Contents
What Agoraly does
Agoraly builds your meeting agenda for you. Anyone can email an item to a meeting's own address. Agoraly puts it on that meeting's agenda in priority order, with a time allocation, ready for the Chair to review. On the day it keeps time, records motions and votes, takes the notes that become the minutes, tracks follow-ups, and produces the final papers.
The short version: send it, and it's on the agenda.
Getting started
- Choose Get started, pick a plan, and enter your organisation's name, your name and your email.
- Pay through Stripe. The Single plan starts with a 14-day free trial; a card is needed to begin, and nothing is charged until the trial ends.
- Your organisation is set up automatically. You'll get your own web address, such as yourorganisation.agoraly.com.au, and you're signed in as its administrator.
- Add your members, then create your first meeting. See Setting up your organisation.
Bookmark your organisation's address. Everyone in your organisation signs in there.
Signing in
There are no passwords. Go to Log in on this site, enter your organisation's address, and you'll be taken to its sign-in page. Enter your email and Agoraly sends you a sign-in link.
- The link works once and expires after 15 minutes. If it has expired, ask for a new one.
- Only people added to your organisation as members can sign in. Ask your organisation's administrator to add you.
- Not sure of your organisation's address? It's in the invitation email you received.
People and permissions
Agoraly keeps who can submit separate from who can see. Anyone with a meeting's address can put an item forward. Only people invited to a meeting can read its agenda.
| Role | What they can do |
|---|---|
| Anyone with the meeting's address | Email an item to the meeting. No sign-in needed. |
| Member | Sign in, use Submit an item, and see the meetings they are invited to. |
| Invited attendee | See that meeting's agenda and documents. |
| Chair and Secretary | The meeting's owners. They can do everything an attendee can, plus curate the agenda, invite people, manage reminders and documents, run the meeting, finalise it, and edit follow-ups. |
| Department admin | Creates and manages the meetings of their own department. |
| Org-admin | Manages the whole organisation: members, departments, templates, organisation settings, and every meeting. |
Can't see a meeting you expected? You haven't been invited to it yet. Ask its Chair or Secretary to add you. Anything you submitted is safe either way.
Sending in an item
By email
Every meeting has its own submission address. Send an ordinary email to it:
- The subject becomes the agenda item's title.
- The message becomes the item's detail.
- Attachments come along and appear with the item.
The Chair, Secretary and administrators can see a meeting's address on its page. The Email submission address button sends it to everyone invited, in an email that is easy to forward.
From the Submit an item page
If you'd rather not email, sign in, choose Submit an item at the top of any page, pick the meeting and type your item. It follows the same path as an email.
Where your item lands
Agoraly recognises you by your email address and places your item according to your rank for that meeting. Higher ranks sit earlier on the agenda, and each rank carries a default time allocation that the Chair can change. If Agoraly doesn't recognise the sender, the item still arrives safely: it goes to the lowest tier, for the Chair to consider.
Items close at the meeting's submission deadline. Get yours in before then.
Setting up your organisation
Organisation administrators will find these under Admin in the top menu.
Members
Add people with a name, an email and, if you use them, a department. You can invite a member by email, and the invitation includes a link to sign in. A person who is the Chair or Secretary of a meeting can't be removed until that meeting is reassigned.
Creating a meeting
Choose + New meeting. Set the title, the meeting date, the submission deadline, how often it repeats, the Chair and, optionally, a Secretary and department. A meeting can be made private, so that only specifically authorised people can see it. From then on the Chair and Secretary run the meeting themselves.
Templates
Meeting templates hold standard sections and standing items, so a new meeting's agenda starts with them already in place.
Organisation settings
Upload your organisation's logo. It appears on the emailed agenda and on printed papers.
Curating the agenda
The Chair and Secretary open a meeting from the Meetings page. Its workspace has four tabs: Agenda, People, Documents and Settings. Invited attendees see the Agenda and Documents tabs.
Agenda tab
- Edit an item's title, detail or time allocation on its card.
- Reorder items. Rank sets the starting order; the final order is yours.
- Reject an item that doesn't belong. It leaves the agenda.
- Merge two items about the same matter. The first keeps its place and gains the second's text and attachments.
- Add an item manually for anything raised in person. Choose the item type (motion, discussion or noting), the rank tier it should be treated as, an optional section, and whether it is a sub-item of another.
- Attach files to any item.
- Sections are optional named groupings, such as Formalities or General Business. They carry through to the printed and emailed agenda.
Documents tab
Upload papers that belong to the whole meeting rather than one item, such as background reading or last meeting's minutes. Everyone who can see the agenda can open them.
Finalising
When the agenda is ready, choose Finalise agenda. The meeting locks and presents a clean, ordered agenda. If something changes, Reopen for editing unlocks it again.
