Once a set of minutes has been created, it is automatically activated. If it is the first set of minutes within a meeting type, the list of topics and entries in the second and third columns will initially be empty. You now need to create the first topic. Clicking the + New Topic field in the second column opens the corresponding dialog.

A new topic is essentially a short heading (e.g. an agenda item) that can be assigned to a chapter (e.g. Planning). The actual content is recorded in the so-called entries.

To create minutes without a chapter structure, simply leave the chapter field empty when creating new topics. If iPROT detects that no chapters are being used within a meeting type, no chapter headings will be displayed in the minutes.

In iPROT, you can also specify whether a topic is to be a continuous topic (i.e. in line with the continuous minutes method) or whether the topic is a one-off topic. One-off topics are then only displayed in the currently active minutes and are not included in the follow-up meetings along with the entries assigned to them.

By clicking on the eye symbol at the bottom left when creating a new topic, it can be marked as internal and is therefore not displayed in the PDF version of the meeting minutes, but only remains visible in the iPROT user interface for the respective author. Entries and addendums within an internal topic are also automatically classified as internal.