Take & manage minutes

How to take minutes in Sherpany?

Sherpany Minutes automatically creates, based on your agenda, a minutes 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 are available.

• Present - the attendee was physically present at the meeting 
• Remote - the attendee was remotely present at the meeting
• Excused - the attendee was excused for the meeting
• Absent - the attendee was (unexcused) absent for 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. Besides the text for the minutes, also decisions and tasks 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.

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?

• If you need to make an extraction of the PDF only for revision purposes, you will be able to get the minutes in any publication status. In that case you will be able to select which agenda items you want to include in the PDF and download it immediately.
  Be aware that for 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. Select which agenda items will be included in the minutes.
2. Generate the document in PDF

• Get the minutes done and ready for signing. With the minutes in the ready state, the editor can start the request for signatures in the top right button on the minutes pages.
  
  Take good note that the Signing Process will block further publication processes, therefore make sure to publish to everybody before starting the signing process! (Even after completion of the signing, it will not be possible to modify the group of people to which you are publishing).  
  

This will start a workflow with several steps:

1. The first step is to select which agenda items will be included in the minutes. By default, all agenda items are selected, which will generate the minutes for the entire meeting content. But you can deselect any of the items, which will produce a minutes extract including just the selected agenda items.

2. Define who need to sign the minutes. From the list of attendees, the editor can select the members that will sign. When proceeding to the next step, the system will generate the minutes' PDF with the signatures placeholders ready to receive the signature

3. Provide additional information to the request, like the due date and the message to be sent to the signers. 
At this point, the user can already download the generated PDF but still without any signature 

1. Once the request is sent, the signers will receive an email requesting the signing of the minutes' PDF. This email will provide a link to the place where that can be done.
   
2. When the signers click the email link, they will be sent to a page where the PDF is presented and where the signature can take place. If the user is not yet authenticated, then authentication will be asked before accessing the PDF.
3. Once in the presence of the minutes' PDF, members can sign it using a new signature drawing or reusing the last one used.

During this process, the editor can follow up on the progress of the signature on the same page he started the request for signatures. In there he will have access to a page where he can check who already sign it, and who is missing signing.

What kind of signature are we using ?

We are supporting the signing of meeting minutes with an Advanced Digital Signature. This kind of signature must be:

1. Uniquely linked to the signatory and are capable of identifying the signatory.
2. Created in a way that ensures the signatory can maintain sole control.
3. Linked to the data it relates to in such a manner that any subsequent change to the data is detectable.

We do this in our process by:

1. Recording in the PDF the name, login and timestamp of what user and when the signature was made.
2. Demanding that the user authenticates in the application to be able to sign the minutes, and no one can sign it on his behalf.
3. After the user confirms the signing, we apply a Sherpany Certificate that will work as a seal that will become invalid if  the document is tampered.

Upload signatures

The upload signature feature will allow you 3 options :

• To draw your signature
• To upload an image to be used as a signature
• To type your name and apply a style with a different font.