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 you need to send the minutes for signatures, you can request them by choosing the Send for signatures option. Take good note that the signing process will block further publication processes, therefore make sure to publish to all users 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:

• Select Item - 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 minutes extract including just the selected agenda items.
• Add signers - define who need to sign the minutes. From the list of attendees, you can select the members that will sign.
• Prepare document - When proceeding to the next step, the system will generate the minute's PDF with the signatures placeholders ready to receive the signatures.
• Complete and send - request the signatures.  Provide additional information to the request, like the due date and the message to be sent to the signers. At this point, you can already download the generated PDF but still without any signatures.

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. 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. Once in the presence of the minutes' PDF, members can sign it using a new signature drawing or reusing the last one used. 

During the process, the editor can follow up on the progress of the signatures 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.

Upload signatures

The participants, after being requested to sign the minute's PDF, will receive an email with the link to sign the document. Open the link, and click the signature sign. 

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.

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:

• Uniquely linked to the signatory and are capable of identifying the signatory.
• Created in a way that ensures the signatory can maintain sole control.
• 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:

• Recording in the PDF the name, login and timestamp of what user and when the signature was made.
• Demanding that the user authenticates in the application to be able to sign the minutes, and no one can sign it on his behalf.
• 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.

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