12 meeting agenda templates you can download

Weeks with this kind of schedule can feel kind of long:

But you know what makes it feel even longer? Attending meetings that don’t have an agenda.

Being in a meeting without an agenda is like walking a trail without a map. You have no idea where the meeting will lead—or even when it’s supposed to end. The conversation topics twist and turn and, even if you do find some of it interesting, you’ll eventually question why you’re even there in the first place.

I’ve attended and scheduled hundreds of meetings: internal and external. I’ve scheduled live and online events, client meetings, team standups, 1:1 meetings, and a whole bunch more. And throughout them all there is one simple truth:

Meetings are better with agendas.

In this post, we’ll discuss the basics of a meeting agenda, why they’re so vital to modern work, and how to up your game when it comes to making and using agendas. We’ll even throw in a dozen meeting agenda templates for good measure (trust me, they’re very useful).

What is a meeting agenda?

A meeting agenda is a list of topics that are going to be discussed in that session.

Meeting agendas can be presented and used in different ways:

• Attached to a meeting invite (usually sent via email or through an app like Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook)

• Printed and distributed like a memo

• Powerpoint presentation slide displayed at the start of a session

Why is a meeting agenda important?

You want to know why meeting agendas are important? Let me put it like this: I wish I could automatically decline business meetings that don’t have an agenda.

Apart from the obvious reason of “it tells you what the meeting is going to be about,” meeting agendas are important in a few ways:

Agendas indicate value

I sometimes get thrown into meetings without a clear agenda because someone thinks my team needs to be made aware of certain updates. I’m grateful at being included, but at that point I don’t know if I’m going to be getting or giving any value.

If I receive an agenda prior to the meeting, I would be able to tell:

How valuable the meeting is. Face it, not all meetings are created equal. There’s a reason “could’ve been an email” is such a popular phrase in the business world—because it’s true. There are far too many wasteful and irrelevant meetings polluting the office, and an agenda will help identify a frivolous meeting right away.

How much value I can provide. The meeting might be important, but how much value would I be able to bring to it? Is there anything I can add to the discussion that nobody else can? Can I bring a unique perspective to the meeting? Do I have key information that others would need to know?

If none of the above is true, then I may be better off turning the meeting down.

Agendas help determine the attendee list

As I said before: productive meetings are all about value. Generally speaking, you only want to invite people who will either provide value to the discussion, or get value from the discussion—and no one else.

Despite this rule, however, I keep getting invites to “FYI” meetings that I could’ve avoided had I known what was being discussed. Instead, all I see is a vague meeting description and the guest list. I can’t do much with that—I can only err on the side of caution and attend anyway, on the off chance that it turns out to be important.

But in addition to excluding myself and others from the meeting, agendas also help identify who to include. If we’re having a marketing meeting about a new product launch, then it may be wise to extend an invitation to one of the engineers or product marketers. They could provide key information that others can’t.

Agendas help people prepare

Now that we know who specifically is attending the meeting, the agenda can also help give everyone an idea of what they need to prep. If, for example, one of the meeting topics is “review sales targets for Q3,” then the person responsible for that side of the business can pull numbers to present.

This can even help people who aren’t actually leading a discussion. Knowing the purpose of the meeting in advance can encourage people to research the topic in more detail so that they can contribute meaningfully to the discussion. Like if HR is presenting their hiring plans for the year, managers can look into their team’s workload prior to the meeting.

Agendas keep meetings on track

An agenda will help keep people honest to the goals of the meeting. Everyone’s clear about the direction of the discussion, and everyone can help keep the conversation relevant. This way, you’re not wasting people’s time.

If any discussion tangents go on for too long, you can always save it for the next meeting where that is the sole topic.

You have the option of adding “review meeting minutes” to the agenda, in case there are any leftover discussions that you want to close out.

Dialpad Ai Meetings has a real-time transcription feature that makes it easier to take meeting notes. This can help you keep track of open items that you can incorporate into the next meeting agenda.

12 free meeting agenda templates

Many meeting notes templates you'll find online look like they belong in the 80's—printed out on paper and distributed via office messenger (which isn’t ideal for a digital era). On the other hand, you have “free” meeting templates from software vendors that only work in-app. Great for their users, not so much for you.

In this post, you’ll get effective meeting agenda templates that you can use in your calendar invites and in your Powerpoint presentations. Below you will find the agenda format for calendar meeting invites. You can download the Powerpoint meeting agenda templates here.

