--- title: "Meeting visibility: who can see and take part" description: "Every Talkspirit meeting is Public or Private. On a Public meeting, anyone in the organisation can open it, add an agenda item, and set the note taker" category: structure-governance section: meetings tags: [permissions, guests] type: Reference lastUpdated: 2026-09-17 locale: en canonical: https://support.talkspirit.com/en/structure-governance/meeting-visibility --- # Meeting visibility: who can see and take part ## Meeting visibility: who can see and take part Every meeting in Talkspirit is either **Public** or **Private**. Private keeps the meeting to the people you invited. Public opens it to your whole organisation: any member can find it, read it, and add an agenda item of their own, without ever being invited. > **In summary:** Set visibility in the **New meeting** dialog, on the row marked with an eye icon. **Public** means *Visible to everyone in the organisation*, **Private** means *Visible only to invited participants*. The dialog opens on **Private**. ## Where you set it The control sits in the **New meeting** dialog, directly under the participants field, on the row marked with an eye icon. It offers two buttons, and the line beneath repeats what the selected one means: - **Public**: Visible to everyone in the organisation - **Private**: Visible only to invited participants The dialog opens on **Private**, so switch it to **Public** when you want the meeting open to the organisation. ![The New meeting dialog. On the row marked with an eye icon, a Public button and a Private button sit side by side; Private is selected and the line below reads "Visible only to invited participants".](/images/structure-governance/meeting-visibility/01-new-meeting-visibility-control.png) The same control appears when you edit the meeting, so you can change your mind later. To change it you need edit rights on that meeting: you are the organiser, the note taker, or a participant granted editing. Once the meeting exists, the padlock beside its title tells you which it is. A Private meeting carries one, a Public meeting carries nothing. In the **Meetings** list, a meeting you can see but were not invited to shows a grey **Public** tag where your own meetings show their RSVP answer. ## The organisation-wide default An administrator sets the starting point for the whole organisation under **Meetings** › **Meeting settings** › **Defaults**, using the **Public by default** switch on the **Default Visibility** card. The setting only seeds the form: whoever creates the meeting still picks either option before saving. ![The Default Visibility card on the Meetings Defaults settings page, with a "Public by default" switch and the description "When enabled, new meetings are visible to all organisation users by default. When disabled, new meetings are private."](/images/structure-governance/meeting-visibility/02-default-visibility-setting.png) ## What a colleague you did not invite can do On a Public meeting, any member of your organisation can: - find it in the **Meetings** list and open it - read the agenda and the notes - add an agenda item, and import one they parked earlier - put themselves down as the presenter of an item - create an action item - move an agenda item onto or off the agenda - change who the **Note taker** is They cannot start, pause or close the meeting. They cannot type in the notes, edit the meeting, edit anyone else's agenda item, or invite and remove participants. They cannot answer the invitation either, because they never received one. While the meeting runs, anyone who opens it without an invitation joins the **People** panel as a visitor, listed beside the invited participants. A visitor cannot be handed the note taker role: their actions menu says *Visitors can't be the note taker*. ## What guests see Guests are left out of Public meetings entirely, at every guest level. A guest sees only the meetings they organise or were invited to, directly or through a circle or a role. Making a meeting Public widens it to full members and to nobody else. ## Private stays private, administrators included A Private meeting is invisible to everyone outside its participants. It is absent from their **Meetings** list, and opening its address returns nothing. There is no administrator exception by default: an organisation administrator who is not a participant sees a Private meeting no more than anyone else does. ### Letting administrators oversee all meetings and reports An organisation that needs an exception switches it on in **Administration** › **Modules** › **Meetings**, in the **Administration** section, with the switch **Allow administrators to oversee all meetings and reports**. The product describes it as: "When enabled, organisation administrators can view every meeting and report, including private ones they don't participate in. Disabled by default." Once it is on, every organisation administrator's **Meetings** list and **Reports** page include all of the organisation's meetings and reports, Private ones included, with nothing further to switch on for each person or each session. It changes what administrators can see, not what they can do: it does not make them participants, and it does not give them editing rights on a meeting they were not invited to. The switch is off until an administrator turns it on. If you find it enabled on your organisation, someone with administrator rights switched it on; the product never enables it on its own. ## When circle privacy overrides your choice A circle carries its own privacy setting, on **Circle settings** › **Privacy**: **Operations visibility**, which governs who sees operations such as meeting reports. The first time someone sets it to **Circle members only**, every meeting that circle takes part in becomes **Private**, past and future, whatever each organiser had chosen. > **Warning:** Setting **Operations visibility** back to **All organisation members** does not undo this. Those meetings stay **Private**, and each one has to be set back to **Public** by hand. ## What's Next? - [Scheduling, starting, editing, and deleting a meeting](/structure-governance/how-to-open-schedule-edit-or-delete-a-meeting) - [Adding agenda items to a meeting](/structure-governance/adding-agenda-items-to-a-meeting) - [Changing the note taker during a meeting](/structure-governance/how-to-change-the-secretary-during-a-meeting) - [Setting my circle to private](/structure-governance/how-do-i-set-my-circle-private)