Meeting Types let you save the configuration of a recurring meeting — registration rules, conferencing options, comment settings, confirmation emails, and more — so the next time you (or an integration) create a meeting on that board, the right defaults are already filled in.
If you're brand new to meetings in PublicInput, start with the Guide to creating a meeting and Different Types of Meetings first. This article assumes you've created at least one meeting and want to stop re-entering the same settings every time.
What Meeting Types Do
A board can host many kinds of meetings: a Regular Session, a Workshop, an Executive Session, a Public Hearing. Each kind probably has its own pattern — different conferencing service, different speaker time limits, different registration fields, different confirmation email.
A Meeting Type is a named category for that pattern, and a Template is the bundle of default settings attached to it. When you create a new meeting and pick a type, the template's settings are pre-filled into the meeting form. You can still edit anything before you save — the template is a starting point, not a constraint.
Meeting Types are also how PublicInput maps committees and bodies from external systems. When a meeting comes in from Legistar or PrimeGov / OneMeeting, the matching meeting type's template is applied automatically — so an imported meeting arrives already configured the way you want it.
Where to Find Meeting Types
Meeting Types live on the board admin page:
From the Engagement Dashboard, open the board (project) you want to configure.
Click into the board's admin view.
Open the Meeting Types tab.
You'll see the list of meeting types already configured for that board, with the default type marked. New boards start empty — you'll see an "Add Meeting Type" button.
Creating a Meeting Type
Click Add Meeting Type and you'll see a small form:
Name (required) — what shows up in the picker, e.g. "Regular Session", "Workshop", "Public Hearing".
Description — optional, for your own reference.
Set as default meeting type — see below.
Save the type, then click into it to configure its template. The first type you create on a board is automatically marked as the default.
Configuring Template Settings
The template editor is organized into five tabs. Anything you leave blank just won't be set on new meetings — you don't have to fill in every field.
General
Meeting format — In-person, Virtual, or Hybrid. See Different Types of Meetings for what each option implies.
Default address — for in-person and hybrid meetings.
Default time zone — applied if you don't set one explicitly when creating the meeting.
Default duration (minutes) — used to compute the end time from the start time.
Speaker time limit (seconds) — per-speaker cap.
Feature on Public Portal — whether to list newly created meetings on the public hub.
Automatically publish new meetings — when on, new meetings are created public; when off, they're private/draft until you publish them.
Engagement options — which contact channels (Phone, Email, SMS, Online) are exposed to the public on the meeting page.
Milestone — flag meetings as significant events for portal/timeline display.
Registration
All registration-related defaults live here. See Meeting Registration for a full overview of how registration works at meeting time.
Registration enabled — master toggle for the whole template.
Require In-Person Registration / Require Virtual Registration — independently require attendees to register for one or both attendance modes.
Accessibility request options — let registrants request accommodations, with a configurable list of supported options.
Speaker pre-registration, Registered speaker limit, End registration N minutes before meeting, Require registration by agenda item, Collect speaker disposition.
Translation services with selectable languages and additional time per translated speaker.
Speaker session limit and per-speaker time limit override.
Standard or custom registration form — choose the platform's standard registration fields, or point at a custom registration project for richer questions.
Registration fields — per-field "Show" and "Required" toggles for the standard set (Name, Email, Phone, Address, Zip, plus any custom fields you've defined for the customer).
Allow registrants to request a callback at meeting start.
Comments
Enable comments — turning this off forces "Accept Questions" to Never on every templated meeting.
Accept questions setting — when comment questions are open.
Comments are public — whether public commentary is visible on the meeting page.
Display mode — list vs. threaded display of public comments.
Per-agenda-item disposition — collect For / Against / Neutral on each item.
Public comment header message — short note shown above the comment box.
Public comment fields — which contact fields commenters see, drag-orderable, with per-field required toggles.
Name & email — collect, and optionally require, name and email.
Character limit on each comment.
Attachments — allow attachments, cap the count, cap the size in MB, restrict file types.
Show commenter name publicly, let participants opt-out of public display, allow replies, display SMS responses, display voicemail transcriptions, show flag button.
Toxicity check and user feedback on comment moderation.
Conference & Video
Conference service — None, Video + Phone, Video Only, or Phone Only.
Allow public to join conference.
Publicly show conference meeting details — exposes dial-in info and join links on the public meeting page.
Speaker queue, with optional position announcement and wait time announcement.
Enable conference recording.
Closed captions.
Live video stream — None, YouTube, Facebook, Granicus, or Swagit, plus the stream URL.
Hide live video before event start, hide video after event end, autoplay live video.
Emails
Send registration confirmation email and send event reminder email — toggle the two transactional emails.
Confirmation email subject.
Confirmation email body — full rich-text editor with merge-field support. New templates are seeded with sensible defaults that demonstrate how to insert the event name, the subscriber's first name, and other tokens.
Setting a Default
Each board can have one default meeting type. The default's template is applied to:
Newly created meetings where no type is explicitly chosen.
Meetings imported from Legistar or PrimeGov / OneMeeting that don't map to a specific meeting type.