On to the templates:

1. Standard business meeting agenda

This is a basic agenda that is very flexible and can be used for many different kinds of meetings.

Date: TBD

Time: TBD

Location/Link: TBD

Attendees:

Topic 1: Name of topic

• Subtopic 1

  • Discussion point 1

  • Discussion point 2

Topic 2: Name of topic

• Discussion point 1

• Discussion point 2

2. Timed business meeting agenda

Some meeting agendas include times to ensure that discussions adhere to a schedule.

Date: TBD

Time: TBD

Location/Link: TBD

Attendees:

10:00 AM: Meeting room opens

10:05 AM: Topic 1: Name of topic

10:20 AM: Topic 2: Name of topic

• Discussion point 1

• Discussion point 2

10:45 AM: Topic 3: Name of topic

11:00 AM: Meeting ends

3. Customer QBR meeting agenda

This meeting agenda is for when you or one of your customer success reps meets with a customer to do a retrospective on their account, and to find ways of addressing any concerns the customer may have so that they will have a higher chance of renewing.

Date: TBD

Time: TBD

Location/Link: TBD

Attendees:

Topic 1: Account review

• Metrics and KPIs

• Notable cases

Topic 2: Needs assessment

• What’s working?

• What’s not?

Topic 3: Action items

• Action items for both sides

4. Board meeting agenda

This board meeting agenda template is for when you are running a meeting for a board of directors. Generally, board members discuss issues critical to company operations and make decisions on how to move forward. Board meetings tend to be formal and more structured than typical team meetings.

Date: TBD

Time: TBD

Location/Link: TBD

Attendees:

Topic 1: Recent highlights

• Announcements

• Notes from previous meeting

• Project updates

• Challenges

Topic 2: Review finances

• Budget vs actual

• Expenditure plan

Topic 3: Strategy discussion

• Review goals

• Metrics

• Roadmap

Topic 4: Next steps

• Action items

5. Weekly team meeting agenda

Weekly meetings should be structured in such a way that each member of the entire team will have the chance to give their own updates.

Date: TBD

Time: TBD

Location/Link: TBD

Attendees:

Topic 1: Important team updates

Topic 2: Team member 1

• Project status updates

• Priorities

• Roadblocks

• Shoutouts

Topic 3: Team member 2

• Project status updates

• Priorities

• Roadblocks

• Shoutouts

Topic 4: Team member 3

• Project status updates

• Priorities

• Roadblocks

• Shoutouts

6. One-on-one meeting agenda

Even meetings with only two people can still benefit from having an agenda—especially if you’re discussing serious topics like performance targets and growth goals.

Date: TBD

Time: TBD

Location/Link: TBD

Attendees:

Topic 1: Project/task updates

• Update 1

• Update 2

Topic 2: Goals review and discussion

• Goal 1

• Goal 2

Topic 3: Career growth

Topic 4: What do you need?

7. Town hall / all-hands meeting agenda

Company town halls or all-hands meetings are big, complex events that require careful planning and lots of micro-management to ensure that things run smoothly. For these staff meetings, it’s best to have detailed agendas given far in advance to help stakeholders prepare.

Date: TBD

Time: TBD

Location/Link: TBD

Attendees:

1:00 PM: Meeting begins

1:05 PM: Company updates

1:20 PM: Department updates (Split into smaller agenda items if necessary)

• Sales

• Marketing

• Product development

• HR

1:45 PM: Q&A

2:00 PM: Meeting ends

8. Daily standup meeting agenda

Daily standup meetings are short yet jam-packed sessions that first began with Agile development teams, but have since become popular in business circles. Consider it a daily check-in instead of a formal meeting. In it, team members take turns answering a list of pre-determined questions in a round-robin fashion.

Date: TBD

Time: TBD

Location/Link: TBD

Attendees:

Topic 1: What did I accomplish yesterday?

Topic 2: What will I do today?

Topic 3: What is impeding my progress?

9. Sales meeting agenda

Sales team meetings usually cover updates on active accounts, sales process updates or changes, and shoutouts to those who contributed to successful deals.

Date: TBD

Time: TBD

Location/Link: TBD

Attendees:

Topic 1: Important team updates

Topic 2: Metrics review

• Qualified opportunities

• MRR

Topic 3: Pipeline updates

• Deals in motion

• Opportunities won

• Opportunities lost

Topic 4: Roadblocks

Topic 5: Shoutouts

10. Marketing team meeting agenda

Topics for this marketing team meeting agenda template can vary based on the specific sub-specialty of marketing your team handles. This template will be for a lean team that wears many hats.

