Downloading the Meeting Book
The Meeting Book is the whole board book as a single PDF: a cover page, the
agenda, and every attached document merged in agenda order. It is built for
chairs who want to run the meeting from their own laptop — projecting or
screen-sharing from one file, with no Boardwise window open.
Downloading it
On the meeting page, open the actions menu (the ⋮ button beside the main
action) and choose Download meeting book.
You can download it at any point once the meeting exists. The book always
reflects the meeting as it stands at that moment, so if materials change after
you download, download it again to pick up the change.
Who can download it
The Meeting Book is available to the chair, vice chairs, the secretary, and
organization administrators. It is deliberately not available to every director.
Ordinary document downloads carry a watermark with the recipient's name, so a
leaked page can be traced back. The Meeting Book has no personal watermark —
it exists to be shown to a room, and a name across every page would be wrong on
a projector. Limiting who can produce one is what keeps that safe.
Every download is recorded: who took the book, when, and which version. You can
see this in the meeting's audit trail.
This works whether or not your organization allows general document downloads.
That setting governs individual documents for everyone; the Meeting Book is
governed by role instead, so a chair can prepare to present without opening
downloads to the whole board.
What is in the book
- A cover page with the organization, meeting name, date and location, marked Confidential.
- The agenda, in full.
- A title card before each agenda item, so you have a clear break between sections as you present.
- Each item's documents, merged directly after that item's title card.
- An appendix at the end for any meeting document not attached to an agenda item, listing what follows so nothing arrives unlabelled.
After the meeting has closed
Until a meeting is closed, the book is built from each document's current
file, so a corrected file is in the next book you download.
Once the meeting is closed, the book is the book the board had. It contains
the version of each document that was current when the meeting closed, in the
same order, and its cover says "Materials as presented at the meeting".
Replacing a document afterwards does not change it, so a book downloaded next
year matches one downloaded the week after the meeting.
- A document replaced since the meeting closed appears as it was presented.
- A document added since is not in the book. It is on the meeting's page.
- A document removed since keeps its place as a page that says it was presented and has since been removed.
The warning about documents that can't be included is not shown for a closed
meeting, because replacing a file no longer changes its book.
For a meeting that closed before Boardwise kept this record, the cover says
the materials were reconstructed from version history. See
Document Versions.
In-camera items
If you can see in-camera material, your book contains it. If you cannot, those
items still appear in the agenda in their numbered place, marked as an in-camera
session, and their documents are left out entirely.
If you are excused from a meeting's in-camera session, your book leaves that
material out — even if you are the board's chair or secretary, or an
organization administrator.
Two people with different access will therefore get different books from the
same meeting. That is intended — the book follows the access you already have.
When a document can't be included
Some files cannot be merged into a PDF:
- Spreadsheets. There is no faithful way to lay a spreadsheet out as pages.
- Password-protected PDFs. The book cannot open them.
- Damaged PDFs. The file itself is unreadable.
These are not dropped silently. The book includes a page in their place, naming
the file, so you know to open the original separately.
You will also see a warning on the meeting page — "2 of 9 documents can't be
included in the meeting book" — listing exactly which files are affected. It
appears while you are still preparing, so you can fix the problem before you are
in front of the board rather than discovering it mid-meeting.
To fix one:
- For a spreadsheet, export it as a PDF and upload that instead if the board needs to read it while you present.
- For a password-protected PDF, upload an unprotected copy. See Document access errors for how Boardwise handles protected files.
- For a damaged PDF, re-export it from the original source and upload again.
Presenting from the book
Open the PDF in any reader and use full-screen or presentation mode. The title
cards give you a natural place to pause between agenda items.
Moving around the book
The agenda at the front of the book is clickable. Tap an agenda item to go to
its title card, or tap a document listed under it to go to that document's
first page. The whole line is the link, so you don't need to aim for the words.
The book also has bookmarks that follow the agenda: each item, with its
documents under it, then the appendix. Most PDF readers show them in a sidebar,
often under a button labelled Bookmarks or Outline. To return to the
agenda, choose Meeting Agenda at the top of the bookmarks.
The links and bookmarks always follow the agenda as it stands when you download
the book. If you reorder items or documents, the next book you download is
linked in the new order. There is nothing to update by hand.
Links and bookmarks work in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, Preview, Adobe
Acrobat, and on iPhone and iPad. On Android they depend on which PDF app
opens the file.
Because the book is one file, nothing depends on a connection while you present.
It is worth downloading it before you travel.