Meetings

What can I do with a meeting in BoardTools?

Every meeting is its own hub, with a row of tabs across the top of every page under it so you can jump straight between sections — no need to go back to a central page first:

The tabs read left to right in the order you'll use them across a meeting's life:

• Details — when, where, and the meeting's status, plus Called to order at … once a manager has actually started the meeting in Run mode — and a Meeting summary card once the minutes have general notes (an imported AI summary shows up here). This is where you land when you open a meeting.
• Agenda — the ordered items you'll work through.
• Packet — the compiled, downloadable PDF for the meeting: the agenda, every attached PDF and image in full, and the prior minutes. See What's in the board packet.
• Attendance — RSVPs, who showed up, and whether you have quorum.
• Motions — the votes taken during the meeting.
• Minutes — the official record afterward.

What should I do next with this meeting?

Next to the meeting's title there is one next-step button for this meeting, worked out from where it stands and what your role can do. On the Details tab it's the highlighted button. On the other tabs it's a plain outlined button — each of those tabs has its own main action (Publish agenda, Open a motion, Circulate for review…), and only one button on a screen is highlighted. You won't see it on the tab it points to: when the next step is Prepare the packet and you're already on Packet, that tab's own controls are the next step.

Organizers also keep a plain Run meeting link beside it while a meeting is still scheduled, so you can open Run mode early to set up. A completed meeting has no Run button at all; its run view is under ⋯ as Open run view. Run mode itself is the one exception to the tab row: it's a focused, full-attention screen with just the meeting title and a single "Exit run mode" link back to the hub.

Start with Scheduling & agendas to put a meeting on the calendar and build out what you'll discuss, then RSVPs & attendance to track who's coming and confirm quorum. Before the meeting, compile the papers into one file (What's in the board packet) and use Reading, highlighting and noting the board packet to read it in place — on a phone too — and mark it up. When the day arrives, use Running a meeting to walk the agenda live.

Where do I see all of my board's meetings?

The Meetings page promotes the soonest upcoming meeting to a hero card at the top, on the board's own dark chrome so it can't be mistaken for one more row in the list. It leads with how soon the meeting is, the date, its title, where it is, a line of plain counts (how many agenda items, how many people are attending), and one dominant action — Join video call while the call is open, and Open agenda the rest of the time, full-width and in thumb reach on a phone. Below that band is readiness at a glance — whether the agenda is drafted, an RSVP forecast: quorum likely / at risk / short reading, and how many RSVP replies are in ("All replies in", or "N awaiting reply") — so you don't have to open it to know whether it's ready to run. That reading is measured against your board's own configured quorum rule (Simple majority, Two-thirds, Fixed number, or Majority of filled seats — see how is quorum decided?), so it always agrees with the Attendance tab's live quorum indicator — it's just labelled a forecast because it's counting RSVP replies, not people who have actually shown up; the Attendance tab's own reading, from recorded attendance, is the one that decides whether a meeting can transact business. A committee meeting gets the same reading, measured against that committee's own roster rather than the whole board's seats — so a committee of five is forecast on those five seats, exactly the way its Attendance tab rules on quorum, and the two always show the same threshold. The "awaiting reply" count is scoped to the committee the same way — the denominator is that committee's own members, exactly like the Attendance tab's, so a fully-answered committee meeting reads "All replies in" here too, never a count of board members who were never expected to answer it. Your own Your RSVP Yes / Maybe / No control sits right there on the hero card, so you can answer the next meeting without opening it. The rest of the list is grouped into Upcoming and Past, each shown in its own timezone: Upcoming meetings are grouped under month headings, Past ones under year headings.

A meeting that is happening right now stays at the top as the hero card, marked Live now with a Go to the live meeting button — it doesn't move to Past when its start time passes, or when it runs over its scheduled end. It moves to Past once the chair adjourns it (or, if nobody adjourns it, a few hours after its scheduled end). Standing meeting schedules — recurring series like a monthly board meeting — sit in their own panel beside the list rather than in the meeting list itself; see Set up a standing meeting schedule.

Before the board has any meetings, the page shows just the empty state — no summary counts, no Needs attention card, and no filters.

Above the hero, a row of counts — Upcoming, Your RSVP due, Quorum at risk, and Past — summarizes the board's whole calendar at a glance. Your RSVP due and Quorum at risk turn amber only once there's at least one meeting matching, and each is a link: tap either to jump straight to just those meetings — the same Needs attention filter described below, already applied for you. A meeting only ever counts toward one of these two figures while it's still upcoming and still scheduled, so a meeting you've already answered, one that's cancelled, or one that's already happened never counts toward either, no matter how a stat elsewhere on the page reads.