Inviting people and sending the agenda
People tab
Give each person a role for this meeting: Chair, Secretary, or a rank tier. A rank both invites the person, so they can see the agenda, and sets the priority of the items they submit. You can also add a guest by name and email. Choose not invited to remove someone's access.
Emailing the agenda
Use Email agenda to send the compiled agenda to the people you choose. Each person receives their own copy with their own unsubscribe link. For a private meeting, only authorised people are offered, and the subject is marked CONFIDENTIAL.
Reminders
Under Settings, add reminders that go out a set number of hours before the submission deadline, so people remember to send their items in.
Changing the date
If you change a meeting's date or deadline, you can notify everyone invited in the same step.
Running the meeting
On the day, open the meeting and choose Run this meeting. Run mode walks the agenda in order.
- Attendance. Record who is present, who sent apologies and who is absent. Note any proxies, and mark anyone who shouldn't count towards quorum. If the meeting has a quorum, Agoraly shows whether it is met.
- Conflicts of interest. Declarations can be recorded for the meeting. They appear on the printed and emailed agenda.
- Timer. Start each item's timer as discussion begins. It shows time used against time allowed.
- Notes. Type notes as you go: decisions, who said what, outcomes. Notes become the minutes.
- Motions. For a motion, record the mover and seconder, the votes for, against and abstaining, and the outcome. If a motion is recorded without quorum, Agoraly flags it.
- Decisions and approvals. Record a decision on an item, or an approval with a payee and amount.
- Follow-ups. Add actions as they arise, assign each to a person, and give it an optional due date.
- Defer. Carry an item, with its attachments, to another meeting you own.
After the meeting
Print and save as PDF
Choose Print / export on a meeting you can see. It produces a clean document with items in order, notes, motions and decisions, attendance and quorum, attachments listed, and follow-ups and deferred items at the end. Use your browser's print dialogue and choose Save as PDF for a file to circulate.
Next meeting
Choose Create follow-up meeting to start the next occurrence with the same Chair, Secretary, invitees, ranks and reminders and a fresh agenda. The date is suggested from the meeting's repeat setting, deferred items are carried in, and meetings in a series link to each other.
Archiving
Old meetings can be archived to keep the main list tidy. Administrators can show archived meetings again at any time.
Follow-ups and deferred items
Follow-ups and deferred items appear in their own card on the meeting page. You don't need to run a meeting to use them.
- Assigning. When a follow-up is assigned to someone, they receive an email with a link straight to it.
- Opening one. Select a follow-up to expand it, then edit the description, owner, status and due date.
- Notes. Add dated notes to a follow-up. The owner is emailed when someone else adds one.
- Who can edit. The Chair and Secretary, the person it is assigned to, and the person who created it.
- Deferred items. The Chair and Secretary can edit these in the same way.
Plans and departments
A department gives a group its own meetings, administrators and privacy, for example a building, a committee or a team.
- Single: one department, $3.99 a month plus GST, with a 14-day free trial.
- 3 Departments: up to three, $8.99 a month plus GST, billed from the start.
- +5 Departments: an add-on for either plan, $9.95 a month plus GST, bought in the app under Admin › Departments. Add as many as you need.
Managing your subscription
Organisation administrators can open Admin › Organisation settings › Manage billing. It opens Stripe's secure billing page, where you can update your card, download invoices and cancel your subscription. To add departments, use Admin › Departments.
All prices are in Australian dollars. To move between plans, or if you have a billing question, email hello@agoraly.com.au. See the pricing page and the Terms of Service for the details.
Questions and answers
I emailed an item. Where did it go?
It's on that meeting's agenda. If you aren't invited to the meeting you won't see the agenda, but the Chair has your item.
Why is my item near the bottom?
Order starts from rank. If Agoraly didn't recognise your email address, the item went into the lowest tier. The Chair can move it anywhere.
Can I submit after the deadline?
Items close at the deadline. After that, ask the Chair to add yours manually, or hold it for the next meeting.
Who can change the running order?
The Chair and Secretary, and organisation or department administrators.
Where are the minutes?
The notes typed while running the meeting are the minutes. Print / export produces the document, with notes included.
My sign-in link didn't work.
Links work once and expire after 15 minutes. Request a new one from your organisation's sign-in page. If you still can't sign in, check with your administrator that your email address is on the member list.
I stopped getting Agoraly emails.
Every automated email has an unsubscribe link, and using it stops all Agoraly emails to you. Ask your administrator if you need to be added back.
How do I stop being sent reminders?
Each reminder email has an unsubscribe link. Meeting owners can also opt individual people out of a meeting's reminders under Settings.
Where is my data kept?
See our Privacy Policy for how information is handled and how long it is kept.
How do I cancel?
An organisation administrator can cancel from Admin › Organisation settings › Manage billing. The terms of cancellation are in our Terms of Service.
I still need help.
Email hello@agoraly.com.au and we'll help directly.