Follow up with whoever missed it

Someone is always missing. They are double-booked, or travelling, or they accepted and never came. What follows is either nothing, or a summary written by whoever felt most guilty.

Neither is good, and the second is the one that quietly costs you an hour.

Work out who was actually absent

Accepting an invitation is not attending. The transcript knows who spoke; the invitation knows who was asked. The gap between them is your list.

For this meeting, compare the invitation list against who actually spoke in
the transcript.

Tell me who was invited and did not speak. Flag anyone who might have been
present but quiet rather than absent, if you can tell from the transcript.

That second sentence matters. A junior attendee who said nothing is not absent, and mailing them a catch-up is a small insult.

Write a catch-up, not a summary

The distinction is what makes this worth reading. A summary tells them what happened. A catch-up tells them what it means for them.

Draft a short note to each person who missed this meeting.

For each: what was decided, anything now waiting on them specifically, and
what they have missed that they would want to argue with.

Do not send the same note to everyone. If nothing from the meeting touches
that person, say so and do not draft one at all.

Keep it under 100 words. Link the full transcript rather than reproducing
it.

"If nothing touches them, do not draft one" is the rule that keeps this welcome. A generic catch-up sent to five people is a round-robin, and after two of them people stop reading anything you send about meetings. Most absences genuinely do not need a note.

Hold them for a moment

Read the drafts before they go, particularly the "waiting on them" line. That sentence assigns work, and assigning work by automated email to someone who was not in the room is a good way to have it ignored.

What good looks like

The two people who genuinely needed catching up get a short, specific note the same day, and nobody else gets anything.

The measure is whether the absent person arrives at the next meeting already knowing what happened. If they do not, the note was a summary rather than a catch-up.