In short
Most work meetings are one of eight types - decision, status, planning, review, one-to-one, client, interview or community. Each needs a different record, from formal minutes for a board to three lines for a standup, and recording is appropriate only when everyone knows and agrees.
There are eight common types of meetings at work: decision-making, status, planning, review, one-to-one, client, interview and community or governance meetings. Each exists for a different reason, so each needs a different record. A board meeting needs formal minutes; a standup needs three lines; a client call needs the client's own words and the next step.
This guide sets out each type of meeting, what it is for, what its notes should contain, and whether recording it is usually appropriate. It is the index for this section: each type links to a guide with an agenda or template for it.
The types of meetings at a glance
| Type | What it is for | What the record needs | Recording |
|---|---|---|---|
| Decision-making | Choosing between options | The decision, the options rejected, who decided, why | Often useful; ask first |
| Status | Sharing progress and blockers | Blockers and who is unblocking them | Rarely needed |
| Planning | Agreeing what happens next | The goal, what was left out, owners, dates | Useful for the reasoning |
| Review and retrospective | Learning from finished work | What to change, with an owner | Ask the team; some prefer not |
| One-to-one | Support, feedback, career | Agreed actions, in words both sides accept | Only if both want it |
| Client or sales | Understanding a customer, agreeing next steps | Their words, commitments on both sides | Only with the client's agreement |
| Interview | Hiring or research | Evidence against criteria, quotes | With the candidate's or participant's consent |
| Community or governance | Formal decisions by a group | Minutes: motions, votes, actions | Announce it; let people object |
Two things decide most of the right-hand columns. The first is who needs the record later: the people in the room, people who missed it, an auditor, a customer. The second is how exact it has to be: a status meeting needs the gist, a board resolution needs the wording.
Decision-making meetings
A decision meeting exists to make one choice, and it succeeds or fails on whether the choice gets made. The record is short but specific: what was decided, the options that were considered and rejected, who made the call, and the reason. The reason is what people will need in six months when someone asks why.
Keep a decision log if your team makes many of these, so decisions do not live only in scattered notes. For the agenda, state the decision in the invite as a question ("Do we move the Harbour launch to November?") so people come prepared to answer it.
Status meetings and standups
Status meetings share progress: what is done, what is next, what is stuck. They are the type most easily replaced by writing, because reporting does not need everyone present at once. When a team keeps a daily standup, the notes should hold only blockers and who is dealing with them; see standup meeting notes.
If a status meeting has turned into people reading out updates, async status updates covers a written format that replaces it, and keeps a short conversation for the blockers.
Planning meetings
Planning meetings turn goals into commitments: a quarter's priorities, a project plan, a sprint. The tool (a board, a roadmap, a spreadsheet) holds the list of work. The notes should hold what the tool does not: the goal, what was deliberately left out and why, the capacity caveats, and the risks someone named. Sprint planning meeting notes goes through this for a Scrum team.
Review meetings and retrospectives
Reviews look at work that is finished or nearly finished. A retrospective looks at how the team worked; a design critique looks at the work itself; a quarterly business review looks at results against goals with a customer. What they share is that the useful output is a change, with an owner. Everything else is discussion.
- Retrospective meeting notes for the team's process.
- Design critique meetings for feedback on work in progress, written as problems rather than solutions.
- Running a quarterly business review for a customer-facing review.
Recording a retrospective can make people less candid. Ask the team before you do it, and accept the answer.
One-to-one meetings
A one-to-one between a manager and a report is about the person: support, feedback, career, problems they would not raise in a group. The notes are short and shared between the two, so both agree on what was said. One-on-one meeting notes has a template.
A performance review is a formal one-to-one with consequences, and it needs notes the employee sees and can correct. Recording one needs both people to agree and is subject to the employer's policy and local law; performance review meeting notes covers both.
