What Your Directors See

Last of seven walkthroughs. Everything so far was from the secretary's chair. This one follows a director through the same cycle, because most of the questions you will get ("I got an email, what do I do?", "where are the materials?") are about their screens, not yours.

You can see any meeting the way a director sees it with Preview as attendee on the meeting page. Share this walkthrough with new directors; it is written to work for them too.

The invitation

A director's first contact is an email invitation. The link opens a page naming you and the organization, with a Create Account button. There is no password: they sign in with a link sent to their email (a magic link) or, better, by setting up a passkey on their phone or laptop so sign-in is a fingerprint or face.

Setting up a passkey is not part of accepting the invitation — it is a separate step, under Security in their account menu, and it is worth walking a new director through it on the phone. Boards that skip it end up requesting a fresh magic link before every meeting.

If they already use Boardwise for another board, Sign in instead adds this organization to their existing account, and they switch between organizations from the home page.

The dashboard

A director's home page for your organization shows, in order of urgency: the Next Meeting with an RSVP Now button if they have not responded, Items Needing Your Attention — what they still have to do, including any declaration, survey, or consent you have issued to them — then what is Coming Up, Documents with anything New since their last visit, and Your Committees.

A declaration, survey, or consent you issue appears there until they complete it. They can also reach it from the email they were sent, and from the Preparation section of the meeting it relates to. If someone tells you they cannot find a declaration you issued, point them to Items Needing Your Attention.

Directors on several boards see a home page listing each organization, then this dashboard once they pick one.

The date hold

When you send the date hold, the director gets an email with a calendar invitation. Adding it to their calendar is one click from the email. In Boardwise the meeting shows the name, date, time in their local time zone, and location, and asks Will you be attending this meeting? with the choices Yes in person, Yes virtually, Maybe, or No. That answer is what your RSVP tracking shows. They can change it any time from the meeting page.

Materials ready

When you publish, they get a materials-ready email. Their meeting page now shows the full Agenda with each item's duration and documents, a Preparation section listing anything they must do before the meeting (declarations due, action items they own), and the attendee list.

From here they can:

• Open any document in the built-in viewer and annotate it with highlights and notes. Annotations are private to them unless they choose to share, and are collected under My Annotations.
• Save for offline, which stores the meeting's documents on their device for reading without a connection (on a flight, say). Available offline confirms it worked, and Remove clears it afterwards.
• On a tablet or phone, install Boardwise as an app from the browser's share or menu button; it then opens full screen like any other app.

In-camera agenda items appear to excused attendees only as a placeholder marked In-Camera Session; they cannot see the item's title, description, or documents.

When you send an update

Calendar changes update their calendar entry automatically with no action needed. Content updates arrive as an email describing what changed, and the meeting page shows the new material. Prep reminders and RSVP reminders, if you enabled them, arrive on the schedule you set.

During the meeting

When you start the meeting, their meeting page shows a live banner and, for virtual and hybrid meetings, a Join the meeting button with the meeting ID and passcode. As you move through the agenda, each item shows In Progress, Completed, or Skipped, so a director joining late can see where the board is. If you present a document, they can follow along on their own screen.

After the meeting

The meeting page stays available as a read-only record. Action items assigned to them appear on their dashboard and under My Action Items, with due dates. Declarations, surveys, and consents you issue between meetings arrive as an email and under Items Needing Your Attention on their dashboard, and each is a short, guided form; signing anything uses their passkey.

The questions you will get

• "I can't see the documents." Either the meeting is still at Date Hold, or they are an agenda-only attendee, or the item is in-camera and they are excused. Check the meeting's badge and their attendee row.
• "I never got the email." Open the meeting's notification history to see when it went and to how many people, then ask them to check spam. Meeting emails come from "your organization via Boardwise"; account emails such as sign-in links come from "Boardwise".
• "I can't sign in." They do not have a password to forget. Send them to the sign-in page to request a magic link, or, if they use a passkey on another device, to sign in there. Their invitation can be resent from the Directory if they never accepted it.

Where to go next

That is one full cycle. For the details behind any step, the reference articles below go deeper, and the rest of the Help Center is organized by topic.

Related reference: Board Member FAQ, Accepting Your Invitation, Annotating PDF Documents, Viewing Documents Offline, Installing Boardwise as an App, Access and Permissions FAQ.