Setting up meetings for the year

What the Meeting Scheduler is for

The Meeting Scheduler lets you plan a whole year of meetings in one sitting. Instead of adding meetings one at a time, you set a usual day and time, click the weeks you want, and build up a provisional calendar you can rearrange freely. Nothing is created until you choose to commit it, so you can move meetings around and fit committees in around each other before anything goes live.

It sits alongside the read-only Meeting Planner (the year overview). Use the Planner to see the year; use the Scheduler to build it.

Before you start

Your council must already have:

• at least one venue, and
• at least one council cycle that covers the dates you want to schedule.

A meeting must fall within a council cycle, so if a date is outside every cycle you will not be able to commit it. If a venue or cycle is missing, the Scheduler will send you to set those up first.

Opening the Scheduler (and choosing the year)

1. Click Meetings in the left-hand menu, then Meeting Planner.
2. Choose the year first. The Scheduler always opens on whichever year the Planner is showing, so use the year buttons at the top of the Planner - ‹ [previous] and [next] › - to move to the year you want to schedule (for example, next year).
3. With that year on screen, click Open Scheduler (top right).

The Scheduler then opens on that year. There is no year selector inside the Scheduler itself - to schedule a different year, click Back to Meeting Planner, select the year there, and open the Scheduler again.

Tip: plan one year at a time. Commit the meetings for the year you are on before moving to the next, so each year's provisional calendar stays separate and easy to follow.

Setting your usual day and time

At the top of the page, set:

• Default day - the weekday most of your meetings fall on (for example Monday).
• Default time - the usual start time.

These are applied to each meeting as you add it. You can change the day or time of any individual meeting afterwards.

Weeks where your chosen day falls outside any council cycle are shaded and marked "<day> is outside any council cycle", so you can see at a glance where scheduling would not be allowed. Change the default day, or add the cycle that covers those dates, to clear the shading.

Adding a meeting

1. Find the week you want and click Add.
2. In the box that appears, choose the Committee. The venue fills in from that committee's default venue - change it if the meeting is somewhere else.
3. The date and time come from your defaults; adjust them here if needed.
4. Click Add.

The meeting appears as a draft in that week and in the Draft meetings list on the right, colour-coded by committee.

Repeating a meeting (every few weeks)

Committees such as Planning often meet on a regular cycle. To set up a series:

1. Click Add on the week the series should start and choose the committee.
2. Tick Repeat this meeting.
3. Set Every [ ] week(s) - for example every 3 weeks.
4. Choose how far it should run under Until:
   • End of <year> (or the cycle end, whichever comes first)
   • End of the meeting's council cycle
   • A specific date
5. Click Add series.

Every meeting in the series is added as a draft. The series is capped at the end of the year shown, so you can see and adjust each one.

Checking, editing and removing drafts

Each draft shows its date, time, committee and venue, and carries a coloured badge if something needs your attention:

To change a draft, click the pencil to edit its day, time, committee or venue, or the bin to delete it. You can edit or remove any draft from the Draft meetings list too, including ones that have scrolled out of view.

Committing the schedule

When you are happy with the year, click Commit [n] meeting(s) in the Draft meetings panel.

• Committing is all or nothing: if any draft has a blocking problem (in the past, or outside a cycle), nothing is created and the problem drafts are highlighted for you to fix.
• Warnings (bank holiday, duplicate, clash) do not stop a commit - they are there to catch mistakes, but you can go ahead if the overlap is deliberate.

Committing makes the meetings live. As soon as they are created, the meetings appear on your public council page and in your iCal feed. Up to that point, the draft calendar lives only in your browser and is not visible to anyone else. Build and rearrange freely, then commit when you are ready.

Once committed, you are returned to the Meeting Planner, where the new meetings appear in the year overview. From there you can open any meeting to build its agenda in the usual way.

A note on drafts and your browser

Draft meetings are held in your own browser until you commit them, tied to your login and the council you are signed in to. They survive a page reload, so you will not lose your work if you navigate away and come back. If you clerk for more than one council, each council's provisional calendar is kept separate - a draft calendar can never be committed to the wrong council.