeting Notes in Real-Time

During your meeting: Use Meeting Notes and Loop components

Taking comprehensive notes during a Teams meeting is key to capturing important discussion points and action items in real-time. Here are some best practices:

Actively listen and jot down key takeaways, decisions, tasks, and questions as they come up.
Organize notes by topic or agenda item to keep related information together. Use Markdown formatting like bullet points, bolding, and highlights to make notes scannable.
Tag meeting participants by @mentioning them when they bring up an idea to attribute insights.
Highlight action items and next steps with checkboxes so they are easy to identify later.
Add tables, links, file attachments, or other elements to enrich notes using Loop components in Teams chat.

Leveraging Teams' collaborative note-taking features like Meeting Notes and Loop can help you efficiently capture a meeting's essence as it unfolds.

Automatic Meeting Notes in Teams: Leveraging AI

Teams now offers an AI-powered Automatic Meeting Notes feature (in public preview) that can transcribe an entire meeting and highlight important discussion points, action items, decisions, and questions - all without any manual note-taking needed.

To use this capability:

Start a new meeting in Teams desktop or web app.
Expand the Meeting Notes pane and toggle on Automatic Meeting Notes.
The AI will analyze the meeting conversation and display a summary of key details in the pane.

Review the computer-generated notes after your session and edit or supplement them with your own notes as desired. This hands-free approach to note-taking can save tremendous time and effort.

Take Private Notes in a Teams Meeting

While Meeting Notes provide a shared space for the team to collaborate, you may also want to take personal notes just for your reference.

To enable private note-taking in a Teams meeting:

Expand the Meeting Notes pane in a session.
Click the More Actions icon ⋮ and choose Open Private Notes.
A separate pane will open for you to jot down private thoughts and takeaways only visible to you.

Keeping private notes alongside shared meeting minutes allows you to capture insights without broadcasting them to all participants.

Thread of Information: Keeping Context with Meeting Notes

Well-structured meeting notes that thread key details together in a cohesive narrative ensure nothing gets lost as your meeting progresses. Some ways to maintain context include:

Number meeting agenda items and label notes accordingly to preserve flow.
Link related notes using Markdown formatting - e.g. "As mentioned in Note #2", to keep conversations connected.
Designate parking lots or follow-ups sections to capture items for later discussion without derailing the current topic.
Review and organize notes after each meeting while the context is still fresh.

With robust note-taking discipline, your team can keep focus as discussions unfold, enabling more productive meetings.

After a meeting concludes, it's important to organize your notes to maximize their usefulness for follow-up tasks and reference. Here are some best practices:

After your meeting: Create tasks and follow-up using notes

Review your notes and highlight any action items or decisions that need follow-up.
Convert action items into Planner tasks with due dates and assignees. This ensures accountability and proper tracking.
Share meeting minutes or a summary with attendees so everyone is aligned on outcomes.
Archive past notes so they don't clutter your Teams channels.
Add tags or labels to notes to make them easily searchable later.

How to Add Meeting Notes in Teams After Meeting

If you forgot to take notes during a meeting, you can still go back and add them afterwards:

Open the meeting chat in Teams.
Click the "More Options" menu.
Select "Show Meeting Notes".
Add your notes using the editor.
Click "Save".

Your notes will now be attached to that meeting's chat for future reference.

Where are Teams Meeting Notes Stored

Teams meeting notes are stored directly within the meeting chat. To access them:

Open the meeting invite in Teams and go to the chat tab.
Click "Show Meeting Notes" in the menu to view notes.

Notes are only visible to meeting attendees by default. To share more broadly, export notes to a Teams wiki or attach files to a channel.

Export a Wiki to a OneNote Notebook in Microsoft Teams

To export meeting notes from a Teams wiki into OneNote:

In Teams, go to the wiki tab and open the desired wiki.
Click the "More Options" menu.
Select "Export to OneNote".
Choose whether to export the full wiki or only certain pages.
Select the destination OneNote notebook.
Click "Export".

This exports the wiki into a OneNote notebook for enhanced organization and storage. Updates sync across both tools.

Integrating Meeting Notes with Other Microsoft Tools

Teams Meeting Notes provides a convenient way to capture notes during meetings directly within Microsoft Teams. However, you may want to connect these notes to other Microsoft tools for more robust document management and task tracking. Here are some ways to extend the capabilities of Teams Meeting Notes:

Teams Meeting Notes vs OneNote: Comparison and Integration

While Teams Meeting Notes offers basic note-taking, OneNote provides much more flexibility for organizing notes, embedding media, collaborating with others, and accessing notes across devices. However, switching between apps can be disruptive during meetings.

You can get the best of both worlds by integrating a OneNote notebook into a Teams meeting. Meeting notes will be automatically saved to the notebook for later reference. This keeps meetings flowing smoothly while still making all information available in OneNote.

Add a OneNote Notebook to Teams for Enhanced Note Management

To integrate OneNote with Teams meetings:

Open the meeting chat tab in Teams
Select "..." and choose "Open notebook"
Pick an existing OneNote notebook or create a new one
Meeting notes will now be synced to this notebook for easy access later

With a OneNote notebook connected, you can add more detailed notes, embed images/links, categorize information, and collaborate with others on meeting follow-ups.

