Introduction
When you are ready to let people know about a meeting, you can send each attendee a calendar invitation for the parts of the meeting they are attending, straight from boardcycle. Each invitation goes into the attendee's own calendar with the date, time and location, so they can accept, decline or respond tentatively from their calendar.
boardcycle tailors each invitation to the person, so it reflects the parts of the meeting they are attending, whether they are presenting, and any actions they are due to address:
Someone attending the whole meeting receives a single invitation.
Someone attending the vast majority of it usually receives a single invitation covering the whole time they are there, including any breaks in between.
Someone attending only part of the meeting receives an invitation for each part they are attending.
Sending invitations
To send invitations to the attendees of a meeting:
open the meeting and go to the Attendance tab
click Send invitations
in the Send meeting invitations window, check the To be sent column, which shows the invitation each person will receive
use the Invite? checkboxes to choose who to send to. Everyone who can be invited is selected by default, so clear the checkbox for anyone you do not want to invite yet
click Confirm and send
Worth knowing: you can invite attendees before publishing
You can send invitations for a meeting that is still a draft. Doing so publishes the meeting at the same time.
What the invitation looks like
Each attendee's invitation is personalised. It always shows the date, time and location, and a link to join by video if the meeting has one. How much more it includes follows your company's email notification setting.
By default, the invitation reflects the part of the meeting the person is attending. For a shorter session it lists their agenda items with times and presenters; for a longer session it highlights just the items they are presenting or have actions on, and lists any actions they are due to address. If you have chosen to exclude data from email notifications, the invitation shows the date, time and location with a short summary and asks the recipient to log in to boardcycle for the detail. See Email notification settings.
A detailed invitation
A summary invitation
Replies, forwarding and new time suggestions
Attendees can reply to an invitation, but boardcycle switches off forwarding it and suggesting a new time, and most popular calendar applications, including Outlook and Google Calendar, respect this. Each invitation reflects the meeting agenda, so a problem with the timing or a missing attendee needs to come back to the person who sent the invitations, rather than being forwarded on or suggested back.
If an attendee replies to the invitation, their reply comes by email to the person who sent the invitations from boardcycle. A reply does not accept or decline the invitation. To act on it, change the meeting or its attendance in boardcycle and send an update.