This post is the first part of a multi-part quick start guide for iPROT beginners.
iPROT is designed to allow you to create your meeting minutes during a meeting or site inspection and send them immediately at the push of a button. Of course, you can also use iPROT to write meeting minutes after the respective meeting or site inspection has concluded. In any case, certain preparatory tasks are necessary for meetings and site inspections, which you can best complete with iPROT directly in the subsequent meeting minutes. In this post, we explain these preparatory tasks step-by-step:
Step 1 – Create the first meeting minutes
To create new meeting minutes, open the New meeting dialog (accessible by clicking the + New meeting link in the top left).
In this dialog, first enter the subject and then select the meeting type in the dropdown field below, into which the new meeting minutes should be categorized. If you are already creating follow-up meeting minutes for existing meeting minutes within a project, the meeting type will be automatically adopted by iPROT and displayed in the designated selection field.
When creating the first meeting minutes, you can adjust the start of the numbering in the minutes number field. The number 1 is automatically entered, which you can adjust to your desired minutes number. Please note that this function is no longer available for subsequent meeting minutes.
Now, enter the so-called metadata for the meeting minutes. Available fields include author, location, start, and end. As the author of meeting minutes, you can only select persons from the iPROT user administration who either have write permission in the current project or meeting type, or who are equipped with administration rights.
As soon as you enter the start of a meeting, iPROT suggests the current system date and time and adds two hours for the end of the meeting or site inspection, which is immediately displayed in the corresponding input fields.
The date in the Start and End fields can be entered either directly via the keyboard in the DD.MM.YYYY format, or conveniently using the calendar selection field that appears when you click into the date input field.
Step 2 – Define participants and mailing list
One text field is provided for participants and mailing list in the dialog.
These two text fields are equipped with an automatic completion function. This means that as soon as you type the first letters of a name, a selection field appears with names from the user administration that contain the entered letters in their first and/or last name. With a simple click on the desired name, it is inserted into the text field and highlighted. You can delete the respective person from the participant and/or mailing list by clicking on the X in the highlight (to the right of the name).
You can quickly add additional participants who are not yet stored in iPROT’s user administration via the + New participant... link. To do this, you only need to enter the first name, last name, and email address and confirm with a click on the Add button on the far right.
The person then entered appears among the attendees and is thus automatically included in the mailing list. Furthermore, the new participant is created in iPROT’s user administration.
Step 3 – Notes and disclaimers
Via the Notes link, you access a text field where you can enter remarks and, for example, a date for the next meeting.
A so-called disclaimer, with which you can, for example, set a deadline for objections to the meeting minutes, can be entered in the system or project settings.
This disclaimer will then be displayed either below the mailing list and notes on the first page of the meeting minutes or on the last page at the end of the meeting minutes, as desired.
Clicking the Save button in the New meeting dialog creates the new meeting minutes in the selected meeting type and enables them for editing.
In the next part of our quick start guide, you will learn how to draft the first meeting minutes with iPROT and what settings you need to consider.
