How do I track RSVPs, attendance, and quorum?

How do I track RSVPs and attendance?

A meeting's Attendance tab shows every member with two independent controls:

• RSVP — Yes, Maybe, or No.
• Attendance — Present, Remote, or Absent.

Which of the two you can actually operate depends on your role, and you only see the ones you can use — so a control on this page never turns you away after you click it. Recording attendance (and Mark all present) needs attendance-management permission, which chairs, board admins, and staff liaisons hold; RSVP is open to every voting member. If a control isn't yours to use, that member's current answer is still spelled out in words next to their name — "Attending", "Present", "No response", "Not recorded" — so the roster still tells you where the meeting stands.

Your board's organizer can record either on any member's behalf from this page. For your own RSVP, you don't have to come here at all — a Your RSVP Yes / Maybe / No control follows you to the places you already look:

• the meeting's own Details tab;
• the hero card at the top of the Meetings list, for the next meeting coming up;
• any upcoming meeting card in that list you haven't answered yet — which is what makes the list's "Your RSVP due" count answerable on the spot. Once you answer, the card states your answer ("You're attending") in place of the control.

Answer with one tap from wherever you already are and it saves instantly, with a brief confirmation. It's the same answer everywhere, so changing it on one surface updates the others immediately, with no need to reload the page. And if you'd rather be reminded where you live — the dashboard — the Overview page lists RSVPs you owe and links each one straight to the meeting.

Answering from the email, without signing in

You don't have to be signed in — or even open the app — to answer. Every meeting invite and every reminder carries three buttons: Attending, Maybe, and Can't attend. Tap the one that's true and you land on a short page with your answer already chosen; confirm it, and you're done. No password, no sign-in, nothing to install.

A few things worth knowing about that link:

• It's personal to you. It records your answer, so please don't forward it — anyone holding the link can answer as you. If you do forward it by mistake, ask your board administrator to send you a fresh one; the old one can be revoked.
• You can use it more than once. Answer "maybe" a fortnight out and "yes" on the morning — the same link keeps working, and each answer replaces the last. Open it without tapping a button and it shows the answer you've already given, so it doubles as a "change your answer" control.
• It stops working once the meeting starts. After that there's nothing useful left to say, so the link expires on its own.
• It's the same answer as the one in the app. An RSVP given by email and one given from the Attendance tab are the same fact: the tally, the meeting card, and the quorum forecast all update straight away, and nobody has to re-key anything.
• A reminder you've already answered doesn't nag. It confirms what you said and offers a single Change your answer link instead of three fresh prompts.

If you'd rather not get meeting email at all, turn the meetings topic off under Notification preferences — no RSVP link is created for you in that case, and you can still answer in the app.

You don't have to open the Attendance tab just to see how RSVPs are shaping up, either. The meeting's Details tab now opens with an at-a-glance summary: an Attendance block with the RSVP tally (attending / maybe / declined) — the committee's, for a committee meeting; the whole board's, otherwise — how many members have responded, and — when the meeting has an expected head-count — a progress bar toward it; plus a Readiness strip showing the agenda-item count and whether the board packet and minutes exist yet (each state spelled out in words, not just a color). It's read-only — a quick pulse-check on the page you land on — with the full roster and controls still on the Attendance tab.

Who appears on the roster

Everyone who holds a seat on your board — which includes members still showing the amber Invited badge, because they were added to the roster but haven't signed in to BoardTools yet. A director is seated by your board's own appointment, not by clicking a link in an email: if they're in the room, you can mark them Present, and they count toward quorum like anybody else. (They also count in the seat total the threshold is figured from, so a board that has just been set up isn't treated as a board of one.)

Members who hold no seat are left off: Prospective and Nominated people who haven't been seated yet, anyone who has left (Resigned, Removed, Past), and the honorary Emeritus standing. Leaving them out is what keeps the quorum threshold honest — see member statuses.

For a committee meeting (a meeting scheduled with the type "Committee meeting" and linked to a committee — see Scheduling a meeting), the roster lists only that committee's members, and Mark all present and the quorum calculation below use that committee roster — not the whole board. A regular board meeting continues to use every seated board member. The RSVP forecast on the Meetings list is measured against that same committee roster, so the reading on the card and the ruling on this tab always use the same threshold.

