Meetings are an essential part of every business. But we all can agree that unproductive meetings wasting time and money are frustrating.
Fortunately, a simple solution can make a world of difference – using an agenda!
Structured meeting agendas align attendees, drive accountability, and optimize efficiency. This article will explore the value of agendas and review the 7 best templates to elevate your meetings.
Why You Need Meeting Agendas
Let‘s start with the basics – what are meeting agendas and why are they integral to productivity?
A meeting agenda outlines the purpose, topics, timing, and assignments for a meeting. It sets clear expectations so attendees can prepare and participate thoughtfully.
Well-crafted agendas have many benefits:
Aligns attendees – An agenda gets everyone on the same page about objectives and roles. This facilitates valuable discussions.
Optimizes time – By designating topics and timers, agendas keep meetings concise. Sticking to an agenda avoids tangent conversations.
Drives accountability – Assigning action items ensures meetings drive outcomes. Reviewing actions at the start keeps teams accountable.
Focuses conversations – Listing key discussion points prevents meetings from going off-track.
Enables preparation – Sharing pre-reads means attendees can develop informed perspectives.
Creates transparency – Agendas reduce confusion about leadership priorities and plans.
Clearly, agendas are fundamental to productive sessions. But formatting effective agendas from scratch takes significant effort.
This is where templates come in…
Benefits of Using Agenda Templates
Agenda templates provide boilerplate structures for common meeting types. Leveraging templates has many advantages:
Timesaving – Well-designed templates remove the busywork of formatting agendas. Simply plug in your details.
Expertly crafted – Templates created by specialists have refined language and best practices baked in.
Promotes consistency – Using the same templates repeatedly develops organizational consistency. Teams know what to expect.
Flexible foundations – Templates still offer customizability for your objectives, topics, times, etc.
Applicable insights – Many templates include tips and examples for getting the most out of sessions.
Facilitates adoption – Making great agendas effortless increases usage across an organization.
The top templates provide much more than just structures. Collaborative editing, attachments, analytics, and integrations streamline management at scale.
Now let‘s explore the 7 best agenda templates available in 2023.
1. Hugo – Best Overall Meeting Templates
Hugo is my recommendation for the best overall meeting templates. With over 80 free templates and linked notes, Hugo has an unrivaled offering.
Template categories cover all common meeting types – daily standups, brainstorms, retrospectives, workshops, and more. They work seamlessly across devices since Hugo lives natively in the cloud.
Standout aspects include:
Ease of use – Hugo‘s clean, intuitive interface makes applying templates simple. And they fully integrate with tools like Google Workspace, Office 365, and Zoom.
Collaboration – Teams can co-edit agenda docs with suggesting commenting and tasks to assign actions.
Attachments – Relevant presentations, documents, etc. can be attached directly inside of agendas.
Analytics – Managers gain visibility into meeting activity levels and health scores.
Hugo offers a free forever tier. The Pro plan unlocks administrative controls, unlimited storage, and priority support for $10 per member/month.
Ideal for – All companies seeking consistency across meetings. Perfect for remote/hybrid teams.
Pros
- Huge template library
- Feature-packed
- Free version available
- Intuitive editor
Cons
- No offline access
2. Canva – Best Graphically Designed Templates
If you want beautifully designed and visually engaging agenda templates, Canva is a fantastic choice.
With eye-catching layouts featuring modern iconography and typography, Canva‘s templates are on-brand for contemporary companies. They offer an easy way to align meetings with overall aesthetic.
Top features of Canva‘s agenda templates include:
Graphic design expertise – As an industry leader in design and publishing, Canva‘s templates are professionally crafted.
Branding capabilities – Easily match company or event branding by modifying colors, fonts, and adding logos.
Presentation integration – Agenda templates pair perfectly with Canva‘s polished presentation templates.
Simple editing – Canva‘s drag-and-drop editor makes revisions seamless.
Downloadability – Export agendas as images, PDFs, presentations, and more.
Free and paid tiers – Core templates are free. A Pro subscription includes premium templates, Brand Kits, image libraries and more.
If visual appeal is important for your meetings and brand, Canva hits the mark.
Ideal for – Companies prioritizing stylistic agendas aligned with branding. Teams that frequently present or publish notes.
Pros
- Visually impressive designs
- Branding customization
- Simple drag-and-drop editor
- Downloadable/exportable
Cons
- Less focus on deep collaboration or productivity features
3. Asana – Best For Task Management
Well-known project management platform Asana also offers useful agenda templates. They focus primarily on driving assigned actions.
Asana integrates tasks from agendas directly into its workflow automation engine. This connects meetings and objectives to broader goals and strategy activation.
Why Asana leads for task-driven meetings:
Clarified responsibilities – Owners and due dates are pre-defined for action items.
Progress visibility – Manager dashboards centralize views of critical initiatives.
Automations – Rules trigger notifications or follow-ups related to overdue tasks.
Project alignment – Tasks roll up into broader project plans and roadmaps.
Flexible frameworks – Templates artfully balance structure with custom sections.
Asana offers a free tier for up to 15 users. Paid tiers unlock features like goal setting, workload management, custom fields and more.
Ideal for – Managers seeking to tightly align meetings, tasks, and strategic projects. Distributed teams.
