.jpg "Technology Friday")
I’ve been sitting on the iPad App, “Meeting Minutes,” waiting for an opportunity to use it at a real meeting. At the same time, I didn’t want to put it through its paces during a lengthy meeting just in case something went terribly wrong. As luck would have it, Meeting Minutes got its opportunity to perform at the NAALJ conference during a 9/12/12 meeting of the NAALJ Website Committee.
Meeting Minutes is from a small developer called, “Youxel,” and is currently in version 2.1, though I’m promised that version 2.2 is expected to be released in the next month or two. The app opens to a table with 12 empty places. Each place at the table has a microphone for each meeting attendee. One begins by creating a meeting. Click the + button to add a new meeting, which need to be named and may include a field for meeting location and description. There’s also a toggle button for creation of repeating meetings. Attendees are selected from your iPad’s Contacts app and when done, all the participants are seated around the table.
Meeting Minutes is started when the start button is clicked, automatically recording the time and date. The app also includes a few handy categories contained in a tabbed left panel that can be retracted or displayed as needed: Agenda, Text (i.e., meetings notes), Drawings, and Actions. The table has icons for each of these categories which can be tapped to instantly display it. The coolest feature is the Recording button. Once meeting is started, the record button may be activated to create an audio file of the meeting. During the recording, you may tap the microphone that corresponds to the attendee that is speaking. An ingenious feature, which during playback displays the name of the speaker. Once a meeting is completed, you open a tabbed right panel, and click on a Finished Meeting. My only complaint is the app’s inability to allow for full manual modification the start/end time in periods smaller than one hour. The developers assure me this will be corrected in the next release.
My committee meeting had five attendees, and was fairly short. I was able to keep copious typed notes of the meeting in the left panel Text (notes) box. When the meeting ended, I went to the Finished Meetings panel, completed/edited my notes, clicked on Docs, then “Open”, where another panel displayed. From there is was able to finalize my edits and to email an HTML formatted copy of my meeting minutes. To my colleagues surprise, I emailed the minutes out to them within a few minutes after the end of the meeting.
Future versions of this app have great potential. For now, it’s good, but it could be great. I highly recommend this app.
| Meeting Minutes Cost: $2.99Pros -Price. -Allows for identifying who is talking while in record mode. -Has an “Actions” box for typing in tasks to be follow-up on by meeting attendees – this can be included at the end of the minutes. -Can accommodate up to 20 meeting attendees. -Can store Word documents and PDF files associated with the meeting. -Minutes can be emailed to all attendees directly from app. Cons |
No consideration of any kind has been accepted for this review. The opinions expressed herein are solely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of NYSALJA.