Overview

Training your board members in OnBoard is one of the best ways to ensure long‑term adoption and confidence. This guide walks you through how to prepare your portal, build a realistic demo meeting, and run a smooth, hands‑on training experience so members feel comfortable from day one.

1. Set Up Your Directory and Groups

1.1 Add Members to the Directory

Add each member to your Directory, but do not send invitations yet.

Set each member’s role to Member so you can assign proper permissions before they activate their accounts.

Why this matters:

Pre-permissioning ensures members immediately see the correct meetings, folders, and actions when they first log in.

1.2 Create and Populate Groups

Groups represent your board, committees, and other organizational segments.

Add all members to their relevant Groups. 

Use Groups to:

• Add entire committees to meetings
• Share Resource folders at scale
• Assign permissions efficiently

This reduces manual work and keeps long‑term maintenance simple.

2. Prepare Your Demo Meeting

Why use a demo meeting?

A hands‑on walkthrough helps members practice logging in, opening materials, and navigating an agenda. This leads to better engagement, clearer questions, and smoother onboarding.

2.1 Recreate Your Most Recent Meeting

We recommend recreating the most recent meeting your board conducted as your demo meeting.

When the content feels familiar, members can focus on learning OnBoard, not trying to interpret new files.

2.2 Build the Agenda and Add Materials

Populate your demo meeting with:

• A full agenda
• Section documents
• Any materials your board typically expects

2.3 Review Meeting Permissions

Members will need to be added to the meeting. 

Before training:

• Add all members as Readers
• Use Groups for quick assignment

2.4 Set Meeting Visibility

The meeting visibility will need to be updated for Readers to view the agenda and meeting book.

Set the meeting to: All Visible: Agenda & Book

This ensures members can:

• See the meeting
• Open the agenda
• Access all included materials

3. Set Up the Resources Section

The Resources area stores helpful, non‑meeting documents that members need year‑round. It's important to already have documents stored in Resources for your members to reference during training. 

3.1 Create and Populate Resource Folders

Create folders and upload relevant content such as:

• Policies and bylaws
• Organization directory
• Committee materials
• Past meeting books (from before OnBoard)

3.2 Set Folder Permissions

Remember:

• Folders stay hidden until access is granted
• Add members as Readers to the parent folder to make all subfolders visible
• Use Groups whenever possible

4. Send Invitations to Members

After you’ve added your members to the Directory and assigned their permissions for meetings and resources, the final step is to invite them to your organization.

Inviting members before your training session is essential. When members can log in during training, they can follow along hands‑on, explore the platform, and begin building confidence with OnBoard from the very first session.

Steps to Bulk Send Invitation

1. Confirm Member Roles
   • Make sure all Members, Directors, or Trustees appear in the Directory with the role Member.
2. Select Members to Invite
   • In the Directory, check the boxes next to each member you want to include in the bulk invite.
3. Open Bulk Actions
   • At the top of the Member List, select the Bulk Actions checkbox.
4. Send Invitations
   • Choose Send Invitation from the Bulk Actions menu to send the activation email to all members simultaneously.

5. Sample End‑User Training Agenda

Here’s a common training flow used by OnBoard’s Customer Education team:

1. How to log in
2. Navigating the Homepage
3. Exploring the Meeting List
4. Viewing the Meeting
5. Opening and navigating the Meeting Book (Open Book View)
6. Creating and sharing Annotations
7. Accessing and navigating Resources
8. Viewing the Directory and updating profile information
9. Accessing Help & Support

Share optional training videos as well:

• OnBoard Training Videos

6. Tips for a Successful Training

Tip: Create a Demo Member Account

A dedicated, member‑level test account allows you to:

• Show exactly what members will see
• Hide admin‑only features
• Test permissions ahead of time

Use a unique email and create a member account. Add this user to meetings, groups, and folders to confirm what members see. Also use this email for training to replicate the member view. 

Tip: Know the Mobile & Tablet Apps

OnBoard has native apps for iOS and Android, and many members, directors, and trustees prefer the mobile experience. 

If your board mainly uses mobile devices:

• Conduct training on the mobile/tablet app
• Point out differences between the web and mobile versions

Download links:

Search for "OnBoard Meetings" in your preferred app store to download for free. Below are direct links.

• iOS App
• Android App