To change which type is the default, open it for editing and check Set as default meeting type. The previous default is cleared automatically — only one type per board can be default at a time. If you delete the current default, the next type by sort order is promoted automatically.
Reordering, Copying, and Deleting
Reorder
Grab the drag handle on a row and drop it where you want. The order shown here is the order users see in the meeting type picker when creating a new meeting.
Copy
The Copy button on each row clones the meeting type and its full template. The copy:
Is named "<Original> (Copy)" — with a numeric suffix if that name already exists.
Is inserted directly below the source in sort order.
Is never marked as the default, even if the source was.
Does not carry over the external Legistar / PrimeGov body mapping — those mappings are 1:1 with the source body.
Copy is the fastest way to spin up a variant: e.g. duplicate "Regular Session" and then change the conference service to create a "Regular Session — Virtual Only" type.
Delete
Deleting a meeting type soft-deletes the type and its template. The type is hidden from the picker going forward, but meetings that were already created from that type keep all their settings — deletion does not retroactively change existing meetings.
Using Meeting Types with Sync Integrations
Meeting Types are how PublicInput knows which template to apply to a meeting that arrives from an external agenda system. Both supported integrations — Legistar and PrimeGov / OneMeeting — use the same flow.
Mapping a Body or Committee to a Board
In the integration's settings page, each external "body" or "committee" lives in a row. For each one you can choose:
Do not import — meetings from this body are skipped entirely.
Link to an existing board — meetings are imported into the board you pick.
Create new board — PublicInput creates a fresh board for this body in your default destination department.
Once a body is linked to a board, a second dropdown appears for Meeting Type. This is the type whose template will be applied to every meeting imported from that body.
Smart Naming When Creating New Meeting Types
From the integration's body row you can also create a brand-new meeting type inline, without leaving the page. The new type is named after the body — for example, the body "Planning Commission" creates a meeting type called "Planning Commission Meeting" — and is immediately linked. You can refine the name and template later from the board's Meeting Types tab.
When the Template Is Applied
The template is applied at meeting creation time only. Editing a template later does not retroactively change meetings that have already been imported or created. To roll out a template change, you'll need to either edit existing meetings individually or wait for the next meeting cycle.
When a Legistar or PrimeGov sync creates a new meeting, the order of operations is:
PublicInput builds the meeting from the source data (title, start time, source IDs).
The meeting type's template is applied — pre-filling registration, comments, conference, video, emails, and so on.
Native source fields (title, start time, source IDs) are reasserted so the template can't accidentally overwrite the meeting's identity.
The meeting is saved.
Settings that live on the related conference call (speaker queue, recording, position and wait-time announcements) are applied — these need the saved meeting's ID to attach to.
For more on what each integration syncs from the source system, see Using the Legistar integration with PublicInput and Using the PublicInput integration with PrimeGov / OneMeeting.
What the Template Carries Through
The table below summarizes which template settings end up on a newly created meeting.
Template area | Applied to the new meeting? |
General (format, address, time zone, duration, speaker limits, hub listing, auto-publish, engagement channels, milestone) | Yes |
Registration (all fields including required-virtual, custom registration form, fields, accessibility, translation, speaker rules) | Yes |
Comments (all fields including display mode, character limit, attachments, moderation toggles) | Yes |
Conference & Video (service, public join, captions, video service and URL, hide-before/after, autoplay) | Yes |
Speaker queue, recording, position & wait-time announcements | Yes (applied after save) |
Confirmation email subject and body | Yes |
Title, start time, source IDs (for Legistar/PrimeGov imports) | No — always taken from the source system |
Changes made to the template after a meeting was created | No — template is applied once, at creation |
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: I changed my template — why didn't my upcoming meeting update?
A: Templates are applied once, at the moment the meeting is created. Existing meetings keep the settings they had at creation time. Edit the meeting directly, or delete and re-import it from Legistar/PrimeGov to pick up the new template.
Q: Do I need a meeting type if I only run one kind of meeting?
A: No, but it's still useful — you can create a single default type called "Standard Meeting" and keep all your defaults there instead of re-entering them on every new meeting.
Q: What happens if I delete the default meeting type?
A: PublicInput automatically promotes the next meeting type by sort order to be the new default. If you've deleted your only meeting type, the board will simply have no default until you create a new one.
Q: Can I share a meeting type across boards?
A: Meeting types belong to a single board. The fastest way to replicate a setup across boards is to use Copy on the source type and re-link it on the destination board.
Q: What if a meeting comes in from Legistar or PrimeGov before I've set up a meeting type?
A: The meeting is still imported with whatever defaults the source system provides. You can configure a meeting type later, and the next meeting that imports under that body will pick up the template.
Related Articles
Guide to creating a meeting — the standard meeting setup flow.
Different Types of Meetings — In-person, Virtual, and Hybrid explained.
Meeting Registration — how registration appears to the public.
How to create a Meeting Series — for repeating meeting cadences.
Day of Meeting Guide — what to do once your meeting is live.