Managing agenda approval

As organizer, you are responsible for creating an agenda for the meeting, but sometimes other people in the organization need to be involved in the process. MeetingBooster lets you send the finished agenda for approval to selected attendees and incorporate their suggestions and comments. If several cycles of approval are needed before the agenda can be finalized, you can even compare the different versions and undo changes between agenda versions individually.

If you prefer approving agendas by having them signed by specific users, you can include a signature in the agenda. For more information, see "Sending and printing an agenda".

The administrator may set up MeetingBooster so that a meeting cannot be started unless the agenda has been approved. For more information, see "Setting system options".

Meeting attendees can provide suggestions and comments for the agenda even when they have not been requested to approve it.

The following procedure assumes that you have created a meeting with an agenda for which you would like attendee approval.

Selecting approvers and sending the agenda for approval

Save the meeting by clicking Save.

On the Agenda tab, click Send for Approval , select Select Approvers in the submenu, and click Edit Approvers.

In the dialog that opens, select one or more approvers. You can select any meeting attendee (except guests) or any user in the organization's MeetingBooster installation.

Click Done.

Click Send for Approval again, select Request Approval in the submenu, and confirm by clicking OK.

The meeting is saved and closed, and an exclamation mark is shown next to the meeting title under Upcoming Meetings. Each attendee selected for agenda approval receives notification of the pending approval so that they can review, and then approve or reject the agenda. For more information on this, see "Approving meeting agendas".

While the agenda is in the process of being approved, the meeting will only open in view mode. If you need to edit it, you can click Edit on its Agenda tab. You will, however, be asked to confirm your intention, as this will invalidate the approvals in progress.

Reviewing approvals, rejections and comments

As soon as an attendee either approves or rejects the agenda, possibly adding suggestions or comments to justify their decision, you receive an email notifying you of their approval or rejection. If the agenda was approved by all approvers, a check mark is shown in the list of meetings; if it was rejected by one or more approvers, a cross is shown instead.

Open the meeting again.

If all the approvers have accepted the agenda, the meeting opens in view mode.

If one or more approvers have rejected the agenda, the meeting opens in edit mode, so that you can make any necessary changes.

For the sake of efficiency, you might prefer to wait until you have received emails from all the approvers before reviewing the agenda.

(Optional) Compare the current agenda with previous versions if available. For more information, see below.

Review the attendee input, particularly if one or more attendees have rejected the agenda. For more information, see "Adding suggestions to an agenda".

If necessary, edit the agenda to take the approver input into account.

Even if all the approvers have accepted the agenda, you can still edit the meeting by clicking Edit. You will, however, be asked to confirm that you want to re-edit the approved agenda, as this will invalidate the current approvals.

Once you add a topic suggestion provided by an attendee to the agenda, the attendee can no longer edit this suggestion during further approval cycles. Likewise, once you have marked a comment as read, it can no longer be edited by the attendee who provided it.

If you decide to limit the number of approvers, or conversely include new approvers, click Send for Approval, select Select Approvers, and make the necessary changes.

If you have made any changes to the meeting or agenda, click Send for Approval and choose Request Approval to resend the agenda for approval, and repeat the process described here.

Once the agenda has been accepted by all its approvers, send it to all the attendees. See "Sending and printing an agenda" for more information.

Save and close the meeting, which is now ready to be started at its appointed time. A check mark is shown next to the meeting title under Upcoming Meetings.

Comparing agenda versions

You can compare the agenda with any previous agenda version. If you are editing the agenda, you can also undo changes individually.

Do one of the following:

In the case of an approved agenda, click Show Changes and select the agenda version you would like to compare the current version with.

In the case of an unapproved agenda, click Approval , choose Show Changes and select the agenda version you would like to compare the current version with.

All the changes introduced since the selected version are identified on the agenda that appears.

For more information about the icons identifying the changes, refer to "Approving meeting agendas".

If you are editing the agenda, you can click to undo specific changes.