We all hate meetings, but well-structured meeting notes? They’re a lifesaver. They give us a record of what happened, and sometimes, an excuse not to attend the next one. If you’re using Confluence to take your meeting notes, great! But like many users, you’ve probably made some mistakes along the way, and there are best practices you need to follow.
In this article, we’ll explore some best practices to help you better create and take meeting notes in Confluence.
Tip #1: Use Confluence Native Meeting Notes Templates
It depends on how you look at things, a blank Confluence page might mean freedom to create your own meeting notes. But it also means wasted time. Whether you’re new to Confluence or a seasoned user, creating templates for any use case, especially meeting notes, is a hassle. There are a lot of things to take into consideration such as the meeting nature (one-to-one, team meeting, retro, etc), macros and resources to include, and of course, a lot of reviews to get the final template approved.
Instead of starting from scratch, you might consider using Confluence meeting notes templates as a starting point. Sure they’re not too advanced (that’s on purpose by the way), but they can guide you by providing a default layout on which you can build. There are a host of meeting notes templates that I know of and I’ve been using. Overall they’re pretty much straightforward and easy to work with. Some of the popular include (at the time of writing this article): Meeting Notes, Weekly Meeting Notes, Retrospective, and more.
Tip #2: Customize your Confluence Meeting Notes
You can use the template as is, but different teams have different needs, and your meeting notes should reflect that. More often than not, teams miss out on tailoring the template or choose the wrong template altogether, which can result in missing important sections or not aligning with the meeting’s goals.
While the native template provides a solid foundation, consider customizing it to better fit your team’s workflow. For example:
- Add sections: Include additional fields or sections that are relevant to your meetings, such as Pre-Reading Materials or Retrospective Insights.
- Customize the layout and Implement Macros: Adjust the layout to match your team’s preferred format, whether it’s adding extra bullet points, adjusting headings, or incorporating specific tabs, expanders and other macros. Here you can both leverage native Confluence macros, or third party ones. When choosing which macro to implement, always take into consideration the content type (sections, important, supplementary) and your target audience. For example, if the content to include is best separated into distinct sections, you are better off with tabs. If the content is supplementary, use expanders. If it’s crucial, panels are the best option.
For more tips on when and how to use Confluence macros, check out this dedicated post.
Tip #3: Don’t Overcomplicate your Meeting Notes
One common error is overcomplicating the meeting notes template by including too many sections or excessive detail. This often results in cluttered notes that are hard to read and less actionable. Always keep in mind the meeting participants. They might be interested in only some specific sections of the meeting notes.
Simplify your template by focusing on the essentials:
- Use bullet points: They’re simple, easy to scan, and allow everyone to absorb the important information at a glance.
- Stick to the agenda: Meeting notes often become lengthy when you include off-topic discussions or try to document every single detail. Focus only on the key agenda items and outcomes.
- Prioritize action items and decisions: The most critical aspects of meeting notes are decisions and action items. Make sure they’re highlighted, preferably using Confluence’s Action Item macro, which allows you to assign tasks directly to attendees.
Pro Tip: If there’s extra information that doesn’t need to be reviewed immediately, use the Expand macro to hide it. This way, the essential details are visible while additional information is accessible if needed.
Tip #4: Structure and Name Your Meeting Notes for Searchability
As is the case with any other Confluence page, meeting notes should be easily searchable. You don’t want your teams to waste time wandering around Confluence to find what they’re looking for. This is why properly naming your meeting notes matters. Naming conventions might seem like a minor detail, but they’re vital for efficient knowledge management. A generic title like “Team Meeting” or “Sprint Review” isn’t helpful when you need to locate specific notes later on. To improve searchability you need to:
- Include the meeting date: Add the date to the title of your meeting notes. For example, “Sprint Review – 2024-09-18” makes it much easier to find later. If you use the native template, then you automatically have the date in place.
- Use consistent titles: Develop a consistent naming structure that includes relevant keywords and follows a logical order. For example, “MKG – 2024-09-18” allows you to easily search for all marketing meetings.
Pro Tip: Ensure that everyone on the team follows the same naming convention to avoid confusion. If everyone is titling their meeting notes differently, it becomes much harder to find the correct page later.
Tip #5: Use Labels to Organize and Filter Your Notes
Another important feature to make your meeting notes well searchable are labels. Labels allow you to categorize your meeting notes and classify them later, making it easier to find notes related to specific teams, project or meeting types.
Upon creating notes with the native Confluence template, the label “ Meeting-notes” is automatically assigned. Try to build on that by using specific ones that further describe the content such as “Team-Meeting,” “Client-Call,” or “Sprint-Retrospective.” This way, when you’re looking for all team meeting notes, you can simply filter by the label.
Pro Tip: Encourage your team to use consistent labeling practices. If someone uses “Sprint-Review” while another person uses “Sprint-Retrospective”, your organization could get messy. Establish clear guidelines for labeling.
Tip #6: Seamlessly Link Your Meeting Notes with Jira
Meeting notes often involve action items that need to be tracked in between Confluence and Jira. More often than not, action items are created only within Confluence, and not within the Jira project. Failing to link these tasks can lead to missed deadlines and untracked progress.
This is why you need to Integrate Confluence with Jira to streamline the task creation and tracking process:
- Create Jira Issues: Directly create Jira issues from your meeting notes for each action item. This ensures tasks are tracked and assigned properly.
- Link Issues: Use Confluence’s Jira Issues macro to link relevant Jira issues directly within your meeting notes. This keeps all related information in one place and ensures visibility.
Pro Tip: Set up Confluence to automatically sync with Jira, so updates in one tool reflect in the other, keeping your tasks and notes aligned.
Tip #7: Leverage Confluence Automation
If you’ve got the Enterprise or Premium plan, you can take your Confluence meeting notes game to the next level by leveraging automation. The latter can help you minimize manual entry, eventual errors, and seamlessly integrate Confluence and Jira.
There are a host of useful, pre-built automations that you can start with. One of my favorites is “Create a Jira issue when a task is created”. Fairly simple, as the name applies, the automation will trigger when you create an action item within your meeting note. Of course, you can use the jira site and specific project to link your meeting note with. This automation ensures both Confluence and Jira are well aligned which reduces confusion and ensures consistency.
Another useful automation you might want to consider is AI notifications. The rule here is also simple. The automation triggers when you publish your meeting notes. An email will be sent to participants (and other designated users) containing an AI generated summary and action items. This one is useful in case some users didn’t have time to attend the meeting. And always remember to double check the AI generated content and especially the action items to make sure they’re well aligned with what you’ve discussed within the page.
Tip #8: Embed Confluence Whiteboards
Sometimes, words alone aren’t enough to capture the full context of a meeting. Whether you’re brainstorming ideas, mapping out a new workflow, or reviewing a project roadmap, incorporating whiteboards can significantly enhance your meeting notes. With the introduction of Confluence whiteboards, teams now have all the tools they need to conduct their meetings solely within Confluence. Whiteboards are practical within meeting and come with a variety of pre-built templates for a variety of use cases including: Brainstorming, retrospective, daily sync, and more.
If your meeting includes a brainstorming session, embed a whiteboard directly into your notes using the Whiteboard link. This keeps all relevant information in one place, making it easier to revisit both the discussion and the ideas generated.
And there you have it! Confluence meeting notes are an essential way to capture discussions, plan and track tasks, and keep everyone on the same page. The above are just a few of the many best practices you need to follow to take better meeting notes. From using templates and labels to embedding visuals and automating tasks, there’s a wealth of tools at your disposal to ensure your meeting notes aren’t just documents, but actionable records that drive your projects forward.
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