Google Meet can now draft your follow-up email after a call

If your team holds client calls on Google Meet, the follow-up is usually the part that slips: the summary email that was meant to go out, and the list of who agreed to do what. Google has added next steps to the Google Meet post-meeting screen, and it drafts that follow-up for you. There is one condition, and it is easy to miss: note-taking had to be switched on while the meeting was running.

What Google announced

Google announced next steps for Google Meet in a post on Google Workspace Updates in October 2026. The feature is powered by Gemini and Workspace Studio and runs inside Google Workspace, so the follow-up is created where the meeting already happened rather than in a separate tool.

It starts with two routines:

• Drafting a follow-up email in Gmail.
• Exporting action items to Google Tasks.

Google says other routines are coming. In its own words, the aim is to turn meeting discussions into definite actions, and it points to the manual typing that usually stands between a decision and the email or task that records it.

The mechanics are simple to describe. "Take notes for me" must be enabled during the meeting, or no next steps appear at all. Once it is on, the post-meeting screen shows a section called "Routines for this meeting", and a single tap turns a routine on. Google says this works for one-off and recurring meetings alike, and that a specific next step can be set to run across all of your meetings wherever note-taking is on.

Why this matters to a small business

For a small business, the value is not the drafting itself. It is that the follow-up starts from the meeting record instead of from a blank page.

Think about how a call usually ends. Someone takes rough notes, everyone goes back to their day, and the follow-up email is written later, from memory, or not at all. Google's own description of the problem is manual data entry, context fragmentation and wasted time. For a team of a handful of people, the practical effect is familiar: a decision that everyone in the room agreed on never reaches the person who has to act on it.

If a drafted email and a task list appear on their own, that gap gets smaller. You still decide what goes out. You just start from something rather than nothing. In our experience a draft is only useful if a person reads it before it leaves the building, so treat what Google produces as a first pass rather than a finished message.

The catch: note-taking has to be on

The feature only appears if "Take notes for me" was switched on during the meeting, and that is the part people forget.

It does not matter how long the call was or who attended. If note-taking was off while the meeting ran, the post-meeting screen will offer nothing, and there is no switch to turn those notes on afterwards.

The same applies to a next step you set to run across all of your meetings. It runs where note-taking is on; where it is off, nothing happens. So the habit that makes this work is a small one, at the start of the meeting, and it belongs to whoever is hosting.

How to turn it on and use it

Turning it on happens at the meeting, not afterwards.

1. When the meeting starts in Google Meet, enable "Take notes for me".
2. After the call, on the post-meeting screen, look for the section "Routines for this meeting".
3. Enable a next step with one tap. You can use one of the routines Google has released, or both.
4. Manage your routines afterwards from the Meet post-call screen or the Workspace Studio Flows library.

Two practical points. The routines belong to each user, so each person who wants a follow-up has to have note-taking on in that meeting. And the feature is arriving gradually: Google describes the rollout as extended and says it may take longer than 15 days to appear for everyone. If you cannot find the section yet, that may simply be why.

What administrators should know

Google says the feature is on by default, and that administrators can disable it. The controls sit in the Workspace Studio admin settings, or in the "Take notes for me" setting, and they can be applied at domain, organisational unit or group level. That means a business can switch it off for everyone, or for one team, or for one group of people.

If you own the business but someone else administers Google Workspace, these are settings to ask about rather than change yourself. Admin settings reach every account in the workspace, and a change made in a hurry can be hard to trace later.

There is also a judgement call that no setting makes for you. Meeting notes, and the tasks that come from them, are stored and shared inside your workspace. Some calls, such as conversations about a person's pay or a sensitive client matter, are easier to hold when nothing is being written down. In our experience the sensible approach is to keep note-taking on for the routine calls and off for the ones that need it. Where personal data and privacy rules are involved, take advice from a qualified adviser.

What you can check yourself

• Open the post-meeting screen after a call where note-taking was on. If the "Routines for this meeting" section is missing, it is either not switched on for your account or the rollout has not reached you yet.
• Start a meeting and look for "Take notes for me" in the controls. If you cannot see it, your Workspace plan or an administrator setting may not allow it; ask whoever looks after your Google Workspace.
• Ask your administrator whether next steps is enabled for your domain, your organisational unit or your group. This is a question to ask, not a setting to change alone.
• Read a drafted follow-up email before you send it. Check that it names the right people and reflects what was actually decided.
• Open Google Tasks and look at the action items that arrive. A task with no owner and no due date tends to sit there.
• Look at the kind of calls your team holds. If notes from a call would be awkward to store or share, leave note-taking off for those.
• Open the Workspace Studio Flows library and see which routines are already running for the team.

What to do next

Pick one recurring internal meeting, make note-taking a habit there, and read what comes out of it.

• Turn on "Take notes for me" at the start of that meeting.
• After the call, enable the follow-up email routine and read the draft before sending.
• Check the Google Tasks entries and give each one an owner and a due date.
• Ask your administrator to confirm whether the feature is on for the business, and whether anything should be turned off.

Then decide, calmly, whether the drafts save your team typing or add a second thing to review. If it is the former, the habit can move to your client calls as well. Connecting a tool like this to the rest of your systems, so that a meeting produces an email and a task in the right place, is the kind of work our engineers do for clients.