Meeting Notes

Create a Meeting Note from a Template

You can create notes for your meetings and link them to the calendar event by clicking on the event on Mac in the right sidebar or long-pressing on the event on iOS. Then choose "Link Note" and select the template you want to use. 



Modify the default templates or create completely new templates to change where and how your new meeting note should be added in NotePlan and which content they should generate. You can find the templates in the new "Templates" folder in the sidebar under "Smart Folders". See below for more details.

Templates

Using templates, you can automate not only the content of your meeting notes but also where they should be added. A template consists of two parts: 

  1. Frontmatter = metadata controlling how the note will be created
  2. Body = future note content using placeholders

Frontmatter

You can use the following parameters in the Frontmatter of your template. Frontmatter is the metadata of your template and it's located at the top between a starting and ending "---" (three dashes, displayed as a blue line in NotePlan). 

Note: It has to be the first section in your note, it can not be preceded by a title or any other text.

Frontmatter options:

  • Use title: Your template title to name your template.
  • Use folder: /path/to/folder to define a specific folder for the new meeting note.
  • Use folder: <select> to show a prompt where you can select a folder.
  • Use folder: <current> to use the same folder where the currently opened note is located.
  • Use append: note title to append the template content to an existing note (will be created if it doesn't exist).
  • Use prepend: note title to prepend the template content to an existing note (will be created if it doesn't exist).
  • Use append: <select> or prepend: <select> to show a prompt where you can select the note.
  • Use append: <current> or prepend: <current> to append the meeting note to the currently opened note.

Make sure to add type: meeting-note to your Frontmatter. NotePlan uses this to filter your templates and shows only the relevant ones in the right places.

Body 

The body contains the text you want to see in your meeting notes later. You will also find templating tags that serve as placeholders to fill in the information of the selected event and you can add more templating tags (see here). A tag starts with <%- and ends with %>. To create a link between a note and an event you need the tag <%- calendarItemLink %> at the very least. 

Tags can also be used in the frontmatter to make the folder more dynamic for example: folder: "📅 Meetings/<%- eventDate('MMM YY') %>" would create the note in the folder "📅 Meetings" with the subfolder named after the month and year of the event.

You can use the following special event tags in the body and frontmatter of your templates (they have to be enclosed in  <%- and %>):

  • eventTitle = The title of the selected calendar event.
  • eventAttendees = Comma separated list of all attendees of this event (names or emails as email links).
  • eventAttendeeNames = Comma separated list of all attendees of this event (names or emails as plain text, available from v3.5.2).
  • calendarItemLink = The link to this event, this has to be added to link a note to an event.
  • eventDate('MMM Do YY') = The date of the event, you can modify the format of the date.
  • eventEndDate('MMM Do YY') = The end date of the event, you can modify the format of the date.
  • eventLink = URL which is optionally added to events, like the link to the zoom call.
  • eventNotes = The text inside the notes field of the event.
  • eventLocation = Location of the event.
  • eventCalendar = Calendar name of the event.

Example 1 - Standard Meeting Note

You can use the following example as a base. Simply copy the contents below and paste them into a new template (right-click on the "Templates" folder and create a new one). Then modify the template: remove existing tags or add new tags to shape the meeting note you need for your workflow.

---
title: Standard Meeting Note
folder: 30 - Resources/30.2 - Quick Notes/Meetings
type: meeting-note
---
# <%- eventTitle %> - <%- eventDate('MMM Do YY') %>
**Event:**  <%- calendarItemLink %>
**Link:** <%- eventLink %>
**Attendees:** <%- eventAttendees %>
**Event Notes:** 
> <%- eventNotes %>
---

## Agenda
- 

## Meeting Minutes
-

In this example, we are creating a new meeting note in the folder 30 - Resources/30.2 - Quick Notes/Meetings.

Example 2 - Monthly Meeting Note

If you struggle with a lot of meeting notes one way to get some control over your system is to file the meeting notes in monthly folders automatically using the following template. You can modify the format the folder is named or even make it weekly instead of monthly. Find out more about date formatting here (change the text inside eventDate(...)).

---
title: Monthly Folder
type: meeting-note
folder: "Meetings/<%- eventDate('MMM YY') %>"
documentation: https://help.noteplan.co/article/134-meeting-notes
---
# <%- eventTitle %> - <%- eventDate('Do') %>
**Event:**  <%- calendarItemLink %>
**Attendees:** <%- eventAttendees %>

---

## Agenda
- 

## Meeting Minutes
-

In this example, we are creating a new meeting note in the folder Meeting Notes/May 22.

Example 3 - Link to Send All Attendees an Email

Once the meeting is over and you have finished writing the meeting minutes you might want to send all attendees an email. Use the following template which generates a link that opens your default mail app with the attendees' email addresses prefilled, so you are ready to send the meeting note. You can create an RTF, PDF, or publish the note and share the link in that email.

This template is also an example of how you can mix Javascript code with template tags to create more dynamic templates:

---
title: Meeting Note w/ Email Link
type: meeting-note
documentation: https://help.noteplan.co/article/134-meeting-notes
---
# <%- eventTitle %> - <%- eventDate('MMM Do YY') %>
**Event:**  <%- calendarItemLink %>
**Attendees:** 
<%- eventAttendees %>
<% const emails = eventAttendees.match(/([a-zA-Z0-9._-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9._-]+\.[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/gi) -%>
<% const uniqueEmails = [...(new Set(emails))].join(",") -%>
→ [✉️ Email Attendees](mailto:<%- uniqueEmails %>?subject=<%- encodeURIComponent(eventTitle) %>)
---


## Agenda
- 


## Meeting Minutes
-

This template is a community contribution by David (@dwertheimer).

Contributions

Thanks to the plugin community, with special thanks to Mike (aka @codedungeon) for creating the templating engine on which the Meeting Notes are based! You can contribute with your ideas, reports, or feedback by visiting our Discord community.

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