Looking for Best Practice for Meeting Minutes and Case Management

Hi Arnon!

I would recommend using tasks for most actionable items.  The do not even have to have a project tied to them.  If you are in a meeting just open up the most relevant discussion group in social and you can assign tasks on the fly that stay in context of the conversation and topic. When the resource goes to their task list, they will see BOTH these ad hoc tasks and projectized tasks in one view.

Requests I would use for items that go through an approval process and may become tasks or be rejected. These could be change requests, new project requests, feature requests, etc.

Josh

We are looking to do the same thing.  However, we do not want to use tasks to capture Action Items that come out of meetings.  The reason is that our project templates are kept at a fairly high level and we don't want to put in the detailed tasks required for each milestone.  

I was originally thinking of using the 'Request' case to be able to add new Action Items for a specific project, but I want to know what others have done in this regard.  

I also would like to know what the best practice is for capturing meeting minutes in Clarizen.  Should we use the Notes functionality or is there a plugin that we could use?  I would like to be able to capture the minutes and have it automatically create the Request based on keywords in the minutes.

Thanks,

Farhan

Farhan, 

You can do this with the MOM (Minutes of Meeting) from the Apps Marketplace...

http://www.clarizen.com/appsmarketplace/item/meeting_minutes.html

What this allows you to do is take Meeting Minutes and then make them an "Action Item" by using the + symbol which allows you to create anything from a Task to a Project to a Issue or Request and more. I think this answers both of your questions but feel free to follow up if you have any further questions.

Sincerely, 

Boris.

Hi Boris,

Thanks for the info on MOM, which will help in tracking meeting minutes, but it doesn't help answer my question on what the best practice is for logging action items (that are not created as tasks).   It looks like the MOM app creates the action items as a Request so is that the best practice?

Also, is there a way to send the email to the MOM mailbox via a tracker ID / URL in the body of the email rather than based on the Subject Line, which needs to equal the Project name?  I want to be able to send an email that does not have the subject as the Project name, but something more descriptive, and still have that tracked in the project.

Thanks,

Farhan

Farhan, 

Action Items can be saved as To Do lists which are simply Tasks without a Parent Project (standalone Task). At the same time, this is not a Best Practice if you are trying to view the information within a Project and want it linked. If you do want them as part of the Project and do not mind them the information Roll Up (i.e. dates, hours, etc) then use Tasks at which ever level  of the project that you want them to be at. You can also use shortcuts. These are most commonly used practices. If these tasks are recurring tasks, consider the Recurring Tasks which are good for meetings and other Tasks that reoccur.

Email functions can be handled through either Interact or Custom Actions which would allow you to customize exactly what is shown in the Subject and Body. 

Sincerely, 

Boris