Meetings Admin Guide
This guide describes the concepts of the membertility Meetings Module, and gives guidance on how to achieve the meeting work flow.
The general work flow for meetings is
meeting admin creates meeting, indicating who would be invited, date, time, location, and purpose of the meeting
meeting admin generates invitations for the meeting
in the invitation, the member is given a link to click
member is shown any outstanding action items they’re responsible for
member clicks link and can indicate if attending the meeting
member should also give their status report for each position they’re responsible for
member can update action item status and record comments about the action item
member can add any discussion items for meeting
as members add discussion items, the meeting agenda is being built, with each discussion item turned into a meeting agenda item
when ready, the meeting admin can generate status report and agenda documents
this will go to a Google Workspace drive location. In a future releases support will be added to create a Word doc
once a Google Workspace file is created, it is updated nightly as members continue to add or update status reports. Alternately, the meeting admin can cause it to be updated on demand
the Google Workspace documents are initially generated to a configured folder, but can safely be moved to any desired folder
additional emails can be sent to the meeting invite list if needed, e.g., with links to documents which should be read to prepare for the meeting
during the meeting, the admin can do the following, which forms the minutes for the meeting
update attendee list (who actually came)
add discussion about any agenda item
add an action item under an agenda item
add a motion under an agenda item, and tally its votes
create a new agenda item (e.g., for unplanned discussion)
after the meeting, the admin can make any adjustments to the notes which were taken, and when satisfied, generate the minutes document (again to a Google Workspace drive location)
when minutes from the last meeting are voted on, changes are rarely required. But if changes are required, the admin can go into the last meeting’s view, make the changes, and generate the minutes again
Google Workspace minutes are generated to configured location but can safely be moved to the desired folder
action items, motions / votes, minutes are available to the members through the system immediately after the meeting
members receive reminder emails about outstanding action items
Meeting Data Model
![digraph records {
graph [fontname = "helvetica"];
node [fontname = "helvetica"];
edge [fontname = "helvetica"];
"member 1" -> "position report 1";
"member 2" -> "position report 1";
"member 3" -> "position report 2";
"member 4" -> "position report 3";
"member 4" -> "ad hoc report 4";
"meeting admin 1" -> "agenda item 4";
"position report 1" -> "discussion/agenda item 1";
"position report 1" -> "discussion/agenda item 2";
"position report 2" -> "discussion/agenda item 3";
"discussion/agenda item 1" -> "action item 1";
"discussion/agenda item 2" -> "motion 1";
"motion 1" -> "motion vote tally 1";
{ rank=same; "member 1", "member 2", "member 3", "member 4", "meeting admin 1" };
{ rank=same; "position report 1", "position report 2", "position report 3", "ad hoc report 4" };
{ rank=same; "discussion/agenda item 1", "discussion/agenda item 2", "discussion/agenda item 3", "agenda item 4" };
{ rank=same; "action item 1", "motion 1" };
}](_images/graphviz-ea604713e21b9f433a0b7c9c0c46482965d2583c.png)
Prepare for Meeting Module use
The following needs to be set up in the database before using the meeting module. These require the indicated role to achieve. Full documentation of this is TBD.
create positions, with proper Has Status Report configuration [organization-admin]
assign members to their position(s) [organization-admin]
create tags which will be used to invite members to meetings and to indicate the voting members [meetings-admin]
set interest defaults for Meeting Invite Tags, Meeting Vote Tags, Google Workplace folders [super-admin]
Use cases for before the meeting (for when you want to…)
These sections describe what an meeting admin might want to do when planning a meeting.
create a meeting
When a meeting is being planned, the first thing to do is create it.
bring up Meetings view
click New
Purpose should be a short description of the meeting, e.g., Board Meeting
Meeting Type defines the behavior of the meeting. The different meeting types are defined using Meeting Types view
Date is when the meeting takes place, or the date after which no more activity is allowed on the meeting
Time the time of the meeting needs to be entered (optional, depending on Meeting Type)
Location can be a physical location, a videoconference URL, or by email (optional, depending on Meeting Type)
Show Actions Since is used to determine which action items are highlighted in the meeting invitation, in the agenda, etc. This should normally be set to the date of the last meeting of this type. (optional, depending on Meeting Type)
Invite Tags, Vote Tags, and Status Report Tags need to be set to the group(s) used for the invitations, votes, and status reports respectively
Note
these tags are associated with positions using the Positions view
click Create
To access the meeting you just created, select the new row and click View Meeting. You’ll see that there is an action item agenda item which was automatically created.
