Creating and Editing Meeting Minutes

OnBoard gives its Administrators the flexibility to create Meeting Minutes easily and make them visible to meeting attendees through a variety of methods. Here's how!

This article covers Creating and Editing Meeting Minutes; review our article on Viewing Meeting Minutes for information on Board Members accessing Minutes.

Creating Meeting Minutes in OnBoard

You must be the Meeting's Administrator to create/edit the Minutes for the Meeting. (Meeting Admins only. Contributors cannot manage the minutes.) To begin, navigate to the meeting's detail page and click Start Minutes

You'll be presented with two options: Start from Scratch or Start from a Copy of the Agenda. We anticipate most organizations using the Start from a Copy of the Agenda option to get a good portion of the minutes organization pre-populated. However, feel free to use the option that best fits your needs.

When clicking Get Started from the "Start from a Copy of the Agenda" option, your full agenda will be brought into the minutes builder for you to expand upon.

Important Note: When clicking Start from a Copy of the Agenda", your meeting minutes will capture a snapshot of what is currently created in your meeting agenda. This is not a live-updating list, meaning that if your meeting agenda is changed, the meeting minutes will not reflect that change.

Using the "Start from Scratch" option creates a blank canvas for you to begin curating your meeting minutes without the Agenda present.

By default, the Meeting Minutes will duplicate the current Meeting Details and Attendance List from your meeting to blocks. You can remove or customize these, which we'll cover later.

Editing Meeting Minutes

Once you've clicked to Get Started in either of the options mentioned above, you'll transition to the Edit Minutes screen.

Important Note: Immediately after the Minutes are created, they are visible only to other Administrators of the meeting.

If you need to get back to edit the Minutes at any time, you can return to the minutes and click Edit Minutes in the top right corner.

View other Admins editing the Minutes

While you're editing, you'll be able to view the Admins currently editing the minutes at the top right corner under the Save & Finish button. Next to their name will be the corresponding color that will highlight the Minutes Blocks the admin is currently editing. An Administrator will NOT be able to edit a Block someone else is currently editing, and the block will appear greyed out.

Setting Meeting Minutes Visibility

In cases where you would like the Meeting Minutes to be visible to ALL Meeting Invitees, you can click on the toggle at the top left corner of the View Minutes page.

Important Note: In order to make the Meeting Minutes visible to All Invitees, the Meeting will need to be set at least to the lowest Meeting visibility setting of Meeting Details. If your meeting isn't already set to "Meeting Details","Details & Agenda," or "All Visible," you'll be prompted to Publish the Meeting with Meeting Details visible, and the Meeting Minutes will be available for users to view.

You'll be able to choose whether to notify the Invitees that the Minutes are available to view, and to add a custom message.

Adding Minute Blocks

Blocks are the sections in Minutes that contain your notes and other information.

To add a new Block, click the "Add Section" menu at the top left of Minutes and choose the Block type you'd like to add.

For quick access, use the plus "+" button throughout the Minutes Builder to create new Minute Blocks wherever you need them:

Or hover your mouse cursor over the line next to the plus "+" icon to view the Block types to add.

Renaming a Minutes Block

To rename the title of a Minutes Block, click on the title and type your text.

Minutes Block Options Menu

The 3 dotted menu at the top right corner of each Minutes Block will allow you to view more editing options. Some options will be different depending on the Block type.

Moving and indenting a Minutes Block

There are two options for moving and indenting your Blocks in minutes.

Option 1: Use the drag handle on the left-most side of the Block to move it around your

Option 2: The 3 dotted option menu at the top right corner of every Minutes Block will also contain the options to Move to Top, Move to Bottom, Move Up, Move Down, Indent, and Outdent.

Collapsing Minutes Blocks

Collapsing sections can make it easier to get an overview of your Minutes and make moving Blocks easier. You can collapse ALL of your Minutes sections by clicking "Collapse All Sections" near the top left of the Minutes Edit screen.

Alternatively, you can also collapse and expand each section individually by clicking on the collapse/expand arrow at the top right corner of each Block.

Minutes Blocks Types

There are many different Minute Block types that can be used to fill different requirements, and we'll break those down below.

Meeting Header Block

The Meeting Header block displays the Meeting Details, such as your organization logo, meeting name, organization name, meeting date, and location. While it is added to the top of your minutes by default, you can move or add Header Blocks wherever you'd like!

Any of these individual Meeting Details can be hidden or shown by clicking the 3 dotted button at the right of the block and selecting Edit Header Display Settings.

Attendance Block

Use the attendance block to quickly capture the attendance for your meeting.

Like other Minutes Blocks, the Attendance Block can be added or moved anywhere in your Minutes.

Members and Guests

When the block is added, it will populate your Members list with the invitees of your meeting.

Any guests set in the Meeting Agenda Sections will also be added to the Guests list here.

