Feature List

MinuteTraq allows anyone that contributes agenda items to a board, committee or departmental meetings to submit their Meeting Topics through an electronic form that can be customized to accommodate the way your meeting group works.

All background information, attachments, recommended actions and more can be attached to this form. As the Meeting Topic is submitted, a history is tracked as it goes through approvals, committee meetings, board approvals and more.

MinuteTraq allows you to create an unlimited number of templates for submitting meeting topics. Templates are as easy as opening a new or existing document and choosing "Save as Template". Templates can be made global or can be linked to a specific department. With the new XML template feature all fields on the meeting topic form can be populated with preformatted text to make data entry fast and easy so their is no confusion for the users that prepare the documents. The new XML templates also allow users to save attachments within the templates which is very useful for providing a format for making required addendums and forms easy to fill out and submit with the agenda item.

All users can collaborate by saving their meeting topics, documents, legislation, history and other information in a central database that can be accessed and searched by all users with access.

MinuteTraq has an integrated PDF Printer that allows users to retrieve information and reports from any computer system throughout the organization as long as it can print.

The PDF Printer allows users to print from any program to this virtual printer named "MinuteTraq" instead of printing to paper. The built-in PDF printer makes the chore of attaching information from other programs a sinch... just click Print... choose the "MinuteTraq" printer and the output is automatically converted to PDF format and imported into MinuteTraq as an attachment. You can easily mark the attachment as public and it will also be published on the web portal. when the agenda is created.

Each Meeting Topic can store an unlimited number of file attachments, file links, web links or notes. Each attachment has its own security and can easily be made public, private, departmental or internally viewable. Attachments can also be easily included in an agenda packet whenever this meeting topic is added to an agenda.

In the Professional and Enterprise editions, you can also setup on each attachment independant review steps for users or departments to review or modify the document. Each attachment can also be locked by users while editing to prevent multiple users changes from conflicting (See File Locking feature for more information).

MinuteTraq will keep a complete history of all your meeting topics from the moment they are prepared, submitted, reviewed, added to an agenda, voted on, tabled to other meetings, passed through committees for review and more. Each meeting topic or attachment can have comments added to the history by users. The meeting topic history screen will provide a complete history of the topic itself plus all of the attachments. The meeting history will track each agenda item and the exact page number it appears on in the minutes with the comments and action or vote record at the meeting.

MinuteTraq will also keep an access log of each meeting topic and document in the system. Everytime a user opens a record for access it is added to the access log which is viewable to certain users on the history page. The access log will also track the view from the web portal so you can see how many views a specific agenda topic or document has received to help gauge public interest.

For the Enterprise edition, the audit trail allows all the changes that are made to the document to be tracked in a log. Each user that makes a change can indicate a reason why they are changing it, a comment and can trigger actions like sending and email notice, resetting the approval process or creating a new revision of the topic or document. (See Revision Tracking & Comparing for more info on this)

Meeting topics and documents can be routed to other users, departments and meetings within MinuteTraq for approval or additional information. Default workflow lists can be setup which automatically get added to a documents routing based on: what category is selected, department it comes from, projects or functions it is related to, committee referrals needed and other fields.

MinuteTraq supports both concurrent and sequential workflow. Email notices are sent to the reviewers and approvers as the meeting topic is submitted and each step of the workflow is completed. Additionally there is a dashboard and search capability to give each user a list of their pending tasks with due dates.

MinuteTraq allows users to lock individual meeting topics and attachments while they are being edited. Any user that tries opens a document that is being edited immediately sees the lock information including the user that currently is working on the document, their phone number, email address and the date and time they started working on the document. As soon as the user closes the document it is typically unlocked automatically.

Email notices are sent through your normal email program to the reviewers and approvers as the meeting topic is submitted and each step of the workflow is completed.

The dashboard is a single screen that each user can view all the pending work items, reviewals, assigned tasks and other current information that requires the attention of the user. With the dashboard any user can easily work from a single list and review meeting topics, attachments and follow up actions. With this consilidated report your time efficiency can be greatly improved allowing you to move on to other things faster.

MinuteTraq allows meeting topics to be linked together. For example, if you are amending an old Resolution, or creating a new piece of legislation that came from some other meeting topic being passed. Linking meeting topics together will show on the history page of each meeting topic and allow you to open the linked topics easily.

MinuteTraq can track changes to meeting topics and documents. When the track changes feature is turned on for a document users that make changes to a document will be required to enter a save reason & comment to summarize the changes. Additionally actions can be triggered to send an email notice to other users linked to the meeting topic or document, reset the approval process on the document and last save the changes as a new revision.

