Meeting agenda template

When was the last time you left a meeting asking, "what was the point of that?" If you’re like a lot of workers—who lose an average of three hours per week to unnecessary meetings—the answer is probably a lot more often than you’d like.

Unfocused, unproductive meetings might feel like an inevitable part of office life, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Clearly defining the meeting’s purpose and goals, setting expectations for team members, and clarifying who’s responsible for what can put the meaning back into meetings. That’s where a meeting agenda template comes in.

What is a meeting agenda?

At its most basic, a meeting agenda is an outline of the topics and talking points your team can expect to discuss during a specific meeting. A well-crafted meeting agenda helps create effective meetings by aligning your team on the purpose of the meeting and setting meeting expectations. By clearly outlining who on the team is responsible for which topics, the priority of those topics, and the length of time allotted for each point of discussion, you can keep the meeting on track and purposeful.

What is a meeting agenda template?

A meeting agenda template is a reusable resource that lays out the basic elements of a meeting. For a meeting to be effective, it has to have a purpose and clearly defined expectations. A meeting agenda template helps facilitate this by clarifying what the meeting will cover, the roles and responsibilities of each team member, and any resulting action items. For example, your meeting agenda template might include topics of discussion, as well as which team member owns each topic and how long they have to discuss the topic during the meeting.

With our free meeting agenda template, you can remove the upfront work of creating a meeting agenda for every meeting, allowing you and your team to start collaborating—and accomplishing high-impact work—faster. Plus, using a meeting agenda template within a work management platform lets you organize information from previous meetings (like meeting minutes and notes) all in one easily accessible place. With a meeting agenda template, you can:

• Standardize how you run meetings.

• Get everyone on the same page about the meeting’s purpose, goals, and responsibilities.

• Use meeting time effectively.

• Foster productive meetings through focused discussions, designated topics, time allotments, and topic prioritization.

• Capture action items as they happen in real time, and assign them to the correct team members to ensure clarity on next steps.

• Streamline your project management process, coordinate work, and encourage team collaboration in one easily accessible place.

Types of meeting agenda templates

While our basic meeting agenda template serves as a useful baseline for everything from one-off syncs to weekly staff meetings, some meetings require a more specific structure. For example, running a one-on-one meeting with a direct report is pretty different from holding a board meeting with a board of directors and outside stakeholders, hence the need for a specific team meeting agenda.

No matter what type of meeting you’re running, there’s probably a template for it. Take a look at the types of meeting templates available to find the right one for your needs.

• Project kickoff meetings: Start your project off on the right foot and get your team on the same page with a project kickoff meeting. Use this kickoff meeting template to organize and standardize kickoff meetings across projects.

• One-on-one meetings: A one-on-one meeting template helps you set up your one-on-one meetings for success. It provides a place for you and your direct reports to plan out discussion points and track action items and career progress.

• Weekly team meetings: Enhance productivity and team collaboration by regularly discussing progress, new business, challenges, and upcoming tasks in a structured weekly team meeting.

• Team brainstorming meetings: Get the creative juices flowing and ensure you never forget an idea with a team brainstorm meeting template. Organize and track ideas as you go and assign follow-up tasks to turn those ideas into actions.

• Company-wide meetings: Streamline your all-hands meetings and get your organization on the same page with this company-wide business meeting template, designed to help you plan and manage the logistics for company town halls and similar events.

• Board meetings: Make your formal meetings effective by clarifying meeting goals and priorities with a board meeting agenda template.

• Sprint planning meetings: Get your cross-functional team or Scrum team on the same page and keep your sprint on track with a sprint planning template.

• Standup meetings: Standup meetings, or all-hands meetings, are quick ways for team members to check in with each other, share status updates, and ensure the project is progressing smoothly. Streamline this process and remove blockers with a daily standup meeting template.

• Postmortem meetings: A successful postmortem meeting should highlight what went well with a project and what you can improve moving forward. Use this postmortem template as a framework for your retrospective meetings.

• Sales meetings: Track sales wins, upcoming initiatives, pipeline updates, and other important metrics with a sales meeting template.

• Performance review meetings: Streamline performance reviews with a performance review meeting template that lets you capture feedback and turn it into actionable takeaways with ease.

What to look for in a meeting agenda template

A basic meeting agenda template should include elements that will help define the goals of the meeting and keep the meeting running smoothly, such as:

• A meeting overview section to keep track of the goal of the meeting, as well as the meeting’s facilitator and attendees.

• A section for topic suggestions, including the discussion points for each meeting, as well as who on the team owns each topic.

• A section for action items that come out of each meeting, as well as who owns each task and the corresponding due date.

• A reference section where you can keep helpful materials, such as previous meeting recordings, slideshow presentations, and meeting notes.

