The approval and adoption workflow

Before you start

Make sure you have read The minutes lifecycle — it explains the difference between Approval and Adoption and why both are required before minutes are fully published.

Minutes must be committed before they can be scheduled for approval or adoption. Uncommitted minutes will not appear in the selection lists.

Step 1 — Check which minutes are pending

Go to Minutes in the left-hand menu. This shows a list of agenda versions across all committees, with columns showing each meeting's Approval and Adoption status. Use this list to identify which minutes are outstanding.

Step 2 — Add an approval or adoption item to a future agenda

Open the agenda for the meeting at which approval or adoption will take place. Find the relevant agenda item — typically a standing item such as "Approve and Adopt Minutes" or "Minutes of Other Meetings" — and click Add Content beneath it.

The dropdown offers different options depending on the committee:

Select the appropriate option. You are taken to a selection page.

Step 3 — Select the minutes to approve or adopt

The selection page lists all committed minutes that are currently pending the relevant action, ordered by date with the most recent at the top. Each entry shows the meeting name and minute page range.

Where minutes have already been scheduled for approval or adoption, history lines are shown beneath the entry — "Approval scheduled", "Approved", "Adoption scheduled" or "Adopted", each with a reference to the agenda item that scheduled it. If that agenda is not the live version, the line is struck through and marked (not Active).

Tick the checkbox next to each set of minutes you want to include in this meeting's agenda item. Minutes already linked to this agenda are marked Already linked to this Agenda and cannot be selected again.

Click Create Items. The selected minutes are added as linked items beneath the agenda item.

At this stage the minutes are marked as scheduled for approval or adoption — not yet confirmed.

Step 4 — Record the outcome in the minutes

When you come to minute the meeting at which approval or adoption took place, open the Edit Minutes Item form for the relevant agenda item.

A highlighted section appears at the top of the form for each set of linked minutes, headed "Mark the Minutes of [meeting] as:", with a checkbox for each scheduled step:

• Approved — tick to confirm the minutes were approved at this meeting
• Adopted — shown as well when adoption was scheduled here (adopting committee); tick to confirm adoption

Ticking the checkboxes and saving updates the status of the original minutes. Once both Approval and Adoption are confirmed, the draft watermark is removed and the minutes are fully published.

Checking the status of minutes

To see the current approval and adoption status of any set of minutes, open the meeting's minutes page. The Approval / Adoption row shows:

• Which agenda item scheduled the approval or adoption, with a View link to that agenda
• Whether the approval or adoption has been confirmed (ticked) or is still scheduled but unconfirmed (unticked)
• Whether the relevant agenda is live or marked (Not Live)

This gives a complete audit trail of where each set of minutes is in the workflow.

Manual approval and adoption

While an approval or adoption is still pending, the minutes page also shows Manually Approve Minutes and/or Manually Adopt Minutes buttons — for example, if minutes were approved at a meeting before CouncilPapers was in use, or if the normal workflow was not followed. Each asks for confirmation first, and reminds you that minutes would usually be marked automatically when you complete the following meeting's minutes.

If you need to reverse an approval or adoption that was recorded incorrectly, contact your CouncilPapers administrator.