Meeting Manager is an SMS tool that can be used to:

1. Quickly prepare meetings;
2. Publish agenda items to attendees;
3. Invite attendees via email;
4. Document meetings; and
5. Assign tasks during a meeting.

Meetings are not required to follow prepared agendas based on your SMS.

To create a meeting, use the green navigation arrows at the bottom of the screen to follow the wizard.

On the General Info page, we can create and edit the basic information about a meeting.  In the meeting manager, there are many tips you can learn by hovering the mouse over images and titles.

With the Meeting Manager, your meetings don't have to be safety related.  SMS meetings by default, populate your agenda with all open issues in your division.

Here, you configure the What, Why, Where and When factors of your meeting.

To create a meeting:

1. Select a Division from the dropdown list below the "Start Here" prompt;
2. Enter a short name for the meeting, such as "April Safety meeting";
3. What is the purpose of your meeting? Generate awareness, communicate safety policies?
4. What is the desired outcome of the meeting?  This should be a measurable goal, such as review all open issues with a high severity rating;
5. Where will the meeting be held?
6. What is the proposed date/time of the meeting?

If you don't want the application  to generate an initial agenda for you, check the box "Check if not SMS Meeting."  This will provide you the power to enter your own agenda items.  Regardless, you always have the ability to add/edit/delete agenda items in the "Agenda" step.

To edit the general information about a meeting, select the folder icon in the respective meeting in the grid titled: "My Meetings."

If a meeting is already loaded and you wish to create a new meeting, select the trash can at the bottom left of the General Information page.  This will delete/clear all the fields in the checkboxes.  The current meeting will no longer be active in any of the tabs.

In the "My Meetings" grid, there are special icons related to each meeting telling you whether the meeting:

1. has already started or finished;
2. will start within one day; or
3. is more than one day in the future;

These visual cues allow you to distinguish meetings at a glance without studying dates.

At the Attendees page, you are able to determine who will be invited to your meeting.

The people you choose will receive email notifications about the meeting in the "Pubish" section.

You can choose attendees either by their role, or individually.  Once you add them to the list, they will no longer appear in the "Individuals Not Yet Invited" list.  This feature was designed to allow you to talk about people behind their backs and ensure they won't be attending (or at least you didn't invite them).

To add users, select them and press the ">>" button to move them to the "Invited Attendees" list.

To remove attendees from the list, check the respective checkbox and press the "<<" button.

Entire groups of people can be added very easily.  Removing entire groups from the meeting is not supported.  Sorry.

On the Announcements (aka Preparation Notes) tab, you can add special notes to help prepare for the meeting.  To get additional tips, you can hover over images and headings.

For example, announce that:

1. special guest speaker will be attending; or
2. Cake will be provided; or
3. Jane has a birthday; or
4. Use your own imagination.

You can order these announcements as to how they will appear in the meeting notice.

If you don't want everyone to see your notes, mark them as private.

To add announcements, enter the announcement in lower textbox, assign an order, and whether the announcement is to appear in the meeting notice.  Then click the add button.

To edit or delete an announcement, click the respecitive button in the row.

The Agenda is what you will discuss at the meeting.  You can hover over images and headings for additional tips.

If this is an SMS meeting (default), you will have all the division's open issues preloaded.  They will be ordered by severity and the far right column is color-coded to denote the issue's severity.  A legend appears below your list of agenda items.

Companies may have hundreds of open issues.  This makes the agenda too large for the meeting.  Using the filter in the upper right part of the screen, you can remove issues by their severity level.  For example, you wish to only address the High Risk issues, you would choose "Remove Medium Risk Level and Lower" from the dropdown list.  Then press the "filter" button.  Only the High Risk issues will remain in your agenda.

You can delete individual items by checking the box in the respective row and pressing the "Delete" button below your agenda list.

You can assign a speaker to lead the discussion about individual agenda items.

You can order the agenda items as to how you wish them to appear in the meeting notice or as to how you will address them in the meeting.  This works the same as the "Announcements" section.

You can assign a time limit to each agenda item if you choose.

Another option is to edit or delete items using the respective buttons in each row.

Adding agenda items is similar to adding Announcements.  Start in the lower row of the grid and enter the description, speaker, the order you wish to the item to appear, and the number of minutes alloted to this issue.

In the Publish, you determine what you wish to publish.  After configuring what you want to publish, you will press the "Publish It!" button.  An email with a PDF attachment is sent to your attendees.  Another attachment is available to synchronize the meeting to Outlook.

Some of this is still in Beta and not fully developed as of March 2008.  Basic functionality works to send the notices with the attachments.

In the Meeting Sections, determine what you want to publish.

You can add a logo to the meeting announcement that will appear at the top of the PDF file when a user opens the notice.

After completing your selections and adding a logo (optional), save  your settings.

Finally, click the "Publish It!" button to send your meeting announcement to attendees.