Meeting notes to decisions and owners

Use it when you have a transcript or your own notes from a meeting that ended with decisions and actions.

Not when the meeting was sensitive (HR, health, legal) or anyone did not agree to a recording. Work from your own notes by hand.

You need the attendee list, a transcript with speakers named (from your meeting tool) or your own notes, and the attendees' agreement to record or transcribe. Recording rules differ by place, and we do not give legal advice. Redact what the assistant does not need before you paste (What not to paste).

Steps

The steps and times are our suggestion.

#	Step	Who	Time	Check
1	Get consent to record or transcribe, and write the attendee list	Person	1 min	Everyone agreed and local rules are met. If it fails: record nothing and use your own notes.
2	Put the transcript or your notes into one text file with speakers named	Person or meeting tool	0 to 2 min	The file exists and names speakers. If it fails: add the speakers from memory for the decisions only.
3	Extract decisions, actions and open questions with the prompt below	AI	2 min	Every row has a quote. Every action has one owner from the attendee list. If it fails: ask again and say which rows lack a quote.
4	Check each row against the transcript and your memory	Person	5 min	Each decision was agreed and not only proposed. Unclear items move to open questions. If it fails: reread the quote in context.
5	Send the tables to the attendees with a reply-by time	Person	2 min	Sent within 24 hours of the meeting. If it fails: send it anyway and note the delay.
6	Add the actions to your task list	Person	2 min	The number of tasks equals the number of actions.
7	At the next meeting, review last time's actions first	Person	3 min	Slipped items get a new date or are dropped aloud.

Prompt for step 3

Paste this into a new chat. Put the attendee list and the transcript at the end:

Meeting notes: decisions, actions, open questions · v1.0

Below is a meeting transcript and the attendee list. Extract only these three things.

1. DECISIONS. Things the group agreed. Not proposals and not ideas. For each, give the decision in one sentence, who agreed, and the exact quote, with its timestamp, that shows the agreement.
2. ACTIONS. For each, give the task (starting with a verb), one owner who is on the attendee list, the due date if one was stated (otherwise write "no date stated"), and the supporting quote.
3. OPEN QUESTIONS. Things that were raised and not settled.

Rules: do not invent owners or dates. If ownership was unclear, put the item under OPEN QUESTIONS with "owner unclear". Do not summarise the discussion. Give the output as three Markdown tables.

Attendees:
<ATTENDEES>

Transcript:
<TRANSCRIPT>

Replace the following:

<ATTENDEES>: the names of the people in the meeting, one per line.
<TRANSCRIPT>: the transcript or your notes, with anything the assistant does not need removed.

Message for step 5

Paste the three tables under this message:

Meeting follow-up message · v1.0

Subject: <MEETING_NAME>: decisions, actions and open questions

Hi all. Here is what we settled in <MEETING_NAME> on <MEETING_DAY>. Each line has a quote from the transcript so you can check it.

[tables here]

Please reply by <REPLY_BY> if anything is wrong or missing.

Replace the following:

<MEETING_NAME>: the meeting's usual name.
<MEETING_DAY>: the date it took place.
<REPLY_BY>: a day and time, such as Thursday 12:00.

How to tell it worked

Every decision has a quote you can point to.
Every action has one named owner and a date, or the words "no date stated".
Someone corrects a line now and then. A correction means the loop is working.

Mistakes to watch for

Proposals logged as decisions, the most consequential error. If two show up in one run, reread each quote in context before you send.
Owners who never agreed, and dates invented to fill the column.
Transcription errors in names, numbers and jargon.
Summaries so long that nobody reads them. Keep to the three tables.

Variations

No recording. Paste your own bullet notes. Ask for the supporting line from your notes in place of a timestamped quote.
Standing meeting. Paste last time's open actions as a fourth input and ask the model to mark each one done, slipped or not mentioned.

Time saved is not settled

In one UK department's pilot, transcribing or summarising meetings was the most reported use, with a mean of 0.7 hours saved per task, yet the evaluators did not find robust evidence that time savings led to improved productivity (DBT evaluation, field study). Treat the quote-and-check design as ours; no study tests it.

Sources

UK government department (DBT). Evaluation of its Microsoft 365 Copilot pilot. Field study of one department. Link.

Changes

v1.010 Oct 2026first version