Close It Out
Fifth of seven walkthroughs. The meeting is closed. What is left is the paperwork, and most of it is already done because you recorded the meeting as it happened.
1. Download the minutes
- On the meeting page, open More actions and choose Download minutes (it is also on the Prepare Minutes page).
- You get a Word document containing the recorded attendance (present, excused, absent, with early departures noted), the call-to-order and adjournment times, the minutes text for each agenda item in order, every motion with its outcome and vote tally, and the action items with assignees and due dates.
- Open it in Word, tidy the prose, and save it as the draft minutes.
Two things to know. First, in-camera items and their notes are included, so the file contains confidential discussion; the download is limited to administrators and the group's corporate secretary for that reason. Second, edits you make in Word do not flow back into Boardwise. The meeting's record in Boardwise stays as it was when the meeting closed; the Word document is the working draft on its way to approval.
2. Circulate the draft minutes
Send the draft to the chair (and whoever else reviews minutes) the way your board prefers. If you want the circulation inside Boardwise, upload the draft to the board's Documents and send a group message from the board's page pointing to it. Messages are delivered by email, appear in each recipient's My Messages, and record who has read them.
3. Follow up on action items
Every action item assigned during the meeting is now live. From the dashboard, open Resolutions & Directives to see the organization's open items with their due dates, soonest first, with anything overdue flagged in red at the top. Open an item to see and change who owns it. Owners see their own items under My Action Items and in the Preparation brief on their next meeting page, so the next meeting's page does part of the chasing for you.
4. Check who read what
Analytics (under More actions) shows, for the closed meeting, which attendees opened the meeting and each document, and how attendance and RSVPs lined up. Useful when a director says they never received the materials, and useful over a year for spotting who consistently arrives unprepared.
5. Put the approved minutes on the next agenda
At the next meeting the board approves these minutes. Attach the draft to the "Approval of minutes" agenda item when you plan that meeting (walkthrough 2), stage the approval motion when you prepare it (walkthrough 4), and record the outcome during the meeting. Once approved, upload the final signed minutes to the board's Documents library so they are in the permanent record alongside the meeting.
What the closed meeting keeps
The meeting page remains available to attendees with full access, read-only: agenda, documents, attendance, and decisions. Decisions also appear in the organization's Decisions register, and every notification the meeting sent is listed in its notification history. Meeting content is retained for the period set in your retention policy (counted from the meeting date), then permanently deleted, which is one more reason to file the approved minutes in the Documents library as a document in their own right.
Next
6. Between Meetings: written consents, declarations, and surveys.
Related reference: Recording Meeting Minutes, Working with Action Items, Understanding Meeting Analytics, Activity and Audit Trails.