If the Meeting Type has an Automatic Agenda Item Title, an agenda item with the indicated title is created.
renew a meeting
If a previously held meeting needs to be created again, an easy way is to renew it.
bring up Meetings view
click Renew
Note
all of the fields are filled in based on the meeting being renewed, but you’ll want to change the Date to be the date of the new meeting
Purpose should be a short description of the meeting, e.g., Board Meeting
Meeting Type defines the behavior of the meeting. The different meeting types are defined using Meeting Types view
Date is when the meeting takes place, or the date after which no more activity is allowed on the meeting
Time the time of the meeting needs to be entered (optional, depending on Meeting Type)
Location can be a physical location, a videoconference URL, or by email (optional, depending on Meeting Type)
Show Actions Since is used to determine which action items are highlighted in the meeting invitation, in the agenda, etc. This should normally be set to the date of the last meeting of this type. (optional, depending on Meeting Type)
Invite Tags, Vote Tags, and Status Report Tags need to be set to the group(s) used for the invitations, votes, and status reports respectively
Note
these tags are associated with positions using the Positions view
Renew Options are defaulted based on Meeting Type. These can be changed for this renewal, but if you find yourself changing these each time, it would probably be best to set them as you’d like in the Meeting Types view.
click Renew
To access the meeting you just renewed, select the new row and click View Meeting. You’ll see that there is an action item agenda item which was automatically created, and any agenda items which were meant to be copied based on the Renew Options will also be there.
If the Meeting Type has an Automatic Agenda Item Title, an agenda item with the indicated title is created.
invite members to a meeting (in-person / virtual)
In order to invite members to an in-person or virtual meeting, you must be in the meeting’s Meeting view. To access the meeting’s Meeting view, from Meetings view select the meeting and click View Meeting
From the meeting’s Meeting view,
click Send Invitations
there will be a popup with the list of members who will be invited, and you will be given the option to change the Subject, add a Message, and update the From address
click Send Invitations
The invitations are sent to the members who resolve to the Invite Tags specified for the meeting.
If the Meeting Type is has the option RSVP Required, an agenda item with title Attendees is created. As invited members rsvp to the meeting, their RSVP will show whether they plan to come to the meeting.
invite member discussion for a meeting (Online Motion/Votes)
In order to solicit discussion for a meeting with Online Motion/Votes, you must be in the meeting’s Meeting view. To access the meeting’s Meeting view, from Meetings view select the meeting and click View Meeting
From the meeting’s Meeting view,
click Send Discussion Request
there will be a popup with the list of members who will be invited, and you will be given the option to change the Subject, add a Message, and update the From address
click Send Discussion Request
The discussion request is sent to the members who resolve to the Invite Tags specified for the meeting. The intention is that discussion will be held on the email thread. Once the discussion has run its course, motion text should be proposed and the motion moved and seconded.
This electronic voting process continues at record a motion, its discussion, and vote tally (Online Motion/Votes).
check to see if status reports are missing, and send reminders
To access the meeting’s Meeting Status view, from Meetings view select the meeting and click Meeting Status.
From the meeting’s Meeting Status view,
to determine which status reports are missing, set the Status filter on the top to missing
select one or more positions you’d like to send reminders to
Note
to see all the positions, you may need to show additional entries (top left of the table)
click Send Reminders
there will be a popup with the list of members to whom reminders will be sent, and you will be given the option to change the Subject, add a Message, and update the From address
click Send Reminders to send the reminder emails
on behalf of a member, enter RSVP and status reports
If a member isn’t able to use the system to RSVP and/or enter their status reports, the meeting admin can use the Their Status Report view to enter the information provided outside the system.
To access the meeting’s Their Status Report view, from Meetings view select the meeting and click Their Status Report. An empty view is displayed.
To enter the member’s RSVP and/or status reports, select the member in the table heading. From there, you can proceed as if you were the selected member, using the instructions from My Status Report view.
review the agenda
To access the meeting’s Meeting view, from Meetings view select the meeting and click View Meeting. The current agenda is displayed.
As members add discussion items to their status report, these get added as agenda items for the meeting.
Once most of the status reports have been received, you may want to update the agenda item titles, or update the headings which will be used to outline the agenda items in the agenda and minutes documents.
