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The best way to capture meeting notes in Jira is to record decisions and action items and tie them directly on the relevant issue, link or embed notes from Confluence, and preserve async context from Slack/GitHub so it linked with the work item. This supports the workflow of distributed teams who work asynchronously. This ensures that conversations are tied to the tasks and everyone has easy access to the context that shape the most important decisions.
However, most engineering teams don't work this way. They discuss work in Slack threads, GitHub discussions, and scattered async conversations that never make their way into Jira. While they've mastered scheduling meetings and recording calls, they haven't solved for capturing and tying back their async conversations to Jira.
In this article, we discuss how to set up a workflow that connects your async discussions to Jira, so you can preserve context, and everyone on your team can see why decisions were made.
The Reality of Modern Software Development
Here's a scenario that might feel familiar: Your team uses Jira to track work items, diligently records sprint planning sessions, and even has a setup that automatically syncs meeting transcripts to tickets. Everything seems organized and efficient. But then you need to understand why your team chose a particular API design six months ago. The decision wasn't made in a meeting - it emerged from a series of Slack discussions between your backend engineer in Berlin and your tech lead in Boston, spread across three days and two different channels.
This is the reality of modern software development. Critical decisions, important context, and valuable insights don't just happen in scheduled meetings anymore. They emerge from asynchronous discussions in chat threads, pull request comments, and impromptu video calls. Our traditional tools for capturing meeting notes, while excellent at handling structured meetings, weren't designed for this new way of working.
This isn't just about keeping better notes - it's about preserving the context that makes our work meaningful and our decisions traceable. As we discuss this, we'll explore the current meeting note tools, understand why they may not work best for async teams, and discover new approaches that better align with how modern teams actually work.
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Why Meeting Tools are Not Ideal for Async Decision-Making
Imagine a scenario where your team spent three days debating an API design. Most of this conversation happened on your team communication tool, like Slack, and a decision was reached on that same tool. Six months later, a new engineer asks why you chose that approach, and you are struggling to find how you reached that decision because it's buried in a Slack group chat.
You have a distribution problem. Your async conversations and decisions are not tied to the tasks. Slack conversations stay in Slack, and GitHub discussions are in some archives. The consequence is that new team members pick up tasks without understanding why.
Why Most Tools Don't Work Best for Distributed Teams
Most of your current tools assume decisions happen in meetings. Calendars block time. Notetakers record the meeting and push it into your project management tool. But that's not your exact workflow. You still host a bulk of your decisions async.
When your best decisions live in Slack threads, they're invisible to others and you lose institutional knowledge. You can't build on what you've learned.
How Quely Solves This
In Quely, you set up a session around your Jira task. You import the ticket, create a dedicated Quely session for it, and treat that session as the home for all task communication, including links, artefacts and attachments. Every conversation happens in one place and syncs back to Jira. On the Jira ticket, you see a live link to the Quely session; from Jira, you can move back into the Quely session where you access the full context, every message, decision, and artifact tied to that work.
Quely then applies AI so your conversations turning them into durable, searchable knowledge for everyone on your team:
- Highlights
Quely AI scans your session and creates summaries of what’s been discussed so far key points, tradeoffs, and decisions. You get a summary you can skim instead of reading through the entire conversation. - Takeaways
As you talk, Quely AI detect action items and lets you push them to Jira with a click. This makes it easily move from conversation to action - AI Assistant
Quely has an AI Assistant that you can ask questions like, “What did we decide about the pagination approach?” or “Why did we switch the API pattern?” The assistant reads your session and shows you a recap.
Learn More about how Quely supports async work or take our interactive product tour.
Tools for Capturing Meeting Notes in Jira
Several tools streamline meeting note-taking and integrate with Jira, improving team collaboration and project management. These tools try to improve meeting efficiency by making notes accessible, actionable, and directly linked to project workflows within Jira.
Here's a breakdown of popular tools:
1. Fellow
- What it does: Meeting management with structured agendas, real-time collaborative notes, and action item tracking
- Jira integration: Users can create and link Jira issues from meeting notes to ensure follow-through.
- Pros: Structured agenda templates, real-time collaboration, intuitive interface.
- Cons: High pricing, limited Jira field customization.
2. MeetGeek
- What it does: AI-powered meeting recording, transcription, and summary automation.
- Jira integration: Transcripts and summaries can be attached to Jira issues for reference.
- Pros: Saves time with automated transcription and summaries.
- Cons: Transcription accuracy varies; limited AI customization.
3. AgileMinutes
- What it does: Real-time collaborative meeting minutes with action item tracking.
- Jira integration: Direct task export to Jira for immediate tracking.
- Pros: Efficient task tracking, straightforward UI.
- Cons: Basic Jira integration, outdated interface.
4. Confluence
- What it does: Atlassian’s documentation tool used for meeting notes and project documentation.
- Jira integration: Natively links meeting notes to Jira issues and allows Jira issue creation from pages.
- Pros: Flexible documentation, strong integration with Jira
- Cons: Can be complex to manage; requires manual linking.
5. Fireflies.ai
- What it does: AI meeting assistant for recording, transcribing, and summarizing discussions.
- Jira integration: Transcripts and summaries can be linked to Jira tasks
- Pros: Automated note-taking, searchable transcripts.
- Cons: Transcription accuracy varies, limited Jira customization.
Limitations of Current Tools for Async Teams
While these tools excel at capturing synchronized meetings, they share common weaknesses that becomes painfully obvious in async work. They're all built around the assumption that important discussions happen in scheduled, real-time meetings.
