Effective team meetings are foundational to a successful team. They’re where teams come together to connect, problem-solve, support each other, and surface issues. But too often, team meetings get bogged down by status updates or derailed because not everyone is on the same page.

When you use Range Check-ins as a pre-read to your team meeting, it’s easy to stay focused on the topics that matter and keep everyone aligned. Teammates can flag important issues before the meeting and Range will automatically add them to your agenda. And with all the context right there in the pre-read, you’ll spend less time filling folks in during the meeting and more time unblocking and collaborating. Plus, you’ll never forget to send out meeting notes because the Range does it for you to keep the whole team in the loop — even when folks can’t attend in person.

Range helps teams run meetings that actually move projects forward and frees up more of your team’s time to get work done.

In this article, we’ll cover how to:

1. Get pre-read updates before the meeting by setting up a schedule and prompts
2. Surface blockers and discussion topics with flags
3. Stay focused on the right topics with a recurring agenda
4. Facilitate a smooth discussion with the meeting tool
5. Connect to Slack to see notes in your team channel

1. Get pre-read updates before the meeting by setting up a schedule and prompts

To ensure everyone shares and reads the right information before you come together to meet, you’ll want to start by setting up a schedule and prompts for pre-read updates — which your team will share via Check-ins. Ideally, you’ll want to schedule a reminder for folks to share their update an hour or two before the meeting in preparation.

To create a Check-in schedule for your team’s pre-read, go to Settings > Check-in schedules.

You’ll be able to customize when teammates will receive a Check-in reminder to share their update, as well as when the pre-read summary of all the updates will be sent out to everyone on the team.

You can tailor the information you collect during pre-read updates using custom Check-in prompts so you’ll have exactly what you need to stay informed and shape meaningful discussion when you come together to meet. Some examples might include:

• Blocked: Are you blocked on something?
• Discuss: What topics do you need to discuss with the team?
• Weekly focus: What is your top priority this week?

2. Surface blockers and discussion topics with flags

Once you’ve got your schedule and prompts set up, folks can use Range to share their pre-meeting updates and then read a summary from the whole team before the meeting.

To share your pre-meeting update in Range, go to My Check-in. (You can also share directly from Slack.)

Just like they’d normally do during the in-person portion of the meeting, teammates can surface blockers, ask for help, and say thanks when someone lends a hand by using flags in their update. This helps you group similar updates or discussion topics together to ensure a smooth conversation when you meet. (More on that in the next step.)

Range comes with the following default flags:

• Get feedback
• Ask for help
• Reflect on progress
• Give gratitude

You can also create your own custom flags by putting a word or two in [brackets] at the start of an item in your Check-in.

3. Stay focused on the right topics with a recurring agenda

Having an agenda saves time and keeps the meeting on track. You can build a recurring agenda in Range so it’s easier to plan for your weekly meeting and pull in flags, blockers, and other items directly from the team’s pre-read to discuss.

To create an agenda, start by adding your team meeting to Range. Go to Meetings and select “New Meeting” in the upper right. After you click “Create Meeting” you’ll see a screen where you can add attendees, link to your calendar app, and build your agenda.

You can set up a recurring topic to show all the flagged items from the team’s Check-ins, so you’ll always remember to discuss them together. Select ‘Add recurring topic’  from the right-hand menu — you might call this topic ‘Review flags and blockers’. Then, scroll to the bottom of the topic screen, click on the menu labeled ‘Extras’, and select ‘Review flagged Check-in items’.

4. Facilitate a smooth discussion with the meeting tool

When you facilitate your meeting through Range, it’s easy to stay on track with your agenda, assign action items, and share notes immediately after.

Go to Meetings and select the Team Meeting you created from the list. At the bottom of the screen, click “Start meeting”.

The main part of the screen will show whatever topic you’re currently on, and the side panel will show the full agenda. You can click “Next topic” to move through items, and add notes and action items in Range as you go.

During the meeting, you can collect ad hoc topics from everyone in the team to build a collaborative agenda as new questions and items come up. You can also use the attendee spinner to select who speaks when, ultimately increasing engagement and inclusion.

When you finish the final agenda item, click “End meeting”. You’ll see your meeting notes organized for you on the next screen — just click “Share notes” to share them over email and Slack (more on that in the next step), keeping everyone informed.

5. Connect Slack to see notes in your team channel

If your team uses Slack, connecting Range to Slack lets you share and read meeting notes in the place you’re already communicating with each other every day.

First, make sure you’ve got the Range app for Slack set up. You’ll also need to have a team set up in Range.

Once that’s done, go to your team channel in Slack to subscribe to receive updates related to your team in Range.

Just type: /range subscriptions and select your team.

Try it out

Team meetings that get bogged down by low-stakes status updates and distracting side convos aren’t a good use of anyone’s time.

With Range, you can facilitate a more effective meeting that helps ICs work through blockers, managers support them, and everyone on the team collaborate a whole lot more smoothly.  And by improving transparency with better note-taking and seamless note-sharing, it’s easier to keep everyone informed, whether they attend the meeting or not.

To get started, try adding your team meeting to Range and building your agenda for next week.