From the meeting’s Meeting view,
if the agenda item title chosen by the member is unclear, you can make updates here.
select the agenda item, click Edit, then update the Title
Note
discussion item titles shown in the status report document will show the member’s original text
each position has a default agenda heading, but if this needs to be changed
select the agenda item, click Edit, then select the Agenda Heading (new agenda headings must be created first using the Agenda Headings view)
Summary captures what the member said in the discussion item. If necessary, this can be edited for clarity
select the agenda item, click Edit, then update the Summary
Note
this overwrites the words written by the member when they created their status report and will be reflected into the status report document, so should be done only when needed
reorder agenda items
To access the meeting’s Meeting view, from Meetings view select the meeting and click View Meeting. The current agenda is displayed.
As each discussion item/agenda item is collected, it is automatically added to the end of the agenda. Once most of these are collected, it may be desired to reorder them.
From the meeting’s Meeting view,
use the reorder icon (
) to grab an agenda item and place it where desired in the
agenda orderNote
for best results, agenda items with the same agenda heading should be grouped together
create a new agenda item
To access the meeting’s Meeting view, from Meetings view select the meeting and click View Meeting
The meeting admin may want to add specific agenda items related to the meeting, such as Call to Order, Next meeting <date>, or such.
From the meeting’s Meeting view,
click New
enter Title
(optional) enter Summary
(optional) select Agenda Heading (new agenda headings must be created first using the Agenda Headings view)
click Save
reorder as needed
generate meeting documents
To access the meeting’s Meeting view, from Meetings view select the meeting and click View Meeting
From the meeting’s Meeting view,
click Generate Docs
select the documents to be generated (e.g., Agenda)
click Submit
the documents are generated and the popup disappears
the link(s) to the documents can be found using the Meetings view
Note
the status report document is automatically updated as members update their status reports, after a slight delay
send email to meeting invitees
To access the meeting’s Meeting view, from Meetings view select the meeting and click View Meeting
From the meeting’s Meeting view,
click Send Email
there will be a popup with the list of members to whom the email will be sent, and you will be given the option to change the Subject, add a Message, and update the From address
click Send Email
Use cases for during the meeting (for when you want to…)
This section describes what the meeting admin might want to do during the meeting.
update the attendance list
To access the meeting’s Meeting view, from Meetings view select the meeting and click View Meeting
From the meeting’s Meeting view,
select the agenda item entitled Attendees
click Edit
under the Invites table, on the member row, click the cell under the Attended and/or In person/Virtual columns to change
click off the selected cell to save – when select widget disappears, the entry is saved
Important
if you don’t click off the selected cell, this change won’t be saved
Note
if someone comes to the meeting who isn’t in the Invites table, this can be recorded in the Discussion field – use a bullet list for best formatting in the minutes document
add discussion about an agenda item
To access the meeting’s Meeting view, from Meetings view select the meeting and click View Meeting
From the meeting’s Meeting view,
select the agenda item to be discussed
click Edit
add discussion text under Discussion
click Save
add an action item
To access the meeting’s Meeting view, from Meetings view select the meeting and click View Meeting
From the meeting’s Meeting view,
select the agenda item being discussed which relates to the action item
click Edit
under Action Items, click New
enter a concise, specific description of the action item under Action
generally the Comments section should be left blank at this point (but see the Note below)
select an Assignee who is responsible for the action
Note
a single Assignee is responsible for any action item. If the Assignee should be working with others and the names need to be captured, this can be done within the Action, or within the Comments
click Create
record a motion, its discussion, and vote tally (in-person / virtual)
To access the meeting’s Meeting view, from Meetings view select the meeting and click View Meeting
From the meeting’s Meeting view,
select the agenda item being discussed which relates to the motion
click Edit
under Motions, click New
enter a clear, specific description of the motion under Motion (see the references for best practices for wording motions)
select the person who made the motion as the Mover
select the person who seconded the motion as the Seconder
optionally record any comments about the motion which come out during the discussion
if the wording of the motion needs to be changed due to the discussion, change this now
click Create
Note
the motion can be created as above, and then updated by clicking Edit under Motions
After creating the motion the motion’s Votes table is created. The votes are initialized to approved if the member is recorded as attending the meeting and novote if not.