How to use our free meeting agenda template

Whether you’re starting with our free team meeting agenda template or creating your own, using it is easy. To begin, ask yourself the following questions:

• What’s the purpose of the meeting? Are we aiming to review ongoing projects or explore new business opportunities? What are we hoping to accomplish?

• What decisions does the team need to make at the meeting? What topics will the team discuss, and which are the highest priority?

• Who will be involved in the meeting? What’s the purpose of their involvement? What are their responsibilities?

• How long should the meeting be?

Once you’ve answered these questions, simply make a copy of the meeting agenda template and follow these steps:

1. Fill out the meeting overview. Include important meeting information, such as the meeting’s purpose, the meeting attendees, and the meeting facilitator.

2. List discussion topics and talking points. In the topic suggestions section, list the discussion topics or agenda items you plan to cover in the meeting. Be sure these topics map back to the meeting’s overall goal, and consider the meeting’s length to keep your time productive.

3. Arrange the topics in priority order, so meeting members know which topics they must address and which are less important, in case you run out of time.

4. Assign talking points to attendees. Once you’ve determined which topics the team needs to discuss, assign an owner to each topic to allow your team members to prepare for the discussion beforehand.

5. Allocate a realistic amount of time for each topic by estimating the amount of time you anticipate the discussion taking and adding in a few minutes as a buffer.

6. Send the agenda to team members early so each attendee has time to prepare for and understand the purpose of the meeting.

7. Add a reference section for helpful materials, such as previous meeting learnings, docs, recordings, and relevant resources.

8. Use the meeting agenda to track action items that come out of the meeting, as well as corresponding owners and due dates, so each meeting attendee knows what they’re responsible for and by when, in preparation for the next meeting.

Integrations and apps to use with your Asana template

Bring all your work together in one place by connecting your meeting agenda template to your favorite apps and using our built-in features.

Integrated features

1. List View. List View is a grid-style view that makes it easy to see all of your project’s information at a glance. Like a to-do list or a spreadsheet, List View displays all of your tasks at once so you can not only see task titles and due dates, but also view any relevant custom fields like Priority, Status, or more. Unlock effortless collaboration by giving your entire team visibility into who’s doing what by when.

2. Custom fields. Custom fields are the best way to tag, sort, and filter work. Create unique custom fields for any information you need to track—from priority and status to email or phone number. Use custom fields to sort and schedule your to-dos so you know what to work on first. Plus, share custom fields across tasks and projects to ensure consistency across your organization.

3. Subtasks. Sometimes a to-do is too big to capture in one task. If a task has more than one contributor, a broad due date, or stakeholders that need to review and approve before it can go live, subtasks can help. Subtasks are a powerful way to distribute work and split tasks into individual components—while keeping the small to-dos connected to the overarching context of the parent task. Break tasks into smaller components or capture the individual components of a multi-step process with subtasks.

4. Adding tasks to multiple projects. The nature of work is cross-functional. Teams need to be able to work effectively across departments. But if each department has their own filing system, work gets stalled and siloed. Asana makes it easy to track and manage tasks across multiple projects. This doesn't just reduce duplicative work and increase cross-team visibility. It also helps your team see tasks in context, view who’s working on what, and keep your team and tasks connected.

Recommended apps

1. Zoom. Asana and Zoom are partnering up to help teams have more purposeful and focused meetings. The Zoom + Asana integration makes it easy to prepare for meetings, hold actionable conversations, and access information once the call is over. Meetings begin in Asana, where shared meeting agendas provide visibility and context about what will be discussed. During the meeting, team members can quickly create tasks within Zoom, so details and action items don’t get lost. And once the meeting is over, the Zoom + Asana integration pulls meeting transcripts and recordings into Asana, so all collaborators and stakeholders can review the meeting as needed.

2. Clockwise. With the Clockwise + Asana integration, you can add Asana tasks as time blocks in your Google Calendar. The Clockwise + Asana integration allows you to specify the duration of tasks, when they happen, and whether Clockwise can automatically reschedule them. Add tasks to your calendar and make time to get work done.

3. Microsoft Teams. With the Microsoft Teams + Asana integration, you can search for and share the information you need without leaving Teams. Easily connect your Teams conversations to actionable items in Asana. Plus, create, assign, and view tasks during a Teams Meeting without needing to switch to your browser.

4. Vimeo. Text may get the point across, but written words lack tone, emotion, and expression. With video messaging in Asana, powered by Vimeo, you can give your team all the context they need, without having to schedule another meeting. Record short video messages of yourself, your screen—or both—then embed the videos in tasks, projects, messages, and comments to provide additional clarity and context. A transcript of the recording is automatically created by Asana, making it readable and searchable. Give feedback, ask questions, and assign tasks—all without leaving Asana.

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