Introduction
Although boardcycle is not a board portal, because it allows you to add paper links to items it can be used to assist in making papers available to the people you share the agenda with. Exactly how boardcycle can assist with this will depend on how you share papers with those people. This article outlines 3 specific use cases:
using paper links to turn your agenda into a 'virtual pack' for your board or committee - an option that can be used if you do not currently use a board portal but instead distribute papers by email or by granting access to a shared drive such as Sharepoint or Google Drive;
using paper links to create a 'review pack' for your CEO so that they can simply and easily review all papers in one go; and
using paper links to simplify linking and relinking in Diligent - an option that is only relevant if you use Diligent as your board portal.
If you have other use cases, please let us know!
Worth knowing: how to add paper links
To learn how to add paper links to an item, please see this article.
Use Case 1: Creating a virtual pack
If you have a shared drive, such as Sharepoint or Google Drive, that your board/committee have access to, you can turn the agenda exported from boardcycle into a 'virtual pack' as follows:
put all of the papers for the meeting into that shared drive/location
copy the link to each paper from that shared drive/location
insert that link as the paper link to the corresponding agenda item in boardcycle
when completed, export your agenda.
You will then see on your exported agenda that items where you have added a paper link will have turned into clickable hyperlinks. You can then share the agenda alone with your board/committee, and they can click each link to access to paper.
Important: You must manage access to the shared drive/location
Adding a paper link to boardcycle does not give boardcycle any access to that paper or shared drive/location. boardcycle does not have any ability to manage access to those locations.
Accordingly, for a virtual pack to work, you must ensure that each person you want to be able to access the papers linked in boardcycle has access to the shared drive/location where those papers are stored.
Worth knowing: some PDF 'printers' remove hyperlinks
If you wish to convert your exported agenda to PDF it is worth knowing that some PDF 'printers' remove hyperlinks. We recommend that you convert your agenda to PDF using Word's "Save as" function and choosing PDF as the file type, which will retain the hyperlinks.
Use Case 2: Creating a review pack for your CEO
In many organisations, the CEO (or another senior stakeholder) reviews all papers before they are distributed to a board or committee - however often, there is no centralised/convenient place for that person to know how many papers they are an easily access and review them.
In this case, you can create a virtual pack as described in Use Case 1 - but for draft papers instead of final ones. Then, you can export your agenda and share that with your CEO to use as a clickable listing of the papers they should review.
In this case, when the CEO review has been completed, you may wish to remove links to the draft documents. Here, there are 2 options:
to permanently remove the links (so that future agenda exports no longer include a link to that file), they should be deleted from each item of the meeting; or
if you would simply like to clear the links out of an exported agenda, you can do this in Word by selecting all text (Ctrl + A) and then removing hyperlinks (Ctrl _ Shift + F9).
Use Case 3: Managing agenda linking in Diligent
If you build board packs in Diligent then you may go undertake the process of 'linking' your agendas - which is a process where you open the agenda inside the Diligent interface and then create links between agenda items and the corresponding paper in the pack.
If you do this, you are also likely to know that if your agenda changes after you have done the linking process, then you will need to relink every item on the new agenda from scratch - a time consuming and frustrating exercise - especially if your agenda changes a number of times!
An alternative approach to this is to add the link to the papers in Diligent as the paper link in boardcycle, then export the agenda from boardcycle and upload this into Diligent. If you do this:
the links in the exported agenda will work when clicked by a someone in the published Diligent pack; and
if your agenda changes, the only items you will need to relink are the items impacted by the change (primarily any new items or any items where the paper was deleted in Diligent at any point).
To apply this approach, take the following steps:
create your book in Diligent
use boardcycle's Diligent Bookbuilder to build a book structure replicating your agenda (to learn how see this article)
upload your papers into the relevant tab in Diligent
click the Review Book tab in Diligent
for the first paper in the book, click the ellipses immediately above the paper (see below)
select Share Director page link - this will copy the link to that paper onto your clipboard
insert that link as the paper link for the corresponding item in boardcycle
repeat for each paper
when completed, export the agenda from boardcycle
upload the agenda into your book in Diligent.
If your agenda subsequently changes or you need to make changes to your Diligent book you will then only need to:
add links in boardcycle for new items/papers that have been added
update links in boardcycle for items/papers that have been moved - this is generally only required if you were forced to delete and re-upload the paper in Diligent in order to move the item
delete links for items/papers that have been removed.
Worth knowing: a quick way to check all your Diligent links are working
Once you've added a paper link to an item in boardcycle, the paper icon in boardcycle becomes a clickable link. A quick way to check that all your Diligent links are working correctly is to run down your agenda and click each of these.