Synced Notes with Planner for Task Management

As meetings generate action items and assignments, you'll want to track these in Planner for project management. Fortunately, Teams makes this simple:

In a Teams meeting, highlight an action item sentence in the notes
Click "Sync with Planner"
The action will be added as a Planner task with smart details like owner, due date, and priority

Syncing notes to Planner tasks ensures clear accountability, due dates, and status reporting on meeting deliverables.

Microsoft Teams Meeting Notes Limitations and Workarounds

Teams Meeting Notes has a few limitations since it's still in preview:

Notes may fail to sync properly with people joining remotely or late
There are few formatting options for notes - no images, docs, or rich text
Notes cannot be exported out of Teams for backup or use elsewhere

Workarounds:

Paste images into OneNote if connected to meeting
Manually create tasks in Planner from notes after meeting
Take supplemental notes in Word/OneNote for personal use

Over time, more functionality will likely be added to Teams Meeting Notes. For now, integrating with tools like OneNote and Planner helps provide missing capabilities.

Customizing Meeting Notes for Different Team Dynamics

Meeting notes can provide tremendous value to teams across departments when customized to their unique needs. Here are some recommendations for getting the most out of meeting notes based on team dynamics:

Meeting Notes for Sales Teams: Tracking Customer Engagement

Log key details from sales calls including customer objections, questions, and concerns to address in follow-ups.
Track action items related to sending proposals, scheduling demos, or providing additional materials.
Note competitor names mentioned to analyze industry trends.
Record feedback on pricing, features, etc and share with product team.
Use tags for customer, opportunity, and deal stages to filter notes.

Marketing Teams: Utilizing Notes for Campaign Management

Track campaign launch dates, budgets, targets and actual performance data.
Log notes from brainstorming sessions to revisit creative ideas later.
Record feedback from leadership on proposed strategies.
Use tables to compare different campaign metrics side-by-side.
Tag notes by campaign name for easy filtering.

Engineering Teams: Structuring Notes for Technical Projects

Log product requirements with checkboxes to track completion status.
Document dependencies and blockers among tasks using bullet points.
Insert code snippets to share solutions between engineers.
Track bugs noticed during testing by priority and severity.
Use labels like "frontend", "backend" etc to organize notes.

By customizing meeting notes for team specifics, you can enhance alignment, accountability, and productivity across the organization.

Meeting Notes Governance and Compliance

Establishing Data Retention Policies for Meeting Notes

To ensure meeting notes do not take up unnecessary storage over time, it is best to establish data retention policies. Some best practices include:

Set notes to automatically archive or delete after a defined period, such as 6 months or 1 year after meeting date. This clears old notes from the system.
Allow note owners to tag certain notes for indefinite retention based on business, legal or compliance needs. This avoids accidentally deleting important notes.
Have automated alerts notify note owners when their notes are nearing expiration, so they can review and retain if still needed.

Implementing Access Controls for Sensitive Meeting Notes

Proper access controls for confidential meeting notes are vital. Recommendations include:

Use Teams security groups to restrict note access to only required participants. This ensures sensitive data is not openly available.
Set user permissions for exporting, printing, copying and screenshotting notes to limit exposure risk. More restrictive rights may be required for highly sensitive notes.
Enable audit logs to track note access and changes. This creates accountability over sensitive data.
Allow participants to tag notes as "confidential" to trigger stricter access controls automatically. This makes securing notes easier.

Ensuring Compliance with Meeting Notes Regulations

Certain regulations may dictate specific requirements for meeting notes relating to privacy, financials or other sensitive information. Some key compliance steps include:

Mandate that certain notes undergo review and approval before finalizing. This reduces compliance risk.
Restrict ability to export notes outside of Teams in plain text formats. Maintaining data within secured systems supports compliance.
Limit note access and sharing capabilities based on user roles and regional data regulations. This appropriately scopes data exposure.
Regularly audit notes tagged "confidential" to ensure proper protections remain intact over time. This catches issues early.

Conclusion: Harnessing the Power of Teams Meeting Notes

Teams Meeting Notes is a useful feature that can enhance productivity in meetings when used effectively. Here are some key best practices to keep in mind:

Focus on Action Items

Highlight key decisions and action items in the meeting notes. This makes it easy to assign tasks and follow up after the meeting.

Use Tags

Tag meeting participants against action items relevant to them. This ensures accountability and proper assignment of next steps.

Store Sensitive Data Securely

For sensitive information discussed in meetings, disable the public preview setting and store notes privately under "Meeting Notes" in Teams channel files.

Integrate with Planner

Connect your meeting notes to Planner tasks so your notes sync automatically. This creates a central place to track meeting outcomes.

Review Notes Afterwards

Designate someone to clean up and finalize the meeting notes. Share the notes with attendees afterwards so everyone stays aligned.

Customize as Needed

Customize who can edit notes and if they are public or private depending on the meeting purpose. Adjust settings per meeting requirements.

Following these best practices will lead to more organized, accessible and actionable meeting notes within Teams. This will ultimately translate to better productivity and collaboration across your organization.