Pros
- Structured action items
- Workflow automation
- Manager visibility
- Scalable
Cons
- Less emphasis on real-time collaboration
Browse Asana‘s Meeting Templates
4. Smartsheet – Best For Reporting
Smartsheet takes a dashboard-driven approach to agenda templates for enhanced visibility.
Robust reporting rolls up meeting data like attendance, topics covered, actions, and statuses across calendars, metrics, and cards.
Meeting organizers love Smartsheet for:
Agenda dashboards – Consolidated views of critical meeting details in calendar and card formats.
Portfolio rollups – Hierarchy dashboards to view status across multiple agenda series or groups.
Automated scheduling – Easily coordinate finding best times and locations for recurring meetings.
Robust integrations – Tie into essential platforms like Slack, Jira, Salesforce and more.
Calculation capabilities – Measure meeting OKRs or satisfaction with formulas.
Smartsheet offers a full-featured free trial. Paid plans start at $7 per user/month billed annually.
Ideal for – Large and regulated enterprises seeking consolidated visibility. ROI-driven cultures.
Pros
- Dashboards and rollups
- Automated scheduling
- Advanced integrations
- Formulas
Cons
- Steeper learning curve
Get Started with Smartsheet Meeting Agendas
5. Trello – Best For Remote Collaboration
Trello facilitates seamless remote collaboration with card-based agenda templates.
Teams can jointly prioritize topics, share research, create checklists, and more in real-time during the meeting. Comments and due dates keep tasks on track.
Trello empowers distributed meetings through:
Card prioritization – Easily move topics to reflect real-time priority changes during the meeting.
Team collaboration – All attendees can add comments, attachments, due dates etc. in the agenda cards.
Checklist progress – Visually mark action progress during and after the meeting.
Enhanced transparency – Every contributor sees real-time changes during the meeting.
Free forever – Trello‘s incredibly generous free tier supports unlimited members, boards, cards, lists, comments and attachments.
Trello is fantastic for agile or scrappy teams that need to dynamically reprioritize.
Ideal for – Distributed teams needing smooth collaboration. Startups embracing agile meeting practices.
Pros
- Card-based flexibility
- Optimized for real-time changes
- Feature-rich free tier
- Simple tools
Cons
- Less structure than typical agendas
Get Trello‘s Meeting Agenda Template
6. Miro – Best Brainstorming Templates
Collaborative whiteboard platform Miro stands out for its stellar brainstorming and workshop formats.
Visually organizing notes, ideas, and action items mirrors natural ideation cadences. Category tags and voting streamline prioritization.
Miro builds engagement through:
Diverse frameworks – Template structures flexibly guide ideation, planning, retrospectives, and more.
Visual organization – Intuitively cluster notes and concepts spatially.
Democratic tagging – Everyone can digitally "vote" on priority topics with icons and labels.
Whiteboard versatility – Embed images, links, docs, videos, and drawings for multimedia notes.
Timeboxing – Use handy timers to keep activities focused.
Miro offers free, standard, and business subscription tiers suitable for all team sizes.
Ideal for – Retrospectives, brainstorms, workshops, design sprints, and creative sessions.
Pros
- Visual collaboration
- Whiteboard versatility
- Engaging templates
- Voting mechanisms
Cons
- Less rigid structure
7. Atlassian Confluence – Best For Company Alignment
Atlassian Confluence dominates the space of company-wide status updates and town halls.
The all hands meeting agenda framework aligns executives, updates, Q&As, and breakouts into logical flows. Great for inspirational kickoffs or closings too!
Atlassian Confluence facilitates alignment through:
Strategic focus – Sections prompt leadership strategy explanations and business goal transparency.
Q&A inclusion – Dedicated space for attendee questions, concerns, and clarifications.
Consistent cadences – Format lends itself well to impactful quarterly, monthly, or weekly rhythms.
Supplemental assets – Presentations, documents can be attached within pages.
Wider integrations – As part of the Atlassian ecosystem, Confluence links to Jira, Trello, and beyond.
Teamwork capabilities – Robust permissions, assignments, and workflows for greater visibility.
Atlassian offers a free tier. Standard ($5 per user/month) and Premium ($10 per user/month) layers add security, automation and advanced integrations.
Ideal for – Larger companies seeking alignment. Teams with distributed workforces. Governance-minded cultures.
Pros
- Strategic focus
- Q&A mechanisms
- permissions and workflows
- Atlassian ecosystem
Cons
- Less real-time collaboration
Use Atlassian‘s All Hands Meeting Template
Choose the Best Agenda Template For You
The right agenda template drives clarity, participation, and action that transform meeting outcomes.
When selecting templates, first reflect on your team‘s unique pain points and priority areas.
- Do you need smoother collaboration for distributed attendees?
- Are meetings disconnected from strategic direction and follow-through?
- Could visual organization and whiteboarding foster creativity?
The templates featured above represent some of the best and highest-rated options available from both specialist providers and broader work management platforms.
Many offer free versions and trials perfect for first tests. Don‘t be afraid to experiment!
Just remember – an agenda‘s fundamental purpose remains keeping meetings compact, aligned, participatory, and driving towards key results.
The rest is just details.
With the right agenda template powering your team‘s workflows, you‘ll be primed to reach ambitious goals collaboratively in 2023.
What meeting productivity questions do you have? The comments section is open for discussions!
