Introduction
Before using boardcycle, you might have found that preparing shell minutes was a labour-intensive task where someone needed to cut and paste information from an agenda into a template used for shell minutes. With boardcycle, you can automatically generate shell minutes that reflect your meeting agenda exactly at a moment's notice.
Worth knowing: Generate your shell minutes just before your meeting
Previously you may have 'started work' on your shell minutes well in advance of your meeting due to the fact that they were time consuming to prepare.
Because you can now generate your shell minutes almost instantly, we recommend only doing so at the point when you are absolutely sure that the agenda will not change - even if this is only hours before your meeting. This will minimise the likelihood that you need to make material changes to the ordering of items in your minutes.
Generating shell minutes
You can generate your shell minutes from any tab within a meeting by:
clicking the Export button
selecting Shell Minutes from the dropdown
Your shell minutes will then be generated and the file will download to the downloads folder on your computer.
Worth knowing: set your browser to automatically open the agenda
Most modern browsers (e.g. Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, etc) can be set to automatically open .docx files, meaning that once your agenda downloads, it will automatically open without you needing to open it manually.
If you wish to do this, we recommend that do a web search for instructions on how to do this for the specific browser you use.
Working with shell minutes
Shell minutes are exactly that - a shell document that is created for a meeting's minute-talker to take with them into the meeting which provides a structure for them to record minutes and, wherever possible, allows the minute-taker to simply confirm whether things that can be anticipated based on the agenda did in fact happen or not, rather than need to enter that information. Accordingly, the shell minutes are inherently incomplete and must be edited by the minute-taker.
Our shell minutes template is designed in a table format to allow you to easily:
cut and paste entire sections of the shell minutes from one place to another where required (e.g. if the forum addressed items in a different order than specified in the agenda)
delete information if not required (e.g. if someone who was intended to enter or leave the meeting for a specific item did not in fact do so).
The shell minutes also include different drafting for items of business based on:
in limited cases, the name of the item
the action assigned to the item (Approval, Noting, Discussion or Recommendation)
whether the item has a paper or not.
Important: Exercise your judgement on minute drafting
Minutes are important documents. It is impossible to fully anticipate the appropriate minute for an item of business prior to it having been discussed in a forum - the drafting provided in our shell minutes template is designed to provide you with a useful and consistent starting point only.
Minute-takers must exercise their own judgement and adjust the content provided to appropriately reflect what occurred in the meeting.
Specific items of information that minute-takers should confirm (e.g. timing related matters such as when the meeting commenced or the item at which a participant joined the meeting) are shown in the shell minutes in square brackets, highlighted yellow.