If your board has a default RSVP deadline configured (the Meetings settings tab), a meeting shows an "RSVP by …" date here and on its Details page — that many days' notice before the meeting, counted back from starts. This applies however the meeting was scheduled, including one promoted from an availability poll or generated by a standing schedule. Moving the meeting to a new time keeps the deadline in step automatically (recalculated from the new start), unless someone has pinned an explicit deadline on that meeting — see scheduling a meeting. Once the deadline itself has passed, it reads as "RSVP deadline passed …" here and on Details rather than a live prompt, so it never suggests you're still on time to answer. A meeting with no board default configured, and no deadline pinned on it directly, simply shows no date.

When most of the board is in the room, use Mark all present at the top of the roster instead of clicking through every member one at a time — it records everyone who has no attendance recorded yet as Present in a single step. Anyone already marked Remote or Absent is left exactly as they are, so mark the exceptions (a remote attendee, someone who couldn't make it) either before or after — whichever is faster for how your meeting is running. The same button is also available from the Run cockpit's quorum control, so you never have to leave the live meeting view to take the roll call.

Marking members one at a time doesn't make you wait, either: each mark appears the instant you tap it and saves in the background, so you can work straight down the roster — nothing else on the page locks up while a mark is saving, and the button you just pressed keeps keyboard focus. If a mark can't be saved (you lost signal, or your role doesn't allow it), that member snaps back to what was recorded before and a message tells you why, so the roster and the quorum indicator always agree about who is actually present.

How do I send a reminder about a meeting?

When a meeting is approaching, use Send a reminder — on the meeting's Details page (next to Edit and Mark as completed) and in the ⋯ menu on each meeting card in the Meetings list. It's available to organizers (members who can manage meetings) on a scheduled meeting.

A reminder goes to everyone serving on the meeting, not only the people who haven't answered. For a committee meeting, that's the committee's members. Before anything goes out, a confirmation dialog tells you how many members it will email and how they currently stand — for example "all 9 members (4 attending · 1 declined · 4 no response)".

Everyone gets a branded email with a link back to the meeting, but the message adapts to where each person stands, so nobody is asked a question they've already answered:

The join link travels with the reminder

If the meeting has a virtual link, every reminder carries a Join meeting button alongside View meeting — for everyone, whatever they answered. Someone who declined may still find they can make it, and a member reading the morning-of reminder usually wants to join rather than read. View meeting stays the primary button, so giving or changing an RSVP is still one tap away.

This applies to the automatic reminders too, not just the ones you send by hand.

There's no limit on reminders

You can send as many reminders as a meeting needs — there's no cooldown. Instead of blocking you, BoardTools shows you a Reminder history so you can decide for yourself whether another nudge is warranted. It appears in two places: on the meeting's Details page, and inside the confirmation dialog right before you send.

Each entry records when the reminder went out, who sent it, how many people it reached, how those people stood on their RSVP at the time, and what happened to each email:

• Queued — accepted by BoardTools, waiting to go out.
• Sent — handed to the mail provider.
• Delivered — confirmed as arriving in the recipient's mailbox.
• Bounced — the address rejected it. Worth checking the member's email.
• Blocked — the address is on your board's suppression list, so BoardTools won't email it. These are also counted as "skipped" on the send.

Sent and Delivered are deliberately different facts: handing an email to the mail provider isn't proof it arrived, and confirmation comes back a little later. If a member insists they never got a reminder, this history is where you find out whether it actually reached them.

Each entry's timestamp is shown in the meeting's own configured time zone (with the zone named alongside it), not the zone your own device happens to be set to — so two board members looking at the same history, from two different zones, see the same label.

Are there automatic meeting reminders?

Yes — you don't have to remember to nudge anyone. For every scheduled meeting, BoardTools sends up to three reminders on its own:

Each one arrives as a notification in your bell and as a branded email, both linking straight to the meeting. They go to the members expected at that meeting: every serving member of the board or — for a committee meeting — only that committee's members. Anyone who has answered No is left out (they already told the board they're not coming); Yes, Maybe, and no-response members all get them.

A few things worth knowing:

• Cancel a meeting and the reminders stop. Cancelled and completed meetings never remind anyone.
• Nothing arrives twice. Each reminder is sent at most once per member per meeting, even if the schedule runs again or is retried.
• No retroactive nudges. A meeting scheduled inside a reminder's lead time skips that reminder — book a meeting three days out and nobody gets a misleading "one week away" note.