Date: TBD

Time: TBD

Location/Link: TBD

Attendees:

Topic 1: Important team updates

Topic 2: Content marketing

• Metrics

  • Traffic

  • Downloads

• Project updates

Topic 3: SEO

• Metrics

  • Search engine rankings

  • Backlinks

• Project updates

Topic 4: Demand generation

• Metrics

  • Conversions

  • MQLs

  • SQLs

• Project updates

Topic 5: Roadblocks

11. Brainstorming meeting agenda

A brainstorming session is useful for generating new and creative ideas for tackling a problem, but only if it’s done properly. An unstructured session can become too chaotic and result in only a few loud voices being heard, instead of contributions from all participants.

Date: TBD

Time: TBD

Location/Link: TBD

Attendees:

Topic 1: Session objective

Topic 2: Brainstorming rules

• All ideas are okay

• Focus on the problem, not the solution

Topic 3: Prompts

• Prompt 1

• Prompt 2

Topic 4: Suggestion time!

Topic 5: Idea voting

Topic 6: Action items / follow-up

12. Project kickoff meeting agenda

This is a planning meeting done at the onset of a project in order to create and finalize a project management workflow. This meeting template can be adapted to sprint planning or to develop a more formal waterfall-style project plan.

Date: TBD

Time: TBD

Location/Link: TBD

Attendees:

Topic 1: Project background/rationale

Topic 2: Project scope

Topic 3: Project timeline

Topic 4: Resources

• Manpower

• Budget

• Technical resources

Topic 5: Project roles

Topic 6: Additional considerations

4 meeting agenda best practices

Over hosting and attending many meetings over my career, I’ve built up a long list of meeting agenda best practices that I hope will help you make yours more effective:

1. Send the agenda with lots of lead time

One of my biggest pet peeves is sending the agenda right before the meeting. Such timing doesn’t allow you to prepare properly for the meeting; nor does it give enough time to include anyone on your team who may need to attend.

My own rule of thumb is to send meeting agendas at least 48 hours in advance. That should give plenty of time for people to read the agenda and prep their talking points and share any docs.

If you’re hosting the meeting virtually, don’t forget to include a link to the meeting room (it sounds basic, but you’d be surprised how often that happens).

Dialpad’s Google Calendar integration helps make that process easier. You can add the Dialpad virtual conference room info to the calendar natively (just pick Dialpad from the dropdown menu), and attendees will be able to join the meeting directly from the calendar invite no matter what device they’re on:

2. Don’t linger on an agenda item

The agenda is there to keep the meeting on point. As I said before, any discussions that run long should be spun into an entirely different session.

That’s why I’m a big fan of agendas with time stamps. Time stamps let you know when the time for the current discussion is up and when the facilitator should move things to the next agenda item.

Dialpad Ai Meetings has a handy meeting clock that helps remind participants of the time. It’s easy to see and even changes color based on how much time is left—or how much you’ve gone over.

3. Don’t try to boil the ocean in one meeting

If you want to avoid running long, don’t pack your meeting agenda with every discussion point under the sun.

Your (and everyone else’s) time is valuable, and so keep discussion points to the ones that would benefit best from a group discussion and is the most urgent/important.

It might also help to set an overall objective or outcome for the meeting as a “theme,” and then sticking to that theme when putting together the agenda.

Side conversations will inevitably happen, and that’s okay as long as they don’t get out of hand. If you’re running a virtual meeting in a platform like Dialpad, every meeting room will have in-meeting chat where you can have side conversations, ask questions, or drop in links:

4. Be clear on who’s needed—and who’s not

Even though you should always keep meeting participants to as few people as possible, there will be times when it would actually be good to include extra people. But leave that choice up to them.

When building the guest list for the meeting, mark all non-essential meeting attendees as “optional” and include the agenda in the invite. That way, they can judge for themselves whether or not the meeting would be a good use of their time.

Run your meetings right with these meeting agenda templates

The agenda can determine the success of your meeting—even before the meeting actually begins.

By sending the agenda in advance, you’ll be able to tell others what to expect, alert people as to who is necessary (and isn’t), and help people prepare for the discussion. During the meeting, you can use the agenda to keep conversations focused and minimize distractions to protect people’s valuable time.

By using these key principles, you will make your agendas (and therefore your meetings) more effective.