Meeting Note Importer

An Obsidian plugin that creates structured meeting notes from calendar invites — drop a .ics file, drag a meeting directly from Outlook, or enter meeting details manually.

Features

• Drag and drop a .ics file from Finder, Explorer, or any file manager
• Drag a meeting directly from Outlook for Mac — no file export needed
• Click to browse for a .ics file via the file picker
• Quick/manual entry — create a note by typing a title and picking a date and time, no file needed
• Populates title, date, attendees, organizer, location, meeting URL, and description automatically
• Skips duplicate notes — if a note for that meeting already exists it is returned without overwriting
• Supports a custom Obsidian template with {{date}} and {{title}} placeholders
• Configurable note name template with {{date}}, {{title}}, {{startTime}}, {{endTime}}, and {{organizer}} placeholders
• Override current note — when a file is open, optionally write the meeting content into that file instead of creating a new one; a secondary toggle also renames the file to match the meeting
• Configurable target folder and heading names for attendees and notes sections
• Localised UI in English, French, and Spanish — automatically follows Obsidian's language setting

Note: This plugin is designed for desktop use. Drag-and-drop and direct Outlook integration rely on desktop APIs. Mobile behaviour is untested.

Usage

From a calendar file

Click the calendar icon in the ribbon, or run the command Create meeting note from file, then:

• Drag a .ics file into the drop zone, or
• Drag a meeting event directly from Outlook for Mac, or
• Click the drop zone to browse for a .ics file

Quick/manual entry

Run the command New quick meeting note (or assign it a hotkey in Settings → Hotkeys) to open the modal directly on the Quick/Manual Entry tab. Enter a title, adjust the date and times if needed, and press Create (or hit Enter in the title field).

• Date defaults to today
• Start time defaults to the current time rounded to the nearest time increment
• End time defaults to start + one increment

The plugin creates a note in the configured folder and opens it immediately.

Default note structure

---
title: "2024-06-15 - Team Sync"
date: "2024-06-15"
tags:
  - meeting
---
# 2024-06-15 - Team Sync

## Attendees
- Jane Smith (Organizer)
- John Doe

## Notes
> https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/...

## Summary

## Action Items

- [ ]

Settings

Localisation

The plugin UI is available in English (default), French, and Spanish. The language is detected automatically from Obsidian's language setting (via the built-in moment.js locale).

To add a new language:

1. Copy src/ts/i18n/en.json to src/ts/i18n/<code>.json (e.g. de.json)
2. Translate all values — keys must stay identical to en.json
3. Import and register it in src/ts/i18n.ts:

   import de from "./i18n/de.json";
   const locales = { en, fr, es, de };
   

4. Rebuild with npm run build

Installation

Manual

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release
2. Copy them into your vault at .obsidian/plugins/meeting-note-importer/
3. Enable the plugin in Settings → Community plugins

Development

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Copy .env.example and set your vault plugin path
cp .env.example .env

# Development build (with sourcemaps)
npm run dev

# Production build
npm run build

# Copy dist/ to your local vault (reads OBSIDIAN_PLUGIN_DIR from .env)
npm run deploy

# Development build + deploy in one step
npm run dev:deploy

# Remove dist/
npm run clean

Testing

# Run all unit tests
npm test

# Integration test — parse a real .ics file and print the generated note
TEST_ICS_FILE=/path/to/invite.ics npm test

# Integration test — parse Outlook meeting text saved to a file
TEST_OUTLOOK_FILE=/path/to/invite.txt npm test

The integration tests are skipped automatically when the env vars are not set, so npm test always works without any fixtures.

To get a .ics file from Outlook for Mac: right-click a calendar event → Export…, or drag the event from Calendar.app to Finder.

Releases

1. Prepare the version bump — choose patch, minor, or major:

   npm run release:prepare patch
   

   This updates package.json and manifest.json. Commit the result:

   git add package.json manifest.json
   git commit -m "chore: bump version to X.Y.Z"
   

   Or do both in one step with the --commit flag:

   npm run release:prepare -- patch --commit
   

2. Publish — pushes the branch, tags the commit, and pushes the tag:

   npm run release
   

   GitHub Actions picks up the tag, builds the plugin, runs tests, and creates a release containing main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css as flat assets ready for manual installation.