Introduction
boardcycle uses a small set of precise terms, and a few of them look alike - a forum member and the Member role are related but not the same thing. This article defines the key terms in one place and calls out the distinctions that most often cause confusion.
For the two foundational explanations, see What are organisations, companies and forums? and What is the difference between people, members, presenters and attendees?
Actions
Actions are the tasks that arise from your meetings (sometimes called matters arising). Each action has an owner, is due at a meeting or by a date, and moves through the statuses Not started, In progress, Completed and Closed.
Where you'll see it: the Actions tab of a company or forum. See Overview of Action Tables.
Not to be confused with: item actions
Item actions (Approval, Discussion, Noting, Recommendation) describe what the forum is asked to do with an agenda item.
Agenda blocks
Agenda blocks are the four building blocks you arrange to create an agenda: sections, items, breaks and notes.
Where you'll see it: the Agenda tab of a meeting, on the agenda canvas. See Building agendas.
Not to be confused with: run sheet and attendance notes
A note block appears on the agenda itself and is different from run sheet notes and attendance notes - see Notes below.
Agenda canvas
The agenda canvas is the drag-and-drop working area in the Agenda tab where you build your agenda by arranging agenda blocks. It saves automatically as you work.
Not to be confused with: the agenda
The agenda is the document boardcycle exports from what you have built on the canvas.
Export documents
Export documents (or simply exports) are the documents boardcycle generates on demand from what you have built: the agenda, run sheet and shell minutes for a meeting (Word .docx files), actions exports at company, forum, meeting and action owner level, and the Diligent Bookbuilder file (a PDF) that recreates your agenda in Diligent.
An export is compiled at the moment you create it - it is a snapshot, not a live link. If something changes, make the change in boardcycle and export again.
Where you'll see it: the Export button in any meeting, and the export options on actions tables.
Forum members and the "Member" role
A forum member is any person who belongs to a forum, whatever their role. Member is also the name of one specific role a forum member can hold: a voting member of the forum who is not a chair or deputy chair. So every Member is a forum member, but not every forum member holds the Member role: the person holding the Secretary role, for example, is a forum member but not a Member.
Where you'll see it: the Members tab of a forum, where each forum member is assigned one of five roles: Chair, Deputy Chair, Member, Standing Attendee or Secretary. The roles are explained in Adding members to a forum.
Not to be confused with: attendees
Attendees are people attending a particular meeting or item. Forum members are automatically added as attendees of all meetings of their forum.
Hidden sections
Hiding is a feature of sections: any section can be hidden, and a hidden section is simply one you have chosen not to display. It is skipped in item numbering and left out of exported agendas, run sheets and minutes, but it remains a section in every other way - it still exists in the structure of your meeting and its items remain connected to it.
Where you'll see it: a section's side panel, under Advanced (CoSec Enterprise only). See Hidden Sections.
Not to be confused with: deleting a section
Deleting a section removes it entirely. Hiding is reversible; the section and its contents remain.
Item actions
An item's action records what the forum is being asked to do with that item: Approval, Discussion, Noting or Recommendation (or free text of your choosing). The action appears on your exported documents and drives the drafting boardcycle uses for that item in your shell minutes.
Not to be confused with: actions
Actions are the tasks that arise from meetings. An item's action describes the nature of an agenda item; an action is a piece of work someone has to do.
Items
Items are the pieces of business your forum will actually address during a meeting, and the most important agenda block. An item carries the detail for that piece of business: its name, duration, action, whether it has a paper (and a link to it), a proposed resolution, a run sheet note, and its presenters and attendees.
Where you'll see it: the agenda canvas. See Items.
Not to be confused with: items inside items
An item cannot contain other blocks. Sub-items like 1.1.1 are created by nesting sections and placing items inside them.
Management portal
The management portal is where meeting attendees and action owners see what has been shared with them: their dashboard, published meetings, and their actions (including updating action statuses). Meetings appear in the portal when the secretariat publishes them.
Where you'll see it: some on-screen controls may still show the previous name for this area - for example a menu option reading My Portal.
Notes
boardcycle has four kinds of notes, each living in a different place:
note - an agenda block that adds explanatory text to the agenda itself
run sheet note - text attached to an item that is useful for the chair while conducting the meeting; it appears in the run sheet only
attendance note - information about a person's attendance at a meeting (apologies, late arrivals, how they are attending); it appears in the attendance table of the run sheet
status note - a comment added when updating an action's status.
Paper links
A paper link is a link you add to an item pointing to the paper for that item. Paper links are available to secretariat users and can be carried through to exports. They are not shown in the management portal.
Secretariat view
The secretariat view is the main working view for secretariat users: it is where companies, forums, meetings, agendas and actions are managed. Secretariat users who are also action owners have a management portal of their own and can switch between the two views.
Where you'll see it: see Switching between the management portal and the secretariat view.
Sections
Sections organise your agenda into logical parts. A section is a container: items, breaks and further sections are indented inside it, its duration is the sum of the blocks it contains, and it appears as a heading in your exported documents. Sections inside sections are how you create depth of indentation in an agenda.
Where you'll see it: the agenda canvas. See Sections.