Using the Meetings Tool

How to start, join, and run meetings with Ninety.

Written by Kris Snyder

Updated at January 31st, 2025

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Table of Contents

Ninety's Meetings Tool for EOS® Learn from an EOS Professional Implementer® Meetings Tool Basics User Roles and Permissions Editing and Customizing Agendas Meetings Best Practices Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Ninety's Meetings Tool for EOS®

The Meetings tool powers all your organization's team meetings. This article explains how to use Ninety's Meetings tool while using the Entrepreneurial Operating System®. 

Learn from an EOS Professional Implementer®

Our CRO, Kris Snyder, is also a practicing EOS Professional Implementer®. Read his guide for leading world-class Level 10 Meetings™ by clicking below.

Learn More

 

 

Meetings Tool Basics

Our Meetings tool guides your teams through the essential steps needed to align on priorities, solve Issues, and document the next steps.

Any user in the meeting can create items, mark items complete, or take notes. Only the user who started the meeting can end it and only their progress through the agenda is timed.

Click through the tabs below to learn the basic functions of the tool.

Start a Meeting

To start a meeting:

  1. Click Meetings from the left navigation.
  2. Choose a team from the dropdown.
  3. Click Start a Meeting.
  4. Select an agenda from the popup to launch the meeting.

Your most recently used agendas appear first, followed by a list of our default agendas and then any created or customized agendas.

 

 

What You Can Do During a Meeting

After starting or joining a meeting, users can: 

  • Click any agenda item
  • Use the Create button
  • Pause the meeting timer
  • Take notes (click Show Notes on the bottom left corner)
  • Click View Tool to access any tool in Ninety
  • Contact our chat support

 

Scheduling a Meeting

Use the Upcoming page in the Meetings tool to start, join, or schedule a team meeting. 

To schedule a single or repeating meeting for your team:

  1. Click Meetings from the left navigation.
  2. Select the intended team from the Team dropdown.
  3. Click Schedule a Meeting.
  4. Choose an agenda from the Select Agenda dropdown.
  5. Click the calendar icon to select a meeting date.
  6. Enter the start time for the meeting based on your time zone in Ninety.
  7. (Optional) Choose when to repeat the meeting from the Repeating Meeting Cadence dropdown.
  8. (Optional) Choose a facilitator and scribe from the respective dropdowns.
  9. Click Save.

📖 Learn more here.

 
 

Join a Meeting

To join a meeting in progress, click Meetings > Join Meeting. As long as you have the correct team selected from the dropdown, you'll be able to join your team meeting to interact with the tools in real time, take notes, and follow along with the presenter.

The presenter controls the meeting for the team, so when the presenter ends the meeting, all attendees receive a notification that the meeting has ended. The presenter sees Finish at the bottom of the screen instead of the Leave Meeting option.

After joining a meeting, any licensed user can click Claim Presenter toward the top right of the screen to  guide the flow of the meeting. After clicking, the user will confirm they want to become the meeting's presenter. All meeting participants will be notified when the presenter changes.

During the meeting, the Presenter can be identified by the microphone icon overlayed on a user profile image toward the top of the page.

 

Meeting Conclusion Cue

When the presenter moves to the Conclude section, everyone who has joined the meeting receives a cue to join that section of the meeting as well. 

 
 

Meeting Ratings

During the Conclude step, team members are asked to provide their rating for the meeting on a 10-point scale.

Meetings deserve a 10 when they:

  • Start and end on time
  • Include prepared attendees
  • Hold open and honest discussions
  • Solve Issues
  • Document needed action items

Team members should be trusted to reduce their rating when meetings aren't held to these standards. When someone rates a meeting as an “8” or lower, we recommend having a quick discussion with them about how the next meeting can be improved.

 
 

Recap Email

All team members with a paid license receive a recap email after a meeting's conclusion. Users can opt out by unchecking Send Meeting Recap Email on the Conclude page.

The recap email includes:

  • Headlines read
  • Rocks created
  • To-Dos created
  • Issues solved
  • Issues metrics
  • Meeting notes
  • Attachments
  • Ratings by team member
  • Section durations (time spent per agenda item)

Team members can also access and edit meeting recap information in the Meeting History section of the Meetings tool.

 
 

History

Easily access a recap of every team meeting with the Meetings tool. 