Here's the reality: your distributed team in Tokyo, Berlin, and San Francisco isn't scheduling a meeting to discuss every implementation detail. Instead, critical technical decisions are being made in Slack threads that span days. Architecture choices evolve through asynchronous GitHub discussions. Product requirements get refined in sporadic Teams messages between a PM and developer in different time zones.
These tools' reliance on live meetings creates several critical problems for async teams:
1. First, they're designed for capturing discrete events - specific meetings with clear start and end times. But async discussions are fluid and continuous. A crucial decision might emerge from a chat conversation that started about one topic and organically evolved into something else entirely. Traditional meeting tools simply aren't equipped to capture these organic, evolving discussions.
2. Second, the integration with Jira, while great for formal meetings, breaks down for async communication. When a key technical decision is made in a Slack thread, there's no straightforward way to preserve that context alongside the relevant Jira ticket. The result? Important context gets buried in chat history, effectively invisible to future team members trying to understand past decisions.
3. Finally, these tools assume a synchronous workflow where teams regularly gather to share updates and make decisions. But for truly async teams, such meetings are rare and often impractical. When your team operates across multiple time zones, forcing synchronous meetings just to utilize these tools defeats the purpose of async work.
The Weaknesses of Common Messaging Platforms For Async Discussions
Most work communication tools, such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, handle quick communication well. But most conversations in these platforms are transient. They’re buried in history or scattered across channels and threads.
You asked a question about API versioning on Tuesday. Someone replies on Wednesday. Three months later, you try to go back to that conversation, but it's buried under dozens of unrelated conversations.
Instead of attempting to make chat tools into documentation systems, use something built for asynchronous work that actually fits your workflow. That’s where Quely comes in: you tie conversations to the actual work item, keep the full history and rationale in one place, and make it easily discoverable every time.
Quely as a Tool for Async Communication
While chat platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams excel at quick, informal communication, Quely takes a different approach by creating dedicated spaces for work-related discussions. Let's explore how it changes how async teams communicate about their work.
Quely functions like a meeting room for each work item. When an engineer in Sydney needs to discuss API design choices, they don't have to choose between scheduling a meeting that disrupts their colleagues' work hours or starting yet another Slack thread that might get lost. Instead, they can start a Quely session specifically for this discussion.
What makes Quely unique is how it approaches async communication:
- Team members can select Jira work items they want to discuss, build an agenda around it and start a Quely session, creating a focused space for that discussion
- They can invite their colleagues via email, Slack or by copying the link.
- When colleagues are not actively in the Quely session, they receive notifications when new messages appear in a Quely session or when they're mentioned
- Discussions remain organized and accessible, tied to the work item they're about
- Team members can join ongoing conversations at their own pace, across any time zone
- To gather everyone's feedback promptly, set a timer to indicate that responses are expected within a specific timeframe.
Think of it this way: If chat platforms are like having conversations in a busy cafeteria where multiple discussions blend together, Quely is like having dedicated conference rooms for each topic - except these rooms are always open, and you can join the conversation whenever it works for you.
What sets Quely apart is that it's not trying to fix the problems of chat platforms or meeting tools - it's creating a new way of having work discussions that better aligns with how async teams actually operate. It's not about capturing conversations after they happen; it's about providing a better space for these conversations to unfold across time zones and work schedules.
If you're thinking of how you can organize all async conversations around work, see how you can do that with Quely.
Benefits of Using Quely for Async Communication
Quely's benefit is evident when you see how it transforms day-to-day work for distributed teams. Let's discuss these benefits in detail using practical scenarios that async teams encounter daily.
1. First, Quely improves collaboration without forcing teams into synchronous meetings. Picture this: A product manager in London starts a Quely session about a new feature's requirements. Instead of waiting for a meeting where half the team needs to join at inconvenient hours, developers in Singapore and San Francisco can engage with the discussion during their working hours. The conversation flows easily over days, with each team member having time to think deeply about their contributions.
2. Visibility into team discussions reaches a new level with Quely. When a junior developer joins your team, they no longer need to piece together context from scattered Slack threads and meeting recordings. Instead, they can browse through relevant Quely sessions to understand not just what decisions were made, but the reasoning and discussions that led to those choices. It's like having a self-documenting history of your team's thought process.
3. Quely also fixes one of the biggest productivity killers in async teams: context switching and information scattered across tools. Rather than bouncing between Slack for discussions, Zoom for meetings, and various note-taking apps, teams have a single source of truth for work-related conversations. This centralization means less time spent searching for information and more time actually getting work done.
Perhaps most importantly, Quely helps maintain accountability in async environments. When discussions happen in dedicated sessions, it's clear who's involved, what's been decided, and what actions need to be taken. There's no more "I must have missed that message in Slack" or "Was that decided in a meeting I couldn't attend?"
Conclusion
The way we work has changed, but until now, our tools for capturing work discussions haven't kept pace. While traditional meeting note tools excel at documenting synchronized meetings, they fall short in addressing how modern, distributed teams actually communicate and make decisions.
The challenge isn't just about finding a better way to take notes - it's about acknowledging that valuable discussions and critical decisions don't always happen in scheduled meetings anymore. They emerge from asynchronous conversations that span time zones, cultures, and work schedules.
Instead of trying to retrofit old meeting-centric tools to work for async teams, or relying on chat platforms that were discurssions get buried in threads, it's time to invest in tools that provide a dedicated space for these conversations to happen and remain accessible.