Meetings

Meeting Prep: 102

An advanced guide on how to use Lindy for meeting prep.

Lindy transforms your meeting prep game – saving you time and ensuring you're always one step ahead.

Building upon our foundational Meeting Prep: 101, in this guide you’ll learn how to set up a Lindy to receive a summary of past communication, collect past call notes, extract action items, and draft a new meeting agenda – all in one prep email!

This Lindy not only holds you and your team accountable, it ensures you maximize every meeting and that nothing falls through the cracks.

How It Works

Lindy uses your past email exchanges with the attendees, the previous meeting notes (if you have any), and action items from the previous call to draft a meeting agenda.

Once the agenda is drafted, Lindy will send you a brief of the meeting, a summary of past communication, previous action items, the new meeting agenda, and attendee contact details to ensure you are prepared for the call.

Here’s the step-by-step workflow:

Lindy is triggered by a calendar event start.
Researches the attendees and their companies.
Finds past communication exchanges through email.
Searches for past meeting notes.
Extracts action items from the last call.
Creates a meeting agenda, relevant to your meeting, beginning with a review of the action items established.
Sends a prep email with information found and curated from the steps above.

Getting Started

This guide builds on the Meeting Prep Alert Lindy template, which you can access here.

Below is the flow you will start with:

Retrieving Past Meeting Notes

Below the Gmail "List Email Action", you are going to add the Google Drive “List Drive Files” action.

In the Query field, update the setting to “AI Prompt” and add the below prompt (or something similar to inform Lindy what meeting notes to retrieve):

"You are searching for previous meeting notes based on the meeting name or attendee name. Search for the attendee name or the theme / title of the event name to find the most recent meeting notes document, relevant to the event that triggered you. The notes will never just be the users name.”

In the Filter Parameters of the Google Drive action, you can specify created and modified dates to ensure Lindy only retrieves meeting notes within a given period.

Extracting Past Action Items

Now add the Google Docs “Get Document” action and add a prompt to instruct Lindy on what document she is referencing.

Example Prompt:

"Use the document found from the Google Drive search"

Creating the Meeting Agenda

After the Google Drive action, add the Google Docs “Create Document” action, customize the Document Title (best if you use the date and meeting attendee / topic name)

Insert this prompt (as always, customize where you see fit) in the Content field:

"Your task is to create a tailored Meeting Agenda for the user. 

This agenda should be highly relevant to the current meeting's context, taking into account:
Previous email exchanges
Last meeting's notes
Action items from the previous meeting (found in the Google Doc meeting notes)

Key Instructions:

Begin the agenda with a comprehensive list of action items:

Start with the heading 'Previous Action Items:'

List every single action item verbatim from the Google document. Do not summarize or paraphrase; use exact wording.

Allocate specific time at the beginning of the meeting to review each action item in detail. The primary focus of this agenda is to ensure all action items have been executed.

Structure the agenda to include:

Date and time of the meeting
List of participants
Previous action items (as mentioned above)
Main discussion topics
Time for reviewing goals and existing action items
Time for setting new action items
Planning for the next meeting (if necessary)
Wrap-up section (if necessary)

Tailor the content and structure based on the specific context of this meeting. While a general structure is provided below, adapt it as needed to best suit the current situation.

Example Structure (to be customized):

Meeting Agenda
Date: [Insert Date]
Time: [Insert Time]
Participants: [List all participants]

Previous Action Items Review (X minutes)[List all action items from the previous meeting document]
Main Discussion Topics (X minutes)[Topic 1][Topic 2][Add or remove topics as necessary]
Progress Update and Blockers (X minutes)
Review of ongoing projects/tasks
Address any challenges or blockers
New Action Items and Assignments (X minutes)
Based on today's discussionAssign responsibilities and deadlines
Next Steps and Future Planning (X minutes)
Determine need for follow-up meeting
Set tentative date if required
Meeting Wrap-Up (5 minutes)
Summarize key outcomes and decisions
Final thoughts or adjustments."

Remember, this is a guideline.

Customize the agenda to best fit the specific needs and context of the current meeting, ensuring it addresses all relevant points from previous communications and documents.

Crafting the Perfect Prep Email

After this, we are going to have Lindy consolidate all of her meeting prep research and send us a prep email (or Slack DM, Whatsapp, etc) to eliminate any manual work prior to a meeting!

In this example, Lindy is going to send us an email.

Add the Lindy Mail action, if it is not already there. You can learn more about how Lindy Mail works here.

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Ensure the prep email is only going to yourself by setting the TO, CC, and BCC fields to “Set Manually” and inserting your email in the TO fields.

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Paste this prompt in the Body field:

"Create a concise, value-packed email body with:  
Zoom or Gmeet link  
LinkedIn profiles of external attendees:  
Name  
Current job title  
Company  
Recent email conversation summaries with attendees  
All action items from previous running notes doc  
Newly created meeting agenda  

Guidelines:  
Extremely concise, no extra verbiage  
Bold key information  
Focus on past communications with attendees and action items (found on the Google Doc) 
Include only essential information for meeting preparation  
Write as if briefing the president with critical info only  

Prioritize:  
Past communications with attendees  
Action items  
Meeting logistics (link, attendee details)  
Agenda  

Omit:  
Greetings/closings  
Explanatory text  
Filler words/phrases  
Anything not directly relevant to meeting preparation"

This is what the final workflow will look like:

Test Your Workflow

Now you can test it out!

10 minutes before your next meeting with an attendee Lindy will wake up and perform the workflow.

Below is an example of what your meeting prep email will look like. You can see in the Meeting Prep Email, Lindy included:

Pertinent meeting details
Information about the attendee and their company
Summary of past communication
Previous action items documented during previous call
New meeting agenda, drafted and linked
Key discussion points for the upcoming call

Meeting Prep Email

In the meeting agenda, you can see Lindy included:

Key meeting details
Previous action items documented during previous call
Agenda outlined, using context from past call notes, action items, meeting details and context from past communication with the attendee.

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New Meeting Agenda

Guides

Delegation: 101

Email Negotiator

Email Responding: 101

Human in the Loop

Building a Slackbot: 101

Chat With Your Meetings