When users save the changes as a new revision, MinuteTraq automatically creates a copy of the current version of the document to the Revision History section. Users can use the History page to view all the changes made and all the revisions currently available for viewing and comparison.

When multiple revisions of a document are available, MinuteTraq allows you to save the old revisions to your hard drive for viewing and comparing. For Microsoft Word documents, MinuteTraq goes a step farther by automatically creating a comparison document in MS Word format where all changes made to the document are highlighted or striked-out with bubbles on the side describing the changes.

The Work Planner is an enterprise class tool that gives a singel birds-eye view of all meeting topics, initiatives and projects and their status. For managers that plan initiatives and progress of their organizations tasks this tool is a godsend.

Meeting topics can be planned for the entire year and easily scheduled at milestone meetings. The work planner allows the users to route these items for committee and board meetings while displaying the work item status as each is reviewed and made ready prior to each meeting.

As an enterprise level tool, you can see all the meetings for all committees, boards and meeting groups on a single screen or drill down on specific groups. Work Plans can be output to Excel format for work sessions and pre-meeting review sessions. Items that need to be pushed out to future meetings can easily be accomplished

MinuteTraq has a built-in meeting calendar to manage all your meetings for all your boards, committees and other meeting groups. These meetings are entered in once and they are available to have agenda items submitted to, agendas prepared, minutes, letters and all the other features available. Also the Meeting list will also be available on the Meeting Web Portal for citizens to see the meetings and retrieve all the other information posted.

The Agenda Wizard tool makes agenda preparation easy. The meeting organizer will open the Agenda Wizard for a meeting and all the submitted meeting topics will show in a list of available agenda items. With our one-click agenda simply auto-fill the agenda and the items are automatically placed into the agenda outline tree. The meeting organizer can easily drag and drop agenda items, sort them, create headings and sub-headings, number items and arrange the agenda however they want. A default outline can easily be saved for each meeting type so that default headings and template based text is automatically placed into the agenda for you.

Generating the agenda and agenda packets is easy. MinuteTraq gives the option to generate in Word or PDF format. The agenda packet can automatically be assembled and numbered into a single PDF for publishing and distributing. Cover memos can be automatically generated for select agenda items. The cover memos can be placed into the packet followed by all of the attached documents.

The agenda is also easily regenerated after small changes are made (See Fast Regeneration Technology for more info).

Because MinuteTraq has built-in Fast Regeneration Technology ™, the documents generated from MinuteTraq can be easily modified and regenerated much faster than the intial build. An agenda packet that needs to be regenerated after adding or removing a couple items can be completed around 90% faster than the initial build. Other products without our unique Fast Regeneration Technology ™ could take hours to build packets even if it was only a small change made.

MinuteTraq can generate up to 4 different agendas (depending on your version). Each agenda can be based on different Microsoft Word templates so that different information can be displayed in the different versions. (See Template Designer for more info)

The different agenda templates are typically used to generate a Public version and a Full Version. For the Professional and Enterprise customers you also have the option to generate another 2 agenda templates which are commonly used for separate Board and Staff versions.

The Template Designer is used to prepare and organize template sets for generating different agendas, minutes and other documents. MinuteTraq uses Microsoft Word documents as templates to make the process of modifying and adding fields or changing formatting in the templates extremely easy.

For our Basic customers, template design is limited.

MinuteTraq make distributing and publishing your agendas, minutes, letters and meeting topics very easy. First meeting organizers can setup distribution lists and add or remove recipient to and from the distribution list. The meeting organizer can also Allow Web Signup for a distribution list which will allow citizens on the web portal to add themselves to specific distribution lists. For example, setting up a distribution list named "City Council Agendas" and making it public would allow citizens to add themselves to the list and then automatically get the agendas once they are prepared. Another example would be creating a distribution list named "Zoning Changes" where all meeting topics categorized as a Zoning Change would be copied to recipients on that list by using our Letter Factory.

Publishing information on the web portal is also easy. When you generate your agendas or minutes you can simple check a box and the documents are then available for download on the web. MinuteTraq also gives you the ability to un-publish or specify a future date and time to automatically publish. Agenda items and attached documents also become available if they are marked as public.

MinuteTraq allows you to create other document types with user definable fields for indexes. Other documents can then be uploaded into MinuteTraq and are instantly indexed for text search capabilities and can easily be published to the web portal for public viewing. This feature allows MinuteTraq customers to upload previous meeting documents into a single place for searching past and future meeting information. Non-meeting based information can also be uploaded and posted to the web portal.