Meetings - Part 6 - Running a Meeting

This article describes the process of running the meeting.

Record Attendees

In an earlier step we defined who should attend the meeting. Now that the meeting is taking place we will have the ability to go through this list and identify who is actually in attendance.

Attendance can be managed from the Invitations tab using the Set as Present and Set as Absent links in the Set Attendance column. Only the link that differs from the invitee’s current attendance is shown. To mark every invitee as present in one go, click the Set All as Present button above the list.

People on the invite list can be marked as Present or Absent.

Attendees can also be added and removed from the list at this point.

To add attendees, use the Invite Staff to Meeting, Invite External to Meeting or Invite List to Meeting buttons. To remove an attendee, click the bin (Delete Invitation) icon on their row and confirm when prompted. The Resend All Invitations button sends the invitations again, and an Email icon is shown against any individual invitation that is still Invited or has been Declined.

Note: These attendance and invitation tools are only available while the meeting has not been completed and you hold the Meetings:Edit Meetings permission.

Taking Minutes

Minutes can be added against each agenda item on the Agenda & Minutes tab. Simply expand the item using the Down icon in the Details column.

The expanded item shows its Description and a Minute text box. Click Save to store your changes; nothing you type is saved until you do.

New Agenda items can be added on the fly using the Add Agendum/Minute button.

Actioning/Deferring Agenda Items

Checkboxes in the Actioned? column allow an item to be flagged as having been addressed. Ticked items are shown with a status of Actioned; items that are not ticked are shown as Deferred, which is the default for new items.

Use the Filter drop-down to choose between View all, View all actioned agenda and View all deferred agenda. When viewing all items, the up and down arrows on each row can be used to reorder the agenda, and the delete icon removes an item after you confirm. As with attendance, these tools (including the Actioned? checkbox) are only available while the meeting can still be edited.

On repeating meetings any Deferred agenda items will be copied over to the next meeting. More information on this can be found in the Reoccurring Meetings guide.

Completing the Meeting

Once complete, close out the meeting by selecting Set as Completed from the Actions drop down menu. This option requires the Meetings:Complete Meetings permission.

Once completed, the meeting becomes read-only. Its status changes from Active to Completed, the editing tools described above are hidden, and the Invitations tab is replaced by a read-only Attendees tab that can be filtered by attendance (View All, View Absent, View Present or Unknown). Users with the Meetings:Unlock Meetings permission can reopen a completed meeting by selecting Unlock meeting from the Actions drop down menu and confirming.

If a meeting is defined as repeating, the next meeting will be created the first time it is completed. Unlocking the meeting and completing it again does not create another meeting (more on this in the Reoccurring Meetings guide).

Next Step:

The next article covers Reoccurring Meetings 

Previous Step:

the previous article covers Setting a Meeting Agenda