How to assign tasks to people after a meeting, and know they got done

The meeting ended well. Everyone agreed what happens next. Then the notes went into a shared folder, and a week later the same three tasks come up again, because each person assumed the list was for someone else.

Writing a name next to a task is only half of assigning it. The other half is making sure it reaches that person, somewhere they already look, and that you can tell when it is done. Here is how to do both in a couple of minutes after the call.

Assigning to-dos to teammates and sending notes to everyone who was there come with trepil’s team workspaces. This is how they work.

Before you start: check the names

When you press Stop, trepil writes the notes and ends them with a checklist of who does what, taken from what was said. It knows who was there from the calendar invite and from the voices on the call.

Give the checklist one quick read:

• Is every line one task? Split anything that is really two.
• Does every line have one name? Not “we” or “the team”.
• Is the name right? If a voice was matched to the wrong person, click the name in the transcript and fix it. trepil remembers it for next time.

If you want more on getting the list itself right, read how to structure your meeting checklists.

Step 1: Click the name in the to-do

In the checklist, the names of people from the meeting show up as chips. Click one, for example Emma in “Emma fixes the two crash reports”, and her card opens.

The card shows her name and email, taken from the invite. If the email is missing, because she joined from a link someone forwarded, add it here. trepil keeps it for her next meeting.

Step 2: Assign this to-do

On the card, under To-do, click Assign this to-do. That’s it. The task now belongs to Emma:

• It shows up in her My to-dos, the list in trepil’s sidebar of everything people have given her, whichever meeting it came from.
• She can open your note from it, so she sees the context: what was said, and the line in the transcript the task came from.
• Your card now reads “Assigned to Emma”. If it should be someone else, open their card and click Give to them instead, or Unassign.

Do the same for each line. On a typical meeting that is four or five clicks.

Step 3: Send the notes, so they hear about it

Assigning puts the task in the owner’s list. To make sure they know it is there, send them the notes. On the same card, click Share, or use Share with attendees to send the notes to everyone from the meeting at once.

Each person gets an email with a link to the note, and it appears under Shared with you in their trepil. People who don’t use trepil yet can open it for free with that link, and their to-dos are waiting when they do. Only the notes go out, never the recording or the full transcript.

The card then tells you whether they have opened it: “Shared with them. Not opened yet.” or “They’ve opened it.”

Step 4: Watch it get ticked

When Emma finishes, she ticks the to-do in My to-dos. On your note, her card shows Assigned to Emma · Done. You don’t need to ask in the next meeting; you can see it before you get there.

Add an @ time to the line, such as @fri, and you also get a reminder when it is due, so you know to check on anything still open.

If your team works in another tool

Some teams track work in Linear, or talk about it in Slack. Sending a meeting’s notes and its to-dos straight into tools like these is on the way. Until then, export the note as Markdown, PDF or Word, or share it as a link, and put it where your team already looks. The point is the same: the task should land where its owner will see it tomorrow morning, not in a folder they have to remember to open.

The two-minute habit

After every meeting with other people in it:

1. Read the checklist. One task, one name, per line.
2. Click each name and assign the to-do.
3. Share the notes with the people in it.

That is it. Nobody has to wonder whether a task was theirs, and nobody has to chase in the next meeting what they could have seen was done.