Committees

What's on the Committees page?

Open Committees from the navigation. At the top you'll see a Committee activity roll-up — a summary the whole board can see of how much each committee has going on: its number of meetings and documents, and its open and total tasks and votes. It lets the parent board keep an eye on committee activity at a glance.

The roll-up shows the counts for every committee, but it only links through to a committee's internal detail for people allowed to see it: the members of that committee and board admins. If you're neither, you'll see the committee's activity numbers with a "Members only" note instead of a link — the committee's internal meetings, documents, tasks, and votes stay private to its members.

For anyone who can see a committee's detail, its Documents count and its Tasks open/total count are themselves links straight into that committee's filtered Documents and Tasks lists — no need to open the committee first and find the filter yourself. A count of zero is never a link (there'd be nothing to see), and the gate is exactly the rule above: if you can't open a committee's detail, its counts stay plain numbers for you too, same as its name.

Below the roll-up, each committee has its own card showing its name, its purpose, its chair, how many members sit on it, and whether its charter is on file yet. A committee with no chair designated says "No chair named" rather than leaving the line out, and one with nobody on it says 0 members the same way — so an empty, unstaffed, or leaderless committee is obvious without opening every one in turn.

Choose a committee (that you can open) to see its detail page: its Activity (its own meetings, documents, tasks, and votes — see below), its Roster (who sits on the committee), its charter (the committee's formal terms of reference), and its responsibilities — named, owned mandates like "review annual budget." Each roster member's name links to their member profile, and the profile's own Committees section links back here, so you can move between a committee and a person in one click either way.

What's in a committee's Activity section?

A committee's page lists its own Activity — every meeting, document, task, and vote scoped to that committee, each linking straight to it (a meeting to its detail page, a document to its own page, a task to the Tasks list, and a vote to that meeting's motions page, where the ballot is cast). A surface with nothing yet says so in plain text rather than showing an empty table. This is the detail the board-wide roll-up's counts, above, are summarizing — the numbers you see there always match what's listed here.

How do documents and tasks get into a committee's Activity?

You choose the committee on the surface that owns the item:

• Documents — the Committee field on the Documents page's upload panel, or on an existing document's Edit details dialog (from its own page or its ⋯ row menu). See Can I file a document under a committee?.
• Tasks — the Committee field in the Add a task and Edit dialogs on the Tasks page. A task generated from one of this committee's responsibilities is scoped here automatically, with nothing to set. See Can I scope a task to a committee?.
• Meetings — the Committee field when scheduling or editing a meeting.
• Votes — a vote appears here when its motion was raised at one of this committee's own meetings; there's nothing separate to set.

Both the Documents page and the Tasks page also have a Committee filter, so you can look at one committee's papers or work from the board-wide list.

Naming a committee on a document or task is filing, not privacy: it decides which committee lists the item, not who may open it. Every signed-in member of the board can still read a committee-scoped document and see a committee-scoped task in the board-wide lists, exactly as before. (What the roll-up above gates is the link to a committee's own detail page, which is a separate thing.)

How well attended have this committee's meetings been?

If you can record attendance (an administrator, the chair, or a staff liaison), a committee's page also has an Attendance section: the committee's overall attendance rate across its own past meetings, with the present, remote, and absent counts and how many meetings were counted. Future meetings and cancelled meetings are never counted, and a committee whose past meetings have no recorded roll call says so rather than showing 0%. Attendance history & rates explains the calculation in full — it's the same one the member profile's Attendance section uses.

How do I create a committee?

Choose New committee at the top of the Committees page, give it a name and, optionally, its purpose, and save. It appears in the list right away, with an empty roster and no charter yet. Creating a committee needs committee-management permission board-wide (an admin or the board's chair); if you don't hold it, you won't see the button.

Adding members and designating a chair is also available from your board's onboarding wizard, if setup isn't finished yet — the empty Committees page links there directly. Once a committee exists, though, its roster is best managed from its own page (see below).

How do I manage a committee's roster?

On a committee's page, its Roster card lists who's on the committee. Choose Add member to pick a board member and, optionally, designate them chair right away — a committee can have more than one chair. For a member already on the roster, open its ⋯ menu to Set as chair (or Clear chair, if they already are one) or to Remove them, which asks you to confirm first. None of this leaves the committee's page. Managing the roster needs committee-management permission board-wide, or being the chair of that one committee — the same rule as editing the charter, below.

How do I edit or archive a committee?

On a committee's page, choose Edit committee to rename it or change its purpose — the same form as creating one, pre-filled with its current details.

Choose Archive committee to retire a committee that's no longer active. Archiving asks you to confirm first, and it's never a delete: an archived committee drops off the main Committees list, but its roster, charter, and history are all kept. You can restore it anytime from its own page, which still shows an Archived notice and a Restore committee button once it's archived. Editing and archiving need committee-management permission board-wide.