Above the list, a Filters button (collapsed when the page opens; it reads Filters (2 active) when any are set) opens search, filter, and clear filters to narrow it down: search by title, filter to a single committee, filter to a meeting type (Board, Committee, Annual general, or Special), or filter to Needs attention (Your RSVP due or Quorum at risk — the same two figures the summary row above counts) — Upcoming and Past stay grouped the same way, just narrowed to what matches. (Since both "needs attention" dimensions only ever apply to upcoming, still-scheduled meetings, choosing either one always empties the Past group for as long as it's applied.) The list updates on its own a moment after you change a search term or filter — there's no need to click Apply (it's still there, and it's what runs the search/filter if JavaScript is off). Choose Clear filters to go back to the full list. Changing any filter, including Needs attention, always takes you back to the first page of Past if you'd paged further in.

Once a board has met for a while, the Past group can get long, so it's split into pages — you'll see Previous page / Next page links and a "Page 1 of N" count under it, and the page you're on is part of the address, so you can bookmark or share a link straight to a particular page of past meetings. Any search or filter you've set stays applied as you page through, and paging works even with JavaScript off. The Upcoming group is never paged. From either group you can:

• Join a virtual meeting with one tap, shown directly on the card during its 15-minute join window (from 15 minutes before the start time through the end); outside that window, Join moves into the card's ⋯ menu instead (it only appears at all once a join link is set and the meeting isn't cancelled).
• RSVP in place. Any upcoming meeting you haven't answered yet shows a Your RSVP Yes / Maybe / No control on its card, so the "Your RSVP due" count in the summary strip above is answerable without leaving the list. It saves the moment you tap, confirms with a brief message, and the card then states the answer you gave instead of the control. It's the same answer as everywhere else — the meeting's Details tab, the Attendance tab, the calendar — so nothing can drift out of step. If your role can't RSVP (an observer), the control isn't shown.
• Open the card's ⋯ menu for Add to calendar (downloads the meeting to your own calendar app), Copy join link (when the meeting has a virtual link), and Copy meeting info — a ready-to-paste summary of the title, date/time and timezone, location, join link, and RSVP-by date, for dropping straight into an email or chat message. The same actions sit under Share beside an open meeting's title. Any one of them shows a brief confirmation once it's copied.
• Open a meeting to see its full detail. Edit, Mark as completed and Cancel meeting sit under the ⋯ menu beside its title, on every tab, if your role lets you manage meetings; if it doesn't, you'll simply see the meeting rather than controls you can't use.

Every member sees a meeting's How to attend ("In person", "Virtual", "Hybrid", or "Location TBD"), its Location, and — for an online meeting — its Join button; being able to attend a meeting never depends on being able to change it. Join is always that one button, everywhere it appears: the meeting itself never prints the raw video link on the page, so there's nothing to select and copy by hand. When you do need the URL itself — to paste it into a message, say — use Copy join link under Share. The Join button itself appears from 30 minutes before the start, and while the meeting is under way; the rest of the time the link is still one tap away under Share. A meeting's card and the home page tell you the same thing at a glance: a purely virtual meeting carries a Virtual badge, one that's both in a room and streamed carries Hybrid, and an in-person meeting simply shows where it is.

Mark as completed, under ⋯ beside a meeting's title, closes it out once it's happened — a confirm prompt checks you mean it, then the meeting's status becomes Completed (its own green status chip) and the Details page shows a short "This meeting is completed" note. Like cancelling, this keeps the meeting on the record rather than deleting it.

What does the board hear when a meeting is cancelled or moved?

Both are told to everyone invited — the whole board for a board meeting, and just that committee's members for a committee meeting — including a member who's been invited to BoardTools but hasn't signed in yet, the same people who receive the meeting's packet. Nobody has to notice the change for themselves.

When you cancel a meeting, everyone invited gets:

• a notification in the app (the bell, and the Notifications page, filed under "Meeting cancelled"), and
• one email: "Meeting on date has been cancelled.", followed by your reason if you gave one in the Reason (optional) box, and "This removes it from your calendar." It carries a calendar cancellation: if they'd added the meeting to their own calendar — from the invite, Add to calendar, or the calendar subscription — that entry is removed, so nobody is left with a live appointment for a meeting that isn't happening. There's no "View meeting" button for a meeting that isn't happening, just an optional See the board's calendar link.

