Using ChatGPT for creating meeting agendas, minutes, and notes

How can ChatGPT help with meetings?

You’ve just gotten out of a lengthy planning meeting at work where you and your team discussed goals for the upcoming quarter and ways to best act on them. You’ve been asked to put together a summary, as well as to identify the action items and an agenda for a follow-up meeting.

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At first, this may feel like an overwhelming task, especially if your meeting was on the long side. But there are ways to approach this ask that use AI, which can streamline the process and make it a little easier to digest. ChatGPT is AI that reproduces patterns in texts in a manner that mimics natural human speech and writing. If correctly prompted, it can generate nearly any kind of human-like text.

Using ChatGPT to create meeting summaries and identify action items

If you’re constantly in meetings, you may loathe the idea of putting together a summary for the participants. Even if there’s a recording and a full transcript available, it can be a tedious process.

One way to speed up your meeting summary is to utilize ChatGPT’s resources, which can analyze the information it’s given and generate natural-sounding text. To use this AI to create a summary of your meeting and identify action items, you’ll first need to:

• Download a transcript of your Microsoft Teams meeting.
• Copy the text of the transcript.
• Open your AI and prompt it with something specific and targeted to your request, like, “Summarize this meeting transcript.”
• Paste the full transcript into the chatbot and wait for it to generate your summary.
• Check the work.

AI like ChatGPT is a powerful tool with a ton of information at its disposal, but it’s not flawless. It’s important to check over any AI-generated content to ensure that there are no errors of any kind. You’ll also want to think carefully about how you’re prompting it. If you’d like a summary as a paragraph or a set amount of bullet points, you’ll need to explicitly say so.

It’s also wise to give the transcript a once-over and remove any extraneous text like introductions or fillers so they’re not considered when ChatGPT is generating a summary. You may also want to add relevant details back into a summary that were omitted by ChatGPT.

If you also need to identify actionable items from your recent meeting, you can prompt the AI with a specific phrase like, “Identify the key action items in the meeting transcript,” then paste the transcript in its entirety.

You may need to play around with phrasing of this prompt, especially if the generated content is lacking. If you know that there were follow-up calls mentioned in your meeting and they’re not listed as action items, you may need to add them in yourself or adjust your prompt to be even more specific. AI is useful, but not infallible. It’s not a complete substitute for doing work yourself, though it can streamline the process.

Taking notes with AI

AI really shines when it’s used for taking outline style notes. To come up with thorough meeting notes that can help you plan and create an agenda, you’ll need a transcript of the meeting. You’ll prompt ChatGPT with something like, “Write formal outline-style notes with the main ideas as different headings” and then paste the transcript below.

ChatGPT’s AI can provide you with thorough, automatic notes that break down large blocks of information into an easily digestible outline. Double-check the generated content against the transcript to ensure accuracy, as ChatGPT is more concerned with creating text that sounds natural than sticking solely to the facts.

Creating agendas with help from ChatGPT

Putting together an agenda for a follow-up meeting can feel tedious, but if you’ve already got a summary of the previous meeting, organized notes, and actionable items created for you, the process should go a lot faster.

You may want to prompt the AI with something like, “Create a meeting agenda using this summary, outline, and action items” and then enter the text for both of those. Entering the transcript in its entirety is helpful as well in case something was glossed over previously. As with all uses of AI, you’ll need to check over the generated content for errors and inconsistencies. Imagine presenting inaccurate information to a client or to a potential business investor!

When it comes times to putting a plan together, Microsoft has a host of agenda templates to suit any need. You’ll be able to stay organized and present something professional.

AI can certainly help you and your business with summarizing meetings, pulling out action items, creating outlines, and helping you get organized for the next meeting. It’ll still be on you to give the presentation and understand the material, but a helping hand can be useful.