Implementing best practice with mycommittee
4. Getting the most out of mycommittee
MyCommittee can do much more than creating meeting agendas and minutes. It allows your group to efficiently communicate and collaborate in-between meetings. You might not immediately realize why this is important and how this can benefit your committee but once you and your members are signed up this will soon become clear.
In the next sections we will highlight a few of the most important features that will definitely help you to save time and become more effective. The only thing you might have to do is to encourage your members to sign up and use the site. Everyone will benefit!
Personalized view
Each time a member of your group signs on, MyCommittee will check if there is anything 'to do' for this member. For instance, RSVP to a meeting invitation, reply to a quick poll, etc. The overview page will show all pending tasks. The member can simply follow the link(s) to get to the details and complete the task.
These personalized links are simply reminders. In addition, MyCommittee will send notifications by email for all events but people might not always pay attention or can switch off the notification for some events (like new messages and comments).
The purpose for all of this it to help the entire group getting more efficient. It will be clear what is expected from each member at any point in time (Prepare for a meeting, work on a task, etc.)
Notes & Comments
In MyCommittee, all members can attach personal notes and comments immediately to an item on the meeting agenda or minutes. To do this, simply click on the 'add note' or 'add comment' link below an item on the agenda or minutes page. If there are comments already, the item will show a small icon that will even indicate whether you already read these comments or not.
Notes can only be viewed by the member that attached them and are for personal use.
Comments can be viewed by all members. Every member can also reply to a comment. This feature was designed to allow for an easy asynchronous discussion about agenda items or meeting minutes before or after the meeting.
For instance, if a member notices something that is missing or incorrect in the minutes, a comment can be attached and the minutes can be updated. This way, minutes can be approved before the next meeting saving you valuable meeting time!
You can view all comments (regardless to what agenda or item they are attached) on the comments page under the 'Discuss' tab.
You can even start a discussion here that is not attached to anything. Use it as a whiteboard to share ideas and get feedback from your members.
Messages
Messages are used to communicate with one or more members only. You can select the recipients when you create a new message. It works more or less like comments but with a selected group. Messages are much easier than email because you can always view the entire discussion as one thread and you don't loose important emails between all the others. All you committee related information and communications stay together in one place.
Messages are indexed and can be searched as any other information like agendas, minutes, comments, etc.
Documents
Use the documents section to share all your committee and meeting documents.
No more expensive agenda packages to mail out. All members can simply download or view the documents online. You can create categories to group your documents by subject and you can even upload different versions of the same document. Document sharing is very easy with MyCommittee!
Other features
After you sign up you will find many smaller features like requesting agenda items, create quick polls, view meeting statistics and many more. Together they make MyCommittee a unique tool that belongs in every organization that is serious about getting best practice implemented in the committee process.
You can always contact support@mycommittee.com if you have any further questions.