The minutes are the official written record of a meeting: who came, what was decided, who does what next. One person types them while everybody else talks, and they go round by email a few days later.
The word is plural and stays plural — the minutes were approved, never the minute was. You take or keep the minutes during the meeting, circulate them afterwards, and approve them at the start of the next one, which is the ritual first item on most agendas. Minute-taking is a skill people are hired for. The spelling matches the minutes of a clock, but the two go their separate ways in use: an hour has sixty minutes, a meeting has one set of them.