Using the Meetings Tool

How to start, join, and run meetings with Ninety.

Written by Tommy Mains

Updated at November 7th, 2024

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Table of Contents

Meetings Tool Basics Editing and Customizing Agendas Meetings Best Practices Additional Resources

The Meetings tool powers all your organization's team meetings. This article explains how to use this tool's functions, including:

  • How to start a meeting
  • How to join a meeting in progress
  • What a meeting's rating means
  • What's included in the recap email
  • How to observe a previous meeting's recap
  • Advice on meeting best practices

📖 Are you new to our Meetings tool? Check out our introduction article here.

If you're in more than one team in Ninety, be sure to choose the correct team from the dropdown.

 

 

Meetings Tool Basics

Our Meetings tool guides your teams through the essential steps needed to align on priorities, solve Issues, and document next steps.

Any user in a meeting can create items, mark items complete, or take notes. The agenda timer sticks with the user who started the meeting.

Click through the tabs below to learn the basic functions of the tool.

Start a Meeting

To start a meeting:

  1. Click Meetings from the left navigation.
  2. Choose a team from the dropdown.
  3. Click Start a Meeting.
  4. Select an agenda from the popup to launch the meeting.

Your most recently used agendas appear first, followed by a list of our default agendas and then any created or customized agendas.

 

 

What You Can Do During a Meeting

After starting or joining a meeting, users can: 

  • Click any agenda item
  • Use the Create button
  • Pause the meeting timer
  • Take notes (click Show Notes on the bottom left corner)
  • Click View Tool to access any tool in Ninety
  • Contact our chat support
 
 

Join a Meeting

To join a meeting in progress, click Meetings > Join Meeting. As long as you have the correct team selected from the dropdown, you'll be able to join your team's meeting to interact with the tools in real-time, take notes, and follow along with the presenter.

The facilitator controls the meeting for the team, so when the they end the meeting, all attendees receive a notification that the meeting has ended. The presenter sees Finish at the bottom of the screen instead of the Leave Meeting option.

 

 

Meeting Conclusion Cue

When the presenter moves to the Conclude section, everyone who has joined the meeting receives a cue to join that section of the meeting as well. 

 
 

Meeting Ratings

During the Conclude step, team members are asked to provide their rating for the meeting on a 10-point scale.

Meetings deserve a 10 when they:

  • Start and end on time
  • Include prepared attendees
  • Hold open and honest discussions
  • Solve Issues
  • Document needed action items

Team members should be trusted to reduce their rating when meetings aren't held to these standards. When someone rates a meeting as an “8” or lower, we recommend having a quick discussion with them about how the next meeting can be improved.

 
 

Recap Email

All team members with a paid license receive a recap email after a meeting's conclusion. Users can opt-out by unchecking Send Meeting Recap Email on the Conclude page.

The recap email includes:

  • Headlines read
  • Rocks created
  • To-Dos created
  • Issues solved
  • Issues metrics
  • Meeting notes
  • Attachments
  • Ratings by team member
  • Section durations (time spent per agenda item)

Team members can also access and edit meeting recap information in the Meeting History section of the Meetings tool.

 
 

History

Easily access a recap of every team meeting with the Meetings tool. 

To review a previous meeting, click on Past Meetings tab. This page lists all your team's previous meetings, which can be filtered by type and team using dropdowns. Click on a meeting's row to open its details card which recaps the following information:

  • Headlines read
  • Rocks created
  • To-Dos created
  • Issues solved
  • Issues metrics
  • Meeting notes
  • Attachments
  • Ratings by team member
  • Section durations (time spent per agenda item)

Click the download button to export the visible meetings history into a csv file.

Read our article, Issues Dashboard, to learn how to set Issue-solving goals for your team's meetings.

 
 

 

Editing and Customizing Agendas

Our default meeting agendas are designed to be effective for most teams in most situations, but we want you to have full control over adding custom sections and creating your own agendas.

Users with the role of manager and higher can create and edit agendas. Read our article, Create and Customize Your Meeting Agendas, to learn how.

 

Meetings Best Practices

Whether your team is meeting remotely, in-person, or a hybrid combination, there are a few steps you can take to have more productive meetings:

  • Update your items before the meeting — Each team member should update their To-Dos, Rocks, Milestones, Issues, and KPIs before the meeting starts so the team can focus on aligning and solving Issues with their time together.
  • Prioritize and Rank Your Issues — Adding well-described Issues to your team's list before your meeting begins keeps the meeting flowing. To understand which Issues to discuss first, we have several ways of assigning priority to each one. Read our article, Prioritizing and Ranking Issues to learn more.
  • Designate one facilitator and one scribe — The facilitator leads the meeting by explaining objectives, moderating discussions, and advancing the agenda. The scribe typically runs the software itself to take notes, complete items, and create additional items as needed.

 

Additional Resources

We've written a lot about meetings. Check out the following resources to explore our teachings:

 
meeting tool meetings basics join meeting start meeting recap email meeting history meeting best practices meeting resources

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