To edit the votes,
select the motion
under Motions click Edit
under Votes, on the member row, click the cell under the Vote column to change
click off the selected cell to save – when select widget disappears, the entry is saved
Important
if you don’t click off the selected cell, this change won’t be saved
in the motion Edit form, select the resulting Status (approved, rejected, tabled) as appropriate
click Save
References
record a motion, its discussion, and vote tally (Online Motion/Votes)
To access the meeting’s Meeting view, from Meetings view select the meeting and click View Meeting
From the meeting’s Meeting view,
select the agenda item being discussed which relates to the motion
click Edit
under Motions, click New
enter a clear, specific description of the motion under Motion (see the references for best practices for wording motions)
select the person who made the motion as the Mover
select the person who seconded the motion as the Seconder
optionally record any comments about the motion which come out during the discussion
if the wording of the motion needs to be changed due to the discussion, change this now
click Create
Note
the motion can be created as above, and then updated by clicking Edit under Motions
After creating the motion the motion’s Votes table is created. The votes are initialized to novote.
To send a link for voting on the motion to the voting members, select the motion and click the Send eVote Requests button. The voting members will be displayed, and the meeting admin will have the opportunity to change the Subject, Message, and From Address. The text of the motion will automatically be included in the email.
The voting members will receive an email with a link they can click to record their vote. All votes must be recorded by the Date set for the meeting.
Note
if additional time is required for the voting, simply update the Date set for the meeting using the Meetings view.
References
Use cases for after the meeting (for when you want to…)
These sections describe what an meeting admin might want to do after a meeting.
generate meeting minutes
To access the meeting’s Meeting view, from Meetings view, select the meeting and click View Meeting
From the meeting’s Meeting view,
click Generate Docs
select the documents to be generated (in this case Minutes)
click Submit
the minutes are generated and the popup disappears
the link to the minutes can be found using the Meetings view
add Google Workspace documents to a meeting folder
Prior to any meeting being created, the super admin must use the Interest Attributes view to configure the system with a folder to store the Google Workspace documents which will be created. There’s a separate folder configuration for each type of document.
Note
the folders for the types of documents can be the same or different as desired
If it is desired to have the documents accessible from some other folder (e.g., one which was created specifically for the meeting), manual intervention is needed.
The file(s) must be “Added” rather than “Moved” to the specific meeting folder. This allows meeting documents to be found in a well known place for ease of review across meetings, as well as in the folders for each meeting. But more importantly, membertility only has permission to write to certain folders, so if the file is moved that will cause problems with the access, and there will be unpredictable results.
Using Google Workspaces,
open the folder where the file was created
to find this folder, click on the file’s link in the Meetings view, then in the browser address box, change “preview” to “edit” and reload the page
then click on the folder icon to the right of the filename, which opens a pull-down
then click on the square/arrow icon to the right of the folder name in the pull-down to open the file’s folder
again please don’t move the file
click on the file you want to add to another folder
on your keyboard, press Shift + z
choose the destination folder you want to add the file to
click Add here
Now the same file(s) can be found by navigating to the well known folder, or by navigating to the meeting folder, and any changes to the file(s) will happen in both folders.
Also see Organize your files in Google Drive 3, click on Create a shortcut for a file or folder
Warning
do not copy the file and save it somewhere else, as this would prevent the system from managing the file contents
Warning
do not edit any of these files directly as the system may overwrite what you’ve changed. Rather, use the system to make any changes you want captured in the file. Then Generate Docs can be used to make the update to the agenda or minutes. Status report will be updated automatically.
download images from the meeting report
To access the meeting status report (or newsletter items), navigate to Meetings > Meetings. Under the Report column click the link (the naming of the link depends on the meeting type).
A google doc should open in another tab.
Google docs does not allow you to right click on the image and save. It gives you a way to copy the image but there doesn’t seem to be a way to paste the image locally. How to Download All the Images From a Google Doc or Microsoft Word Document 4 (and others) suggest downloading as html. This creates a zip file that includes the original images (named as image1.jpg, etc).
In order to see the download menu, you need to manually change the “/preview” to “/edit” at the end of the URL in your browser’s address bar.
Warning
do not edit this file directly as the system may overwrite what you’ve changed. Rather, use the system to make any changes you want captured in the file. Changes can be made to other member’s reports by navigating to Meetings view, selecting the meeting, then clicking Their Status Report button, which will bring up Their Status Report view.