When you edit a scheduled meeting's time, its location, or its join link, the same people get a "Meeting moved" notification and one email: the updated calendar invite. It quotes the old time beside the new one ("moved from Thu, Sep 3, 2026, 1:00 PM to Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 1:00 PM"), says so when the location or join link changed, updates the meeting on their calendar, and carries the one-tap Attending / Maybe / Can't attend buttons so they can answer again for the new time. When the start moved — a new date or start time — everyone's earlier RSVP is cleared, and both the email and the notification ask them to RSVP again for the new time (see moving the start asks everyone to RSVP again). Edits that don't affect when or where the meeting happens — renaming it, tidying up its description — are not mailed to anyone.

Both notices are sent once. An already-cancelled meeting can't be cancelled again, and two administrators saving the same reschedule at the same time doesn't mail anyone twice; a second, genuinely different move is announced again. Both are recorded in the audit log ("Cancellation notice sent" / "Change notice sent") along with how many members were told.

Cancelled by mistake? It can be put back — see can I undo cancelling or completing a meeting?, which also explains why reinstating re-invites everyone.

Members who have turned off the Meetings topic in their notification preferences don't receive these either — the same switch that governs meeting reminders and packet-ready notices governs these, on each channel independently. The one exception is the cancellation email: it still goes to everyone invited, because it's what takes the meeting off their calendar.

What does each meeting card show at a glance?

Every card summarizes the meeting without your having to open it:

• The title, meeting type, the date and time (start and end, in the meeting's own timezone), and the location.
• A status chip: Cancelled or Completed once the meeting reaches that state; otherwise — while it's still scheduled — the chip instead shows its relative proximity ("in 3 days", "today", "3 days ago"), so a glance at the list tells you how soon a meeting is without opening it.
• A row of RSVP chips — how many members are attending, replied maybe, or declined — so you can see who's coming at a glance. To keep the card readable, that's at most three chips; anyone who hasn't answered yet shows as a plain no reply count alongside the number of agenda items and, when one is set, the RSVP by deadline.
• Your RSVP — your own response, when you've given one — so you can tell the meetings you've answered from the ones still waiting on you. Next to it, answer with one tap using the Yes / Maybe / No buttons right on the card — no need to open the meeting just to RSVP. The chips above update immediately to reflect your answer.

The card is the quick summary; the meeting's Attendance & quorum tab is still the home for the full member-by-member detail and the live quorum picture.

Finding your way around one meeting

A meeting has six sections — Details, Agenda, Packet, Attendance, Motions and Minutes — and the strip that switches between them stays pinned to the top of the screen as you read, so you never have to scroll back up to move on. Agenda carries a count of its items, so you can see whether there is an agenda yet without opening it.

The active tab is the section's name, so a section doesn't repeat it as a heading: the Agenda tab opens straight onto the agenda's status ("Agenda published · 7 items · 90 min planned") and its Items. Each section's ? help button sits at the right-hand end of the tab strip, on the same line as the tab it explains.

Beside the meeting's title — on every tab, not just Details — everything besides the next-step button is one tap away in two menus, so the meeting's own content starts near the top of the screen instead of below a wall of buttons:

• Share — Add to calendar, Get directions (when the meeting has a physical address; it opens your phone's maps app), Copy join link, Copy meeting info and, for organizers, Send calendar invites and Send a reminder (unless the reminder is already the next-step button).
• ⋯ (organizers only) — Edit, Mark as completed (or Reopen / Reinstate), Open run view on a completed meeting and, last and set apart in red, Cancel meeting.

Join stays out in the open when it matters: from 30 minutes before the start, and while the meeting is live.

Cancelling a meeting

Cancel meeting is the last item under ⋯, below a divider and in red, so it can't be mistaken for an everyday action. Choosing it opens a confirmation first: you can add an optional reason (it goes in the cancellation email), then Yes, cancel it — or Keep meeting to back out. See What does the board hear when a meeting is cancelled or moved?

One word for the agenda, everywhere

The agenda's state reads the same on the meeting's record, the Agenda tab and the meetings list: No agenda (no items yet), Agenda draft (items, not yet published) or Agenda published.

Materials

The Materials card lists everything that goes into the packet: documents added to the meeting itself, and — under From the agenda — documents attached to agenda items, each labelled with the item it belongs to. A document attached in both places appears once. No materials yet only shows when there's neither.

Recording

Organizers see the Recording card with an upload field. If your board hasn't got recording storage set up, the card says so in one line ("Recording uploads aren't set up for this board yet."). Directors only see the card once there is a recording to watch.

Good governance tip: cancelling a meeting keeps it on the record — it's marked cancelled rather than deleted, so your meeting history stays complete and auditable.