To review a previous meeting, click on Past Meetings tab. This page lists all your team's previous meetings, which can be filtered by type and team using dropdowns. Click on a meeting's row to open its details card which recaps the following information:

  • Headlines read
  • Rocks created
  • To-Dos created
  • Issues solved
  • Issues metrics
  • Meeting notes
  • Attachments
  • Ratings by team member
  • Section durations (time spent per agenda item)

Click the download button to export the visible meetings history into a csv file.

 
 

 

User Roles and Permissions

View what each user role can access here.

 

 

Editing and Customizing Agendas

Our default meeting agendas are designed to be effective for most teams, but we want you to have full control over adding custom sections and creating your own agendas.

Users with the role of manager and higher can create and edit agendas. Read our article, Create and Customize Your Meeting Agendas, to learn how.

 

Meetings Best Practices

Whether your team is meeting remotely, in-person, or a hybrid combination, there are a few steps you can take to have more productive meetings:

  • Update your items before the meeting — Each team member should update their ®, Rocks, Milestones, Issues, and KPIs before the meeting starts so the team can focus on aligning and solving Issues with their time together.
  • Prioritize and Rank Your Issues — Adding well-described Issues to your team's list before your meeting begins keeps the meeting flowing. To understand which Issues to discuss first, we have several ways of assigning priority to each one. Read our article, Prioritizing and Ranking Issues to learn more.
  • Designate one facilitator and one scribe — The facilitator leads the meeting by explaining objectives, moderating discussions, and advancing the agenda. The scribe typically runs the software itself to take notes, complete items, and create additional items as needed.

 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Can teams run their own meetings and create different agendas?

Yes, each team can run a variety of meetings. In addition to our default agendas, teams can customize existing agendas or create a custom one — learn how here. 

Here are some common examples of custom meetings:

Weekly Touch Base

Department and team leaders often set up recurring meetings with their direct reports to discuss individual Issues, build a high-trust relationship, and coordinate professional development. Our goal is to power these meetings with our platform, which will allow for a customizable agenda, Issue lists, Measurable tracking, and more.

Leaders can create a customized agenda for these meetings to increase their effectiveness. For example, some touch base meetings may not benefit from reviewing their team's Scorecard, especially if the team as a whole reviewed it the day before or will review it the day after.

Project Teams

Project teams, often called Tiger teams, are formed to complete a specific, non-recurring task. These teams may benefit more from reviewing website analytics or a project management board than Measurables on a Scorecard, so customizing their agenda keeps them moving toward their goal.

 
 

Does Ninety record our meetings?

Ninety does not record any audio or video.

Our Meetings tool captures the following for recap emails:

  • Headlines and cascading messages covered
  • Issues solved
  • To-Dos created
  • Notes taken in the platform
  • Time spent in each agenda section
  • Meeting ratings

You'll need external tools to record the audio or video of your meeting.

 
 

Do we need to pay for every user who attends a meeting?

If you want team members to have access to Ninety and attend meetings for free, add them as users with the Observer user role. While Observers cannot be assigned items like To-Dos, Issues, Rocks, or KPIs in Ninety, this shouldn't stop you from keeping them involved in meetings and allowing them to view information you're sharing in Ninety.

📖 Learn more about adding users to teams here.

 
 

Will Observers receive the recap email from our team meeting?

No, Observers will not receive the meeting recap email.

 
 

What if I have multiple meetings started at the same time?

A small subset of our users may have had multiple meetings started on the same team in Ninety. To access all of the newest features in the Meetings tool, these users will need to delete or end  all of the in-progress meetings first.

 
 

How do I print the past meeting information?

To print or export to PDF the recap from a previous meeting held on Ninety:

  1. Click Meetings from the left navigation.
  2. Click the Past Meetings tab.
  3. Select a specific meeting.
  4. Press ctrl + P on your keyboard to use your browser's print screen function.
  5. Save the file as a PDF or choose a printer.

 

To  export the following information from all your team's selected meetings into a spreadheet, click the download button from the filters bar to export.

  • Date of the meeting
  • Time the meeting began
  • Agenda used
  • How long the meeting lasted
  • Who the facilitator was
  • The average meeting rating from all who attended
 
 

 

 

 

meeting tool meeting resources best practices meeting history start meeting recap email join meeting level 10 l10 level ten rate a meeting

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