Run a meeting with an agenda, a pack and minutes

A meeting gathers the applications a panel or board will consider. You build its agenda, generate one PDF pack for the attendees, share it to their portal, record what was decided, and then record the decisions themselves.

Before you start

You need Can generate document reports. Without it, you don't see meetings.

Create a meeting

1. Go to Report > Meetings.
2. Select New meeting.
3. Enter the Title and the Date.
4. Tick the grants whose applications the agenda will hold.
5. Choose who attends: an Admin Group, whose members all attend, and any Administrators or assessors you name under Attendees.
6. Tick the Summary page fields each application's summary page shows. Applicant, title, grant, amount requested and score are ticked to start with.
7. Select Create meeting. The meeting opens on its Agenda tab.

Edit on the meeting changes any of these until the minutes are finalised.

Build the agenda

On the Agenda tab:

1. Search under Add application by number, title or applicant. Only applications from the meeting's grants that you can see are listed.
2. Select Add application beside each one you want.
3. Use Move up and Move down to set the order, and Remove to take one off.
4. Type an Agenda note for any item. It prints on the agenda and in the pack.
5. Select Save agenda.

Generate the pack

On the Pack tab, select Generate meeting pack and choose the Format:

• Board or panel pack: a cover, the agenda, a summary page for each application, its grant's scoring matrix and a decision sheet, with the application number on every page.
• Ministerial brief – Commonwealth or Ministerial brief – NSW: also asks for the Decision sought, the Guidelines and selection criteria and the Selection process. The selection process starts filled in from the grant. The brief rates each application against each criterion as met, partly met or not met, and prints the rule it uses.

The dialog shows about how many pages the pack will run to. A pack over 500 pages is refused: take items off the agenda or choose fewer summary fields. A brief is refused until every application on the agenda has a finalised assessment, and the dialog names the ones still to finalise. A board pack for the same meeting still generates.

The pack builds in the background, and the tab says so until it's ready. Each time you generate, a new numbered version is kept. Regenerating offers the last version's format and typed text.

Share the pack

When the latest version is ready, select Share with attendees and confirm. Each attendee gets it in their portal and by email. Only the latest version can be shared.

An attendee who has declared a conflict of interest on an application gets a copy with that application withheld: its pages, agenda note, scoring row and decision row. Attendee copies lists each attendee's copy and how many applications it withholds. If someone declares a conflict after the pack was shared, their copy is withdrawn and the tab asks you to share the pack again.

If a copy failed to build or its email didn't go, the tab says so. Select Retry attendee copies to rebuild and resend just those copies.

If you add an attendee after sharing, the tab says they have no copy yet and offers Share with attendees again. Sharing again builds and emails the new attendee's copy. Attendees who already have theirs keep it.

An Administrator who attends but doesn't have Can generate document reports opens the link in the email to see their own copy and Download pack. They don't see the agenda, the minutes or anyone else's copy.

Record the minutes

On the Minutes tab:

1. Tick who attended and type any General notes.
2. For each agenda item, choose the Outcome and give its Rationale, any Dissent, and a Meeting note. These are saved as the committee outcome and meeting note on the application.
3. Select Save minutes. Saving again changes only what you changed.
4. Select Finalise minutes when they're complete, and confirm. Anything you haven't saved is saved first, and if that save is refused nothing is finalised. Finalised minutes, and the meeting's agenda and attendees, can't be changed.

Record the decisions

Record decisions on the Minutes tab opens a new funding decision with the agenda's applications already ticked. A decision covers one grant, so a meeting with several grants shows one link for each.

A decision holds at most 200 applications. If a grant has more than that on the agenda, its link is split into batches, such as Record decisions (1 of 2) and Record decisions (2 of 2), and each opens its own decision.