Meetings

About meetings

Meetings are where people come together to discuss or inform about a given topic. All the meetings have a given location (where the meeting will happen - which could be online) and start and end date and time (when the meeting will happen).

Types of meetings

Regarding the location, depending on the configuration of the meetings component, you can have:

• In-person meetings: where you get together in a given physical location.

• Online meetings: where you get together using an external service (for instance Zoom or Jitsi Meet) - the online link is shared on the event just before it starts and throughout the meeting.

• Hybrid meetings: where there is an online meeting which is also being streamed online.

Subscribing to calendars

If you wish to be notified of all meetings relating to an entity in the Community Portal, whether that is an Assembly or a Process, click on the meetings tab and click Export Calendar. This provides you with a link to add the calendar in your tool of choice.

To subscribe to all events site-wide, follow the same process but use the Meetings & Events menu item on the main menu.

Creating a meeting

To create a meeting you need to be logged in as a team lead or assistant team lead.

1. Go to the administrator's panel and find your assembly
2. Click on the meetings component
3. Click new meeting and fill out the form - check the Decidim documentation for guidance on the different form fields.
4. Ensure that you select the 'open in a new tab' option in the embed dropdown when using online meeting links such as Zoom.

It's not possible at this time to create recurring meetings, but you can very quickly duplicate an existing meeting using the clipboard icon.

Registration

Through registrations you can have capacity control of the attendance for a meeting. With this feature, for instance, you can limit how many people could attend to the meeting, or you can know before the start of a meeting if you need to find a bigger room to have the meeting.

Enabling this feature will add a button so that participants can express their wish to go to the meeting. Depending in how this feature is configured, then:

• It’s possible to define how many slots are available for controling the maximum capacity for this meeting

• A custom registration form for asking information to participants can be configured

• Administrators can make invitations to other participants or people that aren’t registered on the platform

• It’s possible to control attendance to the meeting through check-in codes - for example if you want to verify attendees have a valid ticket when they arrive at an event.

When registering to attend a meeting, users are presented with the option to show their attendance publicly, and also whether they are attending on behalf of another group.

Turning on registrations

To enable registrations for a meeting:

1. Sign in as admin
2. Go to admin panel
3. In the main sidebar, click in the button for the space that you want to configure the component for. For instance, it could be "Processes", "Assemblies", or "Conferences"
4. Click on "Meetings"
5. Search the meeting that you want to enable registrations for
6. Click on the "Edit" button Edit button
7. Change the "Registration type" field to "On this platform" *
8. Define how many slots are available in "Available slots for this meeting"
9. Click on the "Update" button
10. Click on the "Registrations" button Registrations button
11. Check the "Registrations enabled" checkbox
12. Fill the form

• The default should be to register attendance through the community portal but if an external ticketing system is to be used, it's possible to provide a link to the booking page.

Etherpad note taking

Instead of using external tools for taking notes, we now have an Etherpad instance for the Mautic community, which is fully integrated with the community portal. This allows us to have notes embedded within meetings - also allowing people to take part asynchronously - which becomes available 24 hours before the meeting starts, and becomes read only 72 hours after the finish time of the event passes. Users have to be logged in to interact on the pad.

1. Before the meeting: attendees can check the agenda and add any comments before the meeting starts
2. During the meeting: notes can be taken in a collaborative way
3. After the meeting: notes, minutes, metadata and/or pictures associated witht the meeting, to provide a record of what was discussed

The pad will appear automatically - you don't need to do anything.

The pad iframe is accessible for 24 hours before and 72 hours after the meeting. After the meeting, the read only pad is shown.

Adding an agenda

Please ensure that an agenda is added to meetings. It helps people to better understand what is going to be discussed, and allows you to keep focused when running the meeting.

The agenda feature allows an administrator to define the schedule for a meeting. It’s possible to define agenda items and sub-items, with every one of the topics that will be discussed in the meeting, along with a description and the duration of every item and sub-item.

To define an agenda for a meeting:

1. Sign in as admin
2. Go to admin panel
3. In the main sidebar, click in the button for the space that you want to configure the component for. For instance, it could be "Processes", "Assemblies", or "Conferences"
4. Click on "Meetings"
5. Search the meeting that you want to add the agenda to
6. Click on the "Agenda" button Agenda button
7. Fill the form

Running a meeting

It's a good idea to make an announcement on Slack / Social the day before the meeting to remind people, and also an hour before the meeting starts.

Refer to the agenda, and have someone take notes (rotate this person each meeting) on the Etherpad.

Take note of who is in attendance (individuals, companies, groups represented) and if any proposals are being discussed and be sure to record the meeting as appropriate.

Closing a meeting

After a meeting has passed it’s possible and recommended to close the meeting. This allows you to adds the minutes, the notes that gives a summary on what was discussed during the meeting, the agreements reached, decisions made, etc.

This allows to bring transparency to the meeting and also serves as a record of the different meetings.

It’s also possible to add other kind of metadata to the meeting, such as what organizations has attended, how many attendees and contributions were, and what proposals were discussed.

To close a meeting:

1. Sign in as admin
2. Go to admin panel
3. In the main sidebar, click in the button for the space that you want to configure the component for. For instance, it could be "Processes", "Assemblies", or "Conferences"
4. Click on "Meetings'
5. Search the meeting that you want to close
6. Click on the "Close" button Close button
7. Fill the form

Please be sure to provide a link to the meeting recording (upload to the community shared Google Drive).

When you associate a proposal with a meeting, it is also shown in the proposal overview.