--- title: "Meetings Overview" description: "How the Meetings module works: scheduling, reusable templates, agenda preparation, live note-taking, reports, and calendar synchronisation" category: structure-governance section: meetings type: Tutorial lastUpdated: 2026-08-26 locale: en canonical: https://support.talkspirit.com/en/structure-governance/meetings-overview --- # Meetings Overview ## Meetings Overview The **Meetings** app is where you schedule a meeting, build its agenda, run it live, and keep the report afterwards. Any member can create one, and a meeting stands on its own unless you create it from a circle or a role. > **In summary:** Open **Meetings** to see your meetings as a **List** or a **Calendar**, with **Reports** and **Agenda items** beside them. Create a meeting, optionally apply a template, prepare the agenda in advance, capture tasks and decisions against each agenda item while you talk, and close the meeting to produce its report. ## Where do I find everything? The app panel shows three entries: **Meetings**, **Reports** and **Agenda items**. On the **Meetings** page, a toggle switches between the **List** and the **Calendar**, and **Add meeting** starts a new one. At the bottom of the panel, **Meeting settings** opens **Synchronisation**, **Templates**, **Admin Settings** and **Notifications**. **Templates** appears if you can create meetings or administer a circle, **Admin Settings** only for organisation administrators. ![The Meetings page in list view, with the Meetings, Reports and Agenda items entries in the app panel, the List and Calendar toggle, and upcoming meetings grouped by date](/images/structure-governance/meetings-overview/01-meetings-list.png) ## Who can create a meeting? Any member can, though guest accounts can be blocked from it depending on their guest level. Whoever creates the meeting becomes its **Organiser**, and the content stays editable by the participants rather than by the wider circle. ## How do I schedule a meeting? Give the meeting a **Title**, a start and an end time, and invite participants. You can invite people one by one, or invite a whole circle or role at once. Then set the practical details: choose **In person**, **Video** or **Hybrid** and fill in the location or the video link; open the recurrence control, which starts on **Does not repeat**, to make it a series (daily, weekly, monthly, every weekday, or a pattern you define); and pick **Public** so everyone in the organisation sees it, or **Private** to keep it to the invited participants. You can also attach a template here. ![The New meeting dialog, with fields for the title, the date and time, participants, Public or Private visibility, In person, Video or Hybrid, a location, and a template](/images/structure-governance/meetings-overview/02-new-meeting-form.png) For the full walkthrough, see [Opening, scheduling, editing, or deleting a meeting](/structure-governance/how-to-open-schedule-edit-or-delete-a-meeting). ## How do I work with meeting templates? A template is a reusable agenda. Ten ready-made templates ship with the app, among them Governance Meeting, Tactical Meeting, Daily Standup and 1-on-1. Open **Templates**, click **Browse gallery**, and install the ones your team needs. Each template carries a **Visibility**: **Personal** keeps it to you, a circle shares it with that circle's members, and **Organisation** opens it to everyone. The page groups your templates by visibility, and you see only the groups you are allowed to fill. ![The Templates page, with Browse gallery and Add template, showing installed templates grouped under Organisation and Personal](/images/structure-governance/meetings-overview/03-meeting-templates.png) A template is built from **Sections**. Each section carries a **Section Type** that decides what it does: **Check-in**, **Checklists**, **Goals**, **Metrics**, **Projects**, **Agenda**, **Closing**, or **Custom** for free-form notes. Typed sections fill themselves in from the participants' data, so a **Metrics** section arrives with their metrics already listed. Names like **Checklists**, **Proposal** and **Tension** are set per organisation, so yours may differ. See also [Meeting Templates: Best Practices and Example Uses](/structure-governance/meeting-templates-best-practices-example-uses). ## How do I prepare the agenda in advance? Every participant can add agenda items to a scheduled meeting, even without the right to edit the rest of it. Items you are not ready to schedule wait in your **parking lot**, and **Import** on a meeting's agenda pulls them in. You can also push work to a meeting from where it already lives: a proposal, a checklist and a metric each offer **Bring to a meeting**, and a tension becomes an agenda item through **Transform into…**. ![The Agenda items page grouped by status: two items in discussion in a running meeting, four waiting in the parking lot, and two scheduled for a governance meeting](/images/structure-governance/meetings-overview/04-agenda-items.png) ## How do I capture decisions and follow-up work? During the meeting, work is captured against the agenda item under discussion. Open an item and use **New Task**, **New Goal**, **New Project**, **New Proposal**, **New Metric** or **New Checklist**, or **Link existing** to attach something that already exists. Notes belong to the **Note taker**, and any participant can take that role with **Make note taker**. > **Note:** Every attendee can edit the notes by default. An administrator can switch on **Note taker only**, after which other attendees still add and edit agenda items but see the notes read-only. ## How does the meeting report work? Closing a meeting produces a report holding its sections, its agenda items, the decisions taken and who attended. Your organisation decides what happens next: the report is either **Published** immediately, which emails the organiser and the invited participants, or held as a **Draft** until someone publishes it. Publishing is what sends the email, so nothing leaves a draft. Each section the app fills in for you carries an **Include in report** tick box, so you can leave one out. Reports have their own visibility, separate from the meeting's, and **Export PDF** produces a file. ![The Reports page listing meeting reports grouped by date, each showing its meeting, its type, and a Draft or Published status](/images/structure-governance/meetings-overview/05-meeting-reports.png) ## How do I sync meetings with my own calendar? Open **Meeting settings** then **Synchronisation**. **Connect Google Calendar** or **Connect Microsoft Outlook** links one account, and only one provider can be connected at a time. **ICS Calendar Feed** is the alternative: it gives you a URL to subscribe to from any calendar application. For the steps, see [Synchronising meetings with an external calendar](/structure-governance/allow-external-calendar-synchronization). ## What's Next? - [Opening, scheduling, editing, or deleting a meeting](/structure-governance/how-to-open-schedule-edit-or-delete-a-meeting) - [Governance Meetings Overview](/structure-governance/introducing-governance-meetings) - [Tactical Meetings Overview](/structure-governance/introducing-tactical-meetings) - [Meeting Templates: Best Practices and Example Uses](/structure-governance/meeting-templates-best-practices-example-uses)