Mark users Absent, Present, or Attending Remotely by clicking the corresponding icon to the right side of their name.

New Members and New Guests can be added by clicking the + Buttons to the right of each respective category.

Remove a user by clicking on the X icon to the right of their name.

Important Note: Adding or removing users in the Attendance Blocks will NOT the Meeting's permissions. That must be done directly from the Meeting Permissions.

A new category of attendees, such as Speakers, or Presenters can be created from this panel's Options menu. Select the options menu to the right of the panel and click Add Custom Attendance List.

Here you'll be able to add the name of the Custom Attendee List, as well as list the Attendee names. You can multiple people in this list by separating each full name with a comma.

Once you click Add the new Custom List and the users will be added to your Attendance Block.

Show/Hide Attendee Titles and Prefixes

The Attendance list can also list users' prefixes and titles from their profiles. Clicking the 3 dotted icon on the right corner of the Attendance block will offer a few specific options to customize your block.

Note

Perhaps the most common of Minute Blocks is the Note Block. This block is a simple text editor that allows you to type Rich Text notes directly into the minutes. Use the toolbar to create ordered/bulleted lists, add hyperlinks, and change the font formatting.

Motion

The Motion Block can be used whenever motions are moved and seconded during the meeting. With this Minute Block, indicate a brief description of what is being called, who made the movement, and who seconded the motion, along with the result.

Please Note: The Motion Block does not interact with OnBoard's Approvals feature, but you can Create an Approval from the Minute's Options menu after saving.

You can jump to information on creating an Approval from Minutes by clicking here.

Task Block

The Task Block is used to generate and record action items that come from the meeting.

When placed on the Minute Builder, the Add Task block will need a brief description, an optional assignee, and an optional due date.

This will create a new Task item visible in the Task's main menu navigation, and the Assignees of the task will receive notifications regarding the task and its due date. The Administrator who created this task will be added as the Viewer, and it will automatically be linked to the Meeting of origin.

Discussion Topic/ Agenda Section Block

This Block can be used to alter the automatic numbering of the Agenda that has been brought into the Minutes tool.

Important Note: This does NOT alter the actual Meeting Agenda, only what is visible from within the Minutes Builder.

Using the 3 vertical dot button to the right side of the Block you can also edit what items are displayed from this particular Agenda Section.

The options to display or hide here include the Presenters, Guests, Agenda Section Description, Documents attached to the Agenda Section, and any Linked Actions.

Admin-Only Note Block

Admin-specific notes can be created in the meeting minutes with the Admin-Only Note. Similar to a standard Note block, the Admin-Only Note supports Rich Text, but will be highlighted with a different color and visibility note at the bottom.

Admin-Only Notes This can be helpful during the Minutes review process or add information only Administrators of the meeting should be able to see.

Minute Options Menu

The Meeting Administrator can use the Options menu (either from the Meeting Details page, or from the Minute Builder tool) to publish, or notify users of the changes to the minutes.

Send for Review

Another Administrator of the Meeting can be sent the Minutes to be reviewed with this option. You'll be able to select the current Administrators of the meeting and include a custom message for them to be notified of the request to review.

Notify Meeting Invitees

With this option, we'll be able to customize an alert to send to our meeting invitees, letting them know that the minutes are now available for viewing, that there has been an update to them, or to keep them in the loop of any other change.

Create Approval

If you have the Approvals feature, you can quickly create an approval template from the minutes builder, so you can review and approve the minutes in OnBoard between meetings or during an upcoming meeting.

Clicking Create Approval from this list will create an Approval with the same name as your meeting, along with a copy of the Minutes attached. The Admins of the meeting will also be set as Admins of this Approval, and Readers and Contributors of the meeting will be set as Voters.

Add to Resources

Add to Resources will place a copy of the Minutes directly into an existing Resource folder. Choose from PDF, Word, or a hyperlink that will link users to View-Only access from the Meeting Minute page directly in OnBoard.

You can also enable the option to Notify Members with Access so any users with permission to the folder the Minutes are being added to will be alerted of the new document.

Finalize Minutes

Place your minutes in a finalized state, meaning they can no longer be edited. Though, they can still be exported to PDF/Word files, or placed into the Resource Library. In the Finalized state, the minutes can also be deleted.

You'll be prompted to confirm that you want to Finalize since this action cannot be undone.

Download PDF/Word Documents

Converts your minutes into a downloadable PDF or Microsoft Word document and exported for your records. This option will be disabled if the Administrator has chosen to disable the download feature for your meeting.

Delete Minutes

If you would like to start over you can Delete Minutes. You'll be asked to confirm this, as this step cannot be undone.

This will completely delete the minutes your Meeting. This is a permanent and un-recoverable action. Once deleted, they will be gone entirely and must be recreated.

OnBoard Group Trainings:

If you are interested, we do offer further education. You can find the calendar and register for OnBoard Minutes Builder group training sessions by clicking here.