When you have a lot of work to do, it's easy to forget to add your update to a daily check-in, or prompt other teammates to do the same. Fellow makes this easy and automated with sections. These sections are a smart solution that automatically reminds the right people to contribute, sets the stage for a productive meeting and takes the follow up off of the meeting organizer.
We'll cover these questions in this overview article:
What are sections?
Sections are special headers in a meeting note for parts of an agenda that need to be filled out by a meeting participant in advance of the meeting. This encourages meeting preparation, makes it easy to know what to prepare, and can remind participants who may have forgotten. All this together can set your team up for a successful meeting.
Types of sections
When you go to add a section to a note, you'll see different types of sections:
Section Heading 1: A large heading that can be configured with different templates
Section Heading 2: A medium section heading that can be configured with different templates
Section (Talking Points): A large heading that has the talking points template applied. Users will just need to click on the plus button in order to contribute to the section.
Section (Action Items): A large heading that has the action items template applied. Users will just need to click on the plus button in order to contribute to the section.
All types of sections can be outfitted with automations. When an automation is added, the heading with have a purple lightning bolt (⚡️) next to it.
When to use sections?
Sections can be used whenever there is a part of the meeting agenda that needs to have input for the participants in advance of a meeting. Common use cases include daily stand-ups, sales huddles, etc.
Why use sections?
Sections can help both meeting organizers and participants. For meeting organizers, having sections in an agenda reduces the need to manually remind participants to contribute to the agenda before the meeting starts. Instead of sending Slack messages, or emails, Fellow's sections feature does the prompting for you.
For meeting participants, sections makes it easy for you to remember what meetings you need to contribute, and what content needs to be contributed. The formatting is taken care of and you won't be in the awkward position of being the only one who forgot to add their update.
What types of meetings?
Potential use cases:
A team meeting, such as a standup or huddle, where each participant is expected to write and share a status update (sync or async)
All-hands where the meeting organizer is sourcing questions from the audience in advance and during the meeting
Team retrospective where the meeting organizer is sourcing input from the team on what went well and what can be improved
Who can add sections?
Most often, sections will be added by the meeting organizer or someone else who is in charge of the general format of a meeting. But in reality all meeting participants should be able to insert sections.