Take and manage minutes

How to take minutes in Sherpany?

Sherpany Minutes automatically creates, based on your agenda, a minute template. You can find it on the third tab of your meeting.

Attendance

When writing the minutes, first set the status regarding the attendance for every attendee of the meeting. The following status will be available:

• Present - the attendee was physically present at the meeting
• Remote - the attendee was remotely present at the meeting
• Excused - the attendee was excused from the meeting
• Absent - the attendee was (unexcused) absent from the meeting

By default, every attendee has the status ‘Present’. Click on the status for a given attendee to change it.

Minutes

Simply add the minutes to each agenda item and use the formatting options available as explained in the next section. Besides the text for the minutes, also decisions, tasks, and documents can be added to each agenda item.

• Decisions have a review date and the status can be changed from open to review. 
• Tasks have a due date and the status can be changed from open to done.
• Documents can be added from the agenda in the minutes by selecting or not the toggle: if selected, each agenda item that the document corresponds to will be referred to in the minutes section while respecting the same hierarchy as per the meeting agenda. The document will follow the same security level logic as in the meeting book.

Formatting options

Taking meeting minutes is an essential aspect of your meeting process. It's important to highlight that these minutes can be adjusted and refined to enhance their clarity and effectiveness, ensuring a more dynamic and intuitive text editing experience.

In your minutes section, you will be able to :

• Bold 
• Italic
• Listing
• Add headings
• Underline
• Highlight
• Text Alignment - Align your text to the left, centre, or right
• Add indent
• Add images (via upload button). For information, the images should be jpeg or png, with a maximum size of 100mb.

How to publish the minutes?

Once the minutes of the meeting are ready to be published, they can be made available to either selected attendees for approval or to all attendees. The publication options for the minutes are the same as in a meeting. Meaning, the minutes can - if wished - be selectively published and approved or be published for all attendees right away. You can also notify the attendees that Minutes are available.

How to generate minutes PDF

Once the minutes are published, you can extract a PDF version of it and/or send it for signatures if needed.

Generate minutes PDF

You will be able to select which agenda items you want to include in the PDF and download it. 

Best Practice: we suggest you to review the meeting minutes inside Sherpany, therefore there's no need to export the meeting minutes at this stage.

1. Click on "Minutes PDF", "Generate minutes PDF",
2. Select which agenda items will be included in the minutes,
3. Download the PDF.

How to adjust Headers and Footers in your Minutes PDF?

You can easily modify headers and footers directly in your Meeting Minutes PDFs: you will be able to add logos, include specific information, or adhere to corporate branding guidelines.

You can adjust Headers and Footers in the minutes section, under the PDF Layout button.

Once the wished text, format and images added, do not forget to save it.

How to send the minutes for signatures?

If needed, you can launch the signing process by clicking Send for signatures. 

Make sure the final version has been published to all users beforehand, as no further publication changes will be possible once the process has started.

This action opens a multi-step workflow:

1. Select agenda items: by default, all agenda items are selected, but you can deselect some of them.

2. Add signers: choose which meeting participants should sign the document.

3. Generate the PDF: the system prepares the minutes with placeholders for signatures.

4. Complete and send: set a due date, add a custom message, and send the request. Signers will receive an email with a link to sign the document.

You can track the status of each signature directly in the Minutes > Manage signatures tab.

How to track changes in the minutes?

You can track all changes made to the minutes:

How to access version history?

1. Go to the Minutes tab
2. Click the Version History button (top right)
3. You’ll enter a read-only mode focused on content comparison.

How to use it?

1. Select an agenda item: the version timeline appears
2. Click on a version, and you’ll see:

   Green for added content and Red for removed content

3. Click the ❌ icon on the side panel to exit history view and return to editing

What is tracked?

• Text changes (add/remove)
• Formatting updates
• Image changes
• Status changes (published)

When is the new version created?

• If a user edits and stays inactive for more than <30 minutes, a version is saved
• If a different user edits, a version is saved immediately