If your team’s virtual meetings feel like a blur of “who’s doing what?” and forgotten follow-ups, you’re not alone. Keeping track of action items and making sure they actually get done is tough—especially when everyone’s remote. This guide is for anyone who wants to stop letting stuff slip through the cracks, and start running meetings where tasks actually get assigned and finished. We’re going deep on how to use Vowel, a meeting tool that’s built for capturing action items as you go.
Why Use Vowel for Action Items?
Let’s be straight: you don’t need another meeting tool just for the sake of it. But Vowel actually does a few things really well if your goal is getting clear on next steps:
- Live note-taking: Everyone can see and add action items in real time, not just the person “taking minutes.”
- Automatic transcripts: No more “Wait, what did we say we’d do?” moments. You can go back and check.
- Action item tracking: Assign tasks on the spot, not after the fact.
- Searchable history: If you forget what was assigned last week, just search for it.
Does it replace your project management tool? No, and it shouldn’t. But it’s great at capturing the tasks that come up during the meeting, while they’re still fresh.
Step 1: Set Up Vowel and Prep Your Meeting
You can’t capture action items if your meeting setup is a mess. Here’s how to get started:
- Create a Vowel account and set up your workspace.
- Sign up and add your team. Don’t overthink this—invite anyone who needs to be in meetings.
- Schedule your meeting in Vowel.
- You can invite guests, add a meeting title, and set an agenda.
- Add an agenda (optional, but recommended).
- Even if it’s just rough bullet points, jot down what you need to cover. This makes it easier to slot in action items later.
Pro tip: If your team is new to Vowel, take 5 minutes at the top of your meeting to show where the notes and action items live. It’ll save you headaches later.
Step 2: Capture Action Items in Real Time
The best time to capture action items is while people are talking, not after the meeting when everyone’s memory is fuzzy. Here’s how to do it:
- Use the Notes panel for action items.
- Vowel’s Notes panel is visible to everyone. You can type directly in, or assign someone to be the “scribe”—but honestly, anyone should feel free to add.
- Use the @mention to assign tasks.
- Type “@” and a team member’s name to assign the action item. This makes it clear who owns what.
- Example:
@Sasha will send the updated deck by Friday. - Keep it specific.
- Vague tasks (“Follow up on client feedback”) just get ignored. Add what, who, and when.
- Bad: “Update the doc.”
- Good: “@Jay will update the marketing doc with the new pricing by end of day Wednesday.”
What works:
- Assigning tasks by name in real time means there’s no confusion later.
- Keeping notes visible helps everyone stay on the same page.
What to ignore:
- Don’t bother making action items for everything. If it’s something you know your team will just do, skip it. Focus on things that might otherwise get forgotten.
Step 3: Assign Tasks Without Fuss
Having a list of action items is great, but unless tasks are assigned, they tend to die in the notes. Here’s how to make sure things actually get done:
- Assign during the meeting.
- Don’t wait until after. It’s way easier to clarify who owns what while everyone’s still there.
- Clarify deadlines.
- If it’s not urgent, say so. If it is, set a date. You don’t need to be a taskmaster, but “ASAP” means nothing.
- Use the action items view.
- After the meeting, Vowel gives you a neat list of all action items, who owns them, and (if you added one) the due date.
Pro tip: If you’re the meeting host, do a quick “action item round-up” before you end. Just read through the list—“Sasha’s sending the deck, Jay’s updating the doc…”—and confirm everyone’s clear. Takes 2 minutes, saves 10 follow-up emails.
Step 4: Follow Up After the Meeting
Capturing action items is half the battle. The other half is making sure they don’t disappear. Here’s what’s actually useful:
- Send the meeting summary automatically.
- Vowel can email everyone the notes, transcript, and action items. No more copying and pasting.
- Check the action items tab.
- All assigned tasks live here, so you don’t need to hunt through transcripts or raw notes.
- Sync with your project management tool (if you use one).
- Vowel isn’t a full-blown task manager. If you track work in Asana, Jira, Trello, etc., just copy over the action items that matter. Don’t bother trying to automate everything unless you really need to.
What works:
- Quick follow-ups keep things moving.
- Having a single list of action items avoids “I thought you were doing it” confusion.
What doesn’t:
- Relying on memory or Slack threads to remember tasks. Just use the summary.
Step 5: Review and Iterate
No one gets this perfect from day one. The goal isn’t to create the fanciest “action item workflow”—it’s to actually get stuff done and stop losing tasks between meetings.
- Check in on action items at your next meeting.
- Pull up last week’s list. What’s done? What slipped? No shaming—just adjust your process.
- Make it a habit.
- The first few meetings might feel clunky. That’s normal. As long as you’re capturing and assigning tasks, you’re ahead of most teams.
- Ignore the bells and whistles.
- Vowel has other features—AI summaries, topic detection, etc. Use them if they help, but don’t let them distract from the basics.
Honest Pros and Cons
To keep it real, here’s what Vowel does well for capturing action items—and where it comes up short:
What’s great: - Fast, collaborative note-taking. - Clear action item assignment (with @mentions). - Searchable transcripts and notes. - Automatic summaries right after meetings.
What’s not: - Not a replacement for real project management tools. - Some integrations are still basic; you may need to copy/paste tasks. - If people don’t look at the notes, nothing gets done—Vowel doesn’t force anyone to follow up.
Wrapping Up: Keep It Simple, Iterate As You Go
You don’t need a complicated system—just a habit of capturing and assigning tasks as you talk. Vowel makes the basics easy, but no tool is magic. Focus on being clear about who’s doing what, and check in at the start of every meeting until it becomes routine. If something’s not working, tweak your approach. Don’t chase productivity hacks—just keep it simple, and you’ll actually get things done.