Auto-rename meeting minutes as PDF

Minutes are written, filed and then urgently needed a year later: when was the budget release decided, and what exactly did it say. If the folder holds twenty files called Protokoll_Meeting.pdf, the search starts by opening each one. Filery Rename reads committee, meeting date and key topic from the document and turns them into a readable series. People search by committee and date.

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Before & After

Protokoll_Meeting.pdf 2024-03-15_Vorstandssitzung_Protokoll_Q1-Review.pdf

Minutes have no letterhead

Unlike invoices or official notices, minutes have no sender, no number and no standardised layout. What they do have is in the first few lines: the name of the committee, date and time of the meeting, the location or a note about a video conference, the list of those present and excused, and the agenda. Below follow the items with the resolutions passed, and at the end the minute taker and possibly signatures. Usable for the filename are committee, meeting date and one topic from the agenda — beyond that, the head of a set of minutes is rarely structured enough.

Why Q1-Review appears in the name

2024-03-15_Vorstandssitzung_Protokoll_Q1-Review.pdf turns three fields into a file you can place without opening it. Vorstandssitzung is the committee from the heading. The date is the day of the meeting, not the day the minutes were written — that is often two weeks later and would distort the order of meetings. Q1-Review comes from the dominant agenda item and answers the question of why you would open these particular minutes. The document type separates them from the invitation, agenda and proposal for resolution of the same meeting sitting in the same folder.

Meeting date, drafting date, approval

Minutes carry up to three dates. The meeting day belongs in the name, because that is what people search by. The drafting date is often in the footer and is irrelevant for filing. The third is approval: in many committees the minutes are only adopted at the following meeting, and until then they are a draft. Both versions in the same folder under the same name is a common mistake. A type field with draft and approved solves it, and because Filery recognises the document type from the text, the difference stays visible after renaming.

Keeping committees apart

Management board, supervisory board, shareholders meeting, works council, project jour fixe: the minutes look alike but are subject to very different confidentiality and retention. Shareholder resolutions and supervisory board minutes matter under company law and are kept for a long time, the weekly minutes of a project team are not. That is why the committee belongs directly after the date rather than at the end of the name — sorting by name then keeps each committee together as a block, even when a whole year of minutes lives in one folder. For committees that must be stored separately, dedicated folders with their own fixed field are the cleaner solution.

The topic is the least certain field

A meeting with nine agenda items has no key topic, and any suggestion for one is a simplification. This is the point where a look at the preview delivers the most: you see the proposed term and replace it when it does not carry. A more robust alternative is to leave the topic field out and keep a sequential meeting number instead, such as meeting-03. For committees meeting regularly with numbered sessions, that is the more reliable ordering, because it does not depend on how the agenda was worded. Do not mix both in one folder.

What happens to the content of the minutes

Minutes contain resolutions, names and often figures not intended for the public. Filery reads the PDF on your device and transmits the text content encrypted for AI analysis; only the recognised fields such as committee, date and topic come back. The renaming happens on the device again, and the minutes themselves are not stored permanently. For committee work with heightened confidentiality, the Custom plan at 5 euros a month is the right route, because the analysis then runs through your own API keys. You review every suggestion in the preview first.

FAQ

When the committee is named in the heading or the head of the minutes, yes — and for formal meetings that is the normal case. Informal notes without a header do not contain the entry; then you store the committee as a fixed field in the folder's pattern.

Through the document type in the name. All three carry the same meeting date and the same committee and therefore sit together, yet can still be told apart. Proposals for resolution get their own type as well. Filery reads the type from the text.

Filery works with PDF files. Export the approved minutes to PDF before they go into filing — which is sensible for committee records anyway, because the text can then no longer be changed unnoticed. The draft version stays untouched. The export is enough.

Scanned minutes can be processed with text recognition switched on. Header and agenda are printed and therefore legible; handwritten additions and signatures are not recognised reliably, but they are not needed for naming either. A clean scan of the header is enough.

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