Client, customer and sales meetings
Meetings with people outside your organisation need a record that survives a handover: the customer's problem in their own words, what each side committed to, the dates. Several guides cover the stages of a customer relationship:
- Discovery call questions for a first conversation, and sales call notes for writing it up.
- Customer onboarding calls for the kickoff after a customer signs.
- Client meeting notes for ongoing work, and a follow-up email after a meeting to confirm what was agreed.
A client meeting is recorded only with the client's agreement, asked for at the start. How to ask for consent to record has wording.
Interviews
Interviews are meetings where one side is gathering evidence: a hiring interview, a user research session, a podcast conversation. The notes need what the person said, as close to verbatim as possible, separated from the interviewer's judgement of it.
- Interview notes template for hiring.
- User research interview notes for research sessions.
- Recording a remote podcast interview for interviews that will be published.
Every interview recording needs the interviewee's consent, and a published one needs their agreement to publish too.
Company-wide and community meetings
Some meetings are for a whole group: an all-hands, a town hall, a church council, a residents' association, a volunteer committee. They range from informal updates to formal governance.
- All-hands meeting agenda for a company-wide meeting with time for questions.
- Board meeting minutes for a board of directors.
- Church and community meeting minutes for volunteer-run groups.
Recording a large meeting is announced in the invite and again at the start, with a way for people to object or leave the camera and microphone off. Decide in advance how long the recording will be kept.
Meetings outside work
Some of the meetings people want notes from are not business meetings at all, and the same questions about the record and about consent apply:
- Recording a lecture on a MacBook and recording an online class, where the institution's rules and the lecturer's permission come first.
- Recording a doctor's appointment, where you ask the clinician at the start and accept a no.
- Writing an investor update from a month of meeting notes.
Which meetings need minutes, and which need notes
Formal minutes are for bodies with authority: boards, committees, trustees, councils. They record motions, votes and resolutions in an agreed order and are usually approved at the next meeting. Almost every other type of meeting needs notes: decisions, action items and open questions, written for the people who have to act. Meeting minutes vs meeting notes explains the difference in full, and the meeting notes template works for most of the types above.
Before any of them, an agenda helps more than any note-taking method. The meeting agenda template shows how to write one as a list of questions with owners and time boxes. And if the list of recurring meetings has grown too long, how to reduce meetings starts with an audit of which types you actually need.
Where a notetaker fits
For the types where exact wording matters (interviews, client calls, planning discussions, lectures), a transcript lets the note-taker listen instead of writing, and check the notes afterwards. The rule for every type is the same: the people in the meeting know it is being recorded and have agreed.
Notey records on your Mac, with your microphone and the sound the Mac plays as two separate tracks, and transcribes on the device. Nothing joins the call, so nobody sees it in the participant list; that is why you say so yourself. If you ask for a summary, action items or minutes, only the transcript's text is sent, and the result is labelled as AI-generated. It is one person's notetaker: there is no shared workspace, so you export the notes and put them where your team works.
Frequently asked questions
What are the main types of meetings?
Decision-making, status updates, planning, reviews and retrospectives, one-to-ones, client and sales meetings, interviews, and community or governance meetings. Most meetings are one of these, or two of them run together.
Which meetings need formal minutes?
Meetings of a body with formal authority, such as a board, a committee, a charity's trustees or a church council, usually need minutes that are approved at the next meeting. Most other meetings need short notes with decisions and action items.
Which type of meeting is most often unnecessary?
The status meeting. If people only report what they did, a written update does the same job without taking everyone's time at once. Keep a meeting when something has to be decided or a problem needs discussing.
Should every meeting be recorded?
No. Recording suits meetings where exact wording matters later, such as interviews, client calls and planning discussions, and only with everyone's agreement. Sensitive conversations such as performance reviews or medical appointments need an explicit yes first, and sometimes no recording at all.
What should every set of meeting notes include?
Which meeting it was, what was decided, who will do what by when, and which questions are still open. Everything else depends on the type of meeting.