In our blog post on how to write meeting minutes more effectively with iPROT, we briefly showed you how easy minutes distribution is with iPROT. In this post, we want to revisit this topic and address a few specific points regarding minutes distribution:
Reviewing meeting minutes before distribution
Once you have finished writing and compiling your meeting minutes with iPROT, you can review them in the PDF preview before sending. To do this, click on the Meeting minutes (Preview) entry with the small PDF icon next to it in the menu at the top right. You can also find details on this in our manual under View meeting minutes in PDF format.
When you open the PDF preview, the current status of the active meeting minutes currently being edited is displayed directly in your browser, usually in a new tab or window. Now check in particular whether the information in the participants and mailing list is correct and complete. If necessary, you can use the pencil-shaped edit icon in the column with the meeting minutes to correct the participants and mailing list as well as other key data of the meeting directly in the user interface. To complete personal data, it is best to use the user administration, which you can access via the menu at the top right.
Also ensure that you have not forgotten any topics or entries, as meeting minutes that have already been sent cannot be subsequently expanded or changed to include topics or entries for reasons of audit-proof documentation.
Adjusting meeting minutes layout and settings
By default, meeting minutes in iPROT are formatted in a single column (item number/date, and next to it the text of the entries). Additional information (those responsible for tasks, the “due by” date, etc.) is displayed below each entry.
Alternatively, a multi-column, tabular layout is available, in which the responsible parties and date information (due by, completed on) are displayed in further columns next to the item number, the topic heading, and the entry text.
The desired formatting can be set either in the system settings (applies to all projects) or in the project settings (if the layout for a project should be set differently from other projects).
If you want to change the presentation of the participants and mailing list on the cover page of your meeting minutes, you can adjust this according to your requirements. Details can be found in our manual in the chapter Designing the participants list on the cover page of the meeting minutes.
The automatically generated list of attachments and the disclaimers can easily be moved or hidden entirely in the system settings. To do this, simply access the system settings or project settings via the menu and make the desired adjustments under the menu items List of attachments and Disclaimers or Disclaimer position. You can also find all the details in our manual, either under List of attachments or under Disclaimers and disclaimer position.
Distribution with one click
In the final and concluding step, you can now send the meeting minutes to the people listed in the mailing list with just one click on the menu entry Finalize meeting. Each person on the mailing list will receive an email with a link through which the meeting minutes can be downloaded as a PDF file. You can define the text of the distribution email in the system settings or project settings. The best way to learn how to do this is to read the chapter Email subject and email text in our manual.
As soon as meeting minutes have been sent, iPROT records in the background who has already downloaded (and presumably read) the minutes. You can track this by clicking on the small envelope icon in the far left column of the respective meeting minutes, which is created as soon as the minutes have been sent.
The Send meeting minutes dialog will then open, and next to the list of email addresses to which the minutes were sent, a checkmark indicates whether the minutes have been downloaded. A red cross is located next to the email addresses from which the minutes have not yet been downloaded. In addition, you will find a note in red text stating that these meeting minutes have already been sent.