How do I find and restore an archived committee?

At the bottom of the Committees page there's an Archived committees section listing every committee that's been archived, each with its roster size, and each linking to its own page. Open one and choose Restore committee — it goes straight back onto the main list above, with its roster, charter, and history intact.

The section only appears if you can manage committees (an admin or the board's chair) — the same permission archiving and restoring need, so nobody sees an archive-management surface they can't act on. When nothing has been archived it says No archived committees, so the answer to "where did my archived committee go?" is always in the same place.

Archived committees stay out of search deliberately: a retired committee shouldn't clutter results for everyone. The Archived committees section is the way back to one.

Where are a committee's discussions?

Each committee has its own discussion space — a place for its members to talk between meetings. On a committee's page, the Discussions tab takes you straight to that space, and the space itself links back to the committee, so the two are always one click apart.

Committees created recently get their space automatically. For an older committee that doesn't have one yet, anyone who can manage the committee (an admin, the board's chair, or the committee's chair) will see a Set up discussions button on its page; choosing it creates the space, and the Discussions tab appears.

The committee's chair also administers that space — they can rename or archive it and lock or unlock its threads, all without any board-wide admin permission and only for the committee they chair. Read more in Discussions.

How do I write or update the charter?

On a committee's page, choose Edit charter and enter the committee's terms of reference. Saving doesn't overwrite the old text — every save keeps the previous version in the committee's charter history, so you can always see what the charter said before and who changed it. Choose Show version history to list every past version with who edited it and when, then choose Show text of version N on any row to read that version's full text in place — no need to leave the page. A version where the charter was cleared entirely shows as "Charter was cleared in this version" rather than a blank panel. You can edit the charter and manage responsibilities if you hold committee-management permission board-wide, or if you're the chair of that committee — a committee chair can make these changes on their own committee without gaining any board-wide permission. Everyone else can read the charter and its history.

If a change needs undoing — a bad edit, or an accidental clear — choose Restore next to any past version in the history table (it's never shown next to the current version, since restoring the version you're already on would do nothing). Confirming names the version you're restoring; if it's an emptied version, the confirmation says plainly that restoring it clears the charter. Restoring doesn't rewind history — it adds a new version with that version's text as the current charter, so nothing already in the history is ever changed or removed. Restoring needs the same permission as editing the charter.

What's a responsibility?

A responsibility is a named, owned mandate within a committee — for example, "review annual budget," owned by a specific member, and optionally recurring on a set cadence. It's a standing assignment, distinct from both the committee's roster (who sits on the committee) and an action item with a due date.

To add one, choose Add a responsibility, give it a name, choose the owning member, and optionally set how often it recurs to one of: Weekly, Biweekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Semiannually, or Annually. Anything else is rejected with an error, so you always know right away whether a cadence took. You can reassign the owner, rename it, change or clear its recurrence, or remove it later — each change saves immediately.

How do I create a task from a responsibility?

On a responsibility's row, choose Create task to turn it into a real, assignable task: it's titled after the responsibility, assigned to the responsibility's owner, and shows up right away on the Tasks page. The new task stays linked back to the responsibility it came from, and is scoped to this committee automatically — so it also appears in this committee's own Tasks section without anyone setting a committee by hand. If the responsibility already has an open task, choosing Create task again doesn't create a duplicate — it tells you the existing one is still open. Creating a task from a responsibility needs the same permission as managing responsibilities: committee-management permission board-wide, or being the chair of that committee.

A recurring responsibility also generates its own tasks automatically, on its actual schedule — counting from the day the responsibility was created, not from the start of a calendar week/month/quarter/year. A Quarterly responsibility created on March 5th gets a new linked task every March 5th, June 5th, September 5th, and so on — not on the first day of each calendar quarter. Only one open task per responsibility exists at a time (the same rule the manual button follows): once that task is done, the next scheduled occurrence's sweep creates the next one, and this keeps working indefinitely — even years into a Weekly or Biweekly cadence. Create task is there for whenever you want one sooner, not instead of that schedule.

How do I tell a responsibility already has an open task?

As soon as a responsibility has an open generated task — whether you created it with Create task or it arrived on its recurring schedule — its row shows that task's title, status, and due date right there, linked straight through to it on the Tasks page. You don't have to open Tasks and search, and you won't accidentally click Create task a second time not realizing one already exists. The task itself points back the other way too: its row on Tasks shows a "From" link back to the responsibility that generated it, to whoever can see that committee's detail (its own members, plus anyone with committee-management permission board-wide) — everyone else still sees the task, just without a link they couldn't otherwise follow.

That due-date hint — here and on the committee's activity summary above — reads your board's own configured timezone (set on its Settings page), the same "today" the Tasks page itself uses, so a task never looks overdue (or not-yet-due) here when it doesn't on Tasks.