To change what reaches you, use the Notification preferences grid at the bottom of the Notifications page: the Meetings topic covers these reminders, and its In-app and Email boxes are independent — keep the in-app nudge and turn off the mail, or the other way round. The choice is personal to you on this board; no one else can change it for you.

Automatic reminders ride on BoardTools' background scheduler, so they arrive without anyone lifting a finger. The manual Send a reminder button above is still there for the times you want to reach the board right now.

How is quorum decided?

The same page shows a live quorum indicator: how many members are present against your board's threshold — counted over everyone who holds a seat, the same roster listed above — and whether quorum is currently met, stated in words, not just a color, so it's unambiguous at a glance. Next to the rule it names (simple majority of seats, two-thirds of seats, a fixed number of members, or a majority of filled seats), you'll see the rule as plain text — this page only shows it, it never changes it.

The quorum rule is a board-wide setting, so it has exactly one home: the Governance tab of Settings. Changing it there updates it everywhere quorum is calculated on this board, including every other meeting, votes, and minutes — not just one meeting. If you administer your board (you hold the settings permission), the Attendance page's quorum indicator also shows a Change in Settings link that jumps you straight to that tab; if you don't, you'll just see the rule with no link, since you can't change it anyway.

Good governance tip: confirm quorum before you open your first motion, not after — a motion decided without quorum can't be recorded as passed no matter how the vote actually went.

Do meetings land on my own calendar automatically?

Yes. Whenever your board schedules a meeting you're invited to — and again if it's rescheduled or cancelled — you get a calendar file alongside the usual branded email, so the meeting appears (or updates, or disappears) on your own calendar app without you doing anything.

Every way a meeting can be created is covered, not just the "Schedule meeting" form: a meeting a standing schedule drafts for you, and one created by promoting an availability poll's winning slot, both invite you the same way. If your board has meetings from before this was true — a recurring series nobody's calendar ever received — an admin can put them right with Send calendar invites (see my recurring meetings never reached my calendar).

None of this depends on your board's optional contact email. When one is set on the board profile it becomes the invitation's organizer address and the reply-to on the email; when it isn't, BoardTools' own sending address stands in, and the invitation goes out exactly the same.

That invite email follows the same Meetings preference as everything else under this topic: untick its Email box and you stop getting invite (and re-invite) email, calendar file included — but scheduling still tells you the meeting exists via an RSVP requested notice in your bell, as long as the Meetings topic's In-app box is still ticked. See what happens when a meeting is scheduled for the full picture of both channels.

What clicking Accept/Decline in your calendar app does — and doesn't — do today: most calendar apps hide their own Accept/Tentative/Decline buttons for this kind of invite, and any that show them don't yet send your answer back to BoardTools. That's deliberate, and it costs you nothing: answer with the Attending / Maybe / Can't attend buttons in the invite email itself (see Answering from the email above) and your RSVP is recorded in one tap, signed in or not. The Your RSVP control on the meeting's Details tab and the Meetings list does the same thing when you're already in the app. A future release will let a reply from your calendar app count as your RSVP too.

Turn this off — or back on — from the Notification preferences section of the Notifications page: untick Include a calendar file with meeting invites if you'd rather not get the calendar file. You'll still get the same email either way, with its link back to the meeting; only the calendar file is affected. It's on by default.

If you already use "Subscribe to your board's calendar" below, you don't need this too — a subscribed calendar and an emailed invite are two separate copies of the same meeting on your calendar (your calendar app has no way to tell they're the same event), so using both means seeing every meeting twice. Pick whichever fits how you work: the subscription updates itself silently and covers every meeting at once, while the emailed invite arrives per meeting and is what most people expect from "being invited" to something.

How do I view my board's calendar?

Open Calendar to see every meeting on your board, either as a month grid or as an agenda list — whichever view suits how you think about your schedule. Once you're signed in, each meeting is annotated with your own RSVP, so you can tell at a glance which upcoming meetings you've responded to and how.

How do I subscribe to my board's calendar?

To keep your personal calendar app (Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, and similar) automatically in sync, choose Generate link under "Subscribe to this calendar," then Subscribe (or Copy link to add it manually in apps that want a plain web address instead). It updates itself as meetings are scheduled, changed, or cancelled — no need to re-import it.

Keep that link private: anyone who has it can see your board's meetings. Regenerate link replaces it and immediately retires the old one; use Revoke link if you just want to turn it off.