Implementing best practice with mycommittee
2. Switching to mycommittee (your first agenda)
Many committees or other groups with recurring meetings are already using some kind of meeting management. Most of the techniques in use are completely manual and require a lot of time and energy.
Regardless of whether you are using a word processor, spreadsheet or any other type of software to create your agendas and meeting minutes, switching to MyCommittee should be fast and easy.
You can enter all your existing meeting information into MyCommittee so even your first new agenda should be completely up to date and ready to go. We'll come back to this later in this chapter.
The first thing you will need to do if you didn't already is to sign up. You can sign up here (The link will open in a new window so you can follow the instructions in this guide and immediately setup your first committee and agenda).
Once you are registered you will need to enter the name of your committee or organization. Click on continue and your private group portal will be created.
Before you start to move your current meeting information to MyCommittee, you should tell MyCommittee a few things about your organization and meeting habits. You can do this at your own pace and while you are doing this, no notifications are sent to anyone yet.
Committee Settings
Only you and other members that have the 'committee admin' box checked (on the membership page) have modify access to the committee settings. Other people can see this information but cannot make changes.
Most sections of the committee settings are easy to understand and change. We will just touch a few things that are important for the working of your committee or team and can save you time later whenever you schedule a new meeting.
Terms of reference
This section is important because it will tell the members about the purpose and scope of the committee, the members, the meeting procedures, reporting, etc.
You can enter the terms of reference directly into the space provided or attach one or more documents as reference.
Meeting schedule
In this section you can enter the recurring schedule of your meetings. When you enter this here, MyCommittee will automatically calculate the next meeting date and enter this information automatically whenever you create a new agenda. (You can also enter the usual meeting location here if there is one)
Standing Items
Standing items are agenda items that are part of every regular scheduled meeting. MyCommittee provides 2 sections in every agenda for standing items. One at the beginning of the meeting and one at the end of the meeting.
Examples of beginning standing items are:
- Review the agenda
- Approve the minutes of the previous meeting
- Sub-committee reports
- Financial reports
- etc.
Examples of standing items at the end of the meeting:
- Review of action items
- Announcements
- Date/time of the next meeting
- etc.
Each time you create a new regular agenda, MyCommittee will pre-populate these 2 sections automatically. You can still choose to remove or add items at that time.
The initial settings contain a few frequently used sample standing items already. You can easily delete or modify these samples and add your own items in either section.
People
When your committee is customized it's time to enter the members of your group or committee. To do this follow the link on the welcome screen or click on the 'People' tab in the main menu.
You will notice that you already have one member, you! To add more members simply click the 'add new member' link and fill out the form for each member. Only members with a valid email address will able to register to your web site. If not all your members have Internet access just enter their name for now.
It is good practice to select a role and enter a functional role for each member (especially in larger teams) so everyone knows what other people are doing and whom to contact for information later. (The information you enter here can be viewed by all members).
Each member can, after they register, complete their personal profile with business contact information. (also viewable for all members).
That's it you're all set and ready to create your first agenda!
Your first agenda
You can enter all your old agendas and minutes in MyCommittee if you want but that could take some time. Because most committees already have their minutes in electronic format (word document, PDF file, etc.) it's recommended to simply upload these documents to MyCommittee. In the documents tab you can create a new category (E.g. "old meeting minutes") and upload these documents so all members can still access and view these files and all committee information is accessible from one central location.
Keep the minutes of the last meeting handy.You're now ready to create your first agenda.
On the Meetings page click on 'Schedule new meeting'. The agenda wizard will open and you can enter or confirm the general meeting information. Click on 'Create meeting' to save the new agenda (draft version).
You will notice that MyCommittee already did half the work for you. The meeting date/time is usually entered automatically, all participants (members) are added to the invited list and the standing items (you entered in the committee settings earlier) are added to the agenda. To make your first agenda as complete as possible you will need to click on 'old business' and enter the deferred agenda items from your last meeting here. You only have to do this last step once. From now on, MyCommittee will keep track of agenda items and populate the old business items automatically for you on every new agenda.
Click on 'New business' and enter your new business items. In the next step you can review the complete agenda and if everything looks OK, click on 'distribute'. Here you can send a notification (meeting invitation) to all members and guests.
You're done. All members can now open and view the online agenda and RSVP and/or leave comments or personal notes right on this page. You can always see who read the agenda and confirmed by clicking the 'Status: view details' link on the meetings page.