What Agenda Import Is
Building a meeting agenda used to mean retyping each section and each item by hand. For a board with 30–80 items per meeting, that's 30–90 minutes of retyping per meeting.
The agenda import function removes that step. You can now upload an existing agenda file (it can be exported from PrimeGov, Granicus, Legistar, OSI Agenda, PDF, a spreadsheet, etc.), PublicInput reads it, and you'll get a reviewable draft of the whole agenda in seconds.
Where to Find It
On the Meeting Admin Agenda tab, in the agenda toolbar, you'll find an Import Agenda button. Clicking it opens a side drawer that walks through the import in four steps. The rest of this guide will walk you through how to import step by step.
Step 1. Upload Agenda Files
After clicking the Import Agenda button, the first screen of the import process will appear. This is where you'll choose what to import and where you can (optionally) coach the import tool using AI.
Upload Agenda Files (drop zone)
There are a couple of upload methods available. You may either drag and drop or browse your computer for the file you want to import. A drag-and-drop zone labeled "Drag & drop your files here" with an "or browse" link to open a file picker will appear at the top of the screen.
Accepted file types: PDF, CSV, Excel (
.xlsx), and HTML (.htm/.html).Multiple files are allowed. You can drop several files at once (e.g., a main agenda PDF plus a supplemental/housing-authority PDF), and they're combined into one draft. If you want to start over, a Clear button removes the selection.
Word documents are not supported — you will need to export
.docxto PDF first.Scanned / image-only PDFs are not supported. The reader pulls the text layer out of the PDF; if a PDF is just a scanned image with no text, the import returns a "no extractable text" warning and you'll need to find a text-based file instead.
Custom Instructions
A text box labeled "Custom Instructions" provides the option for one-off guidance about the upload.
Whatever you type here is handed to the AI reader along with the file, so it can interpret the agenda as the board intends. It applies to every format — for a spreadsheet, it's just as useful: e.g. "the Cat column is the section name" or "treat Section cells as Consent Calendar."
Board-Level Instructions
The collapsible panel labeled "Board-Level Instructions" is the persistent version of Custom Instructions. These are standing notes about how this board's agendas are always formatted; they are saved once and reused on every future import for that board.
Custom Instructions = "for this one file."
Board-Level Instructions = "for every import this customer ever does."
💡Onboarding a new board is the perfect time to fill in Board-Level Instructions.
If you already have agenda items listed...
The Import Agenda button will first ask if you would like to:
Update the agenda from import - matches items in your upload to existing item numbers or titles. This option keeps any existing speaker registrations, comments, or statuses intact.
Replace agenda from import - deletes all existing items and associated engagement (registration, comments, or statuses)
Mode | What it does | When to use it |
Update Agenda from Import | Matches imported items to existing ones (by sequence ID, then item number, then exact title). Matched items are updated in place; new items are added; existing items keep their data. Keeps speaker registrations, comments, votes, and statuses on matched items. | The agenda changed slightly and people have already engaged — re-importing the updated agenda close to meeting time without losing registrations/comments. This is the safe choice. |
Replace Agenda from Import | Deletes all existing items and rebuilds the agenda fresh from the file. | Starting over — the existing items are throwaway/test data, or the agenda was rebuilt from scratch. |
Download CSV Template
The CSV Template button downloads a ready-made spreadsheet with clean, clearly-named columns for you to use: ItemNumber, Section, Title, Description. Customers who'd rather build a tidy spreadsheet than wrangle a PDF can hand this template to whoever maintains their source system. They can fill it in and upload it. Well-labeled columns give the AI reader the clearest possible structure to work from, so the draft comes back accurate.
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Step 2. Processing
A spinner screen is shown while the file is read in the background. Depending on the file size, this process can take several minutes.
Step 3. Review Draft Agenda
This is your chance to check everything out before importing it to your board. The draft lays out what the reader produced: a running total of items and sections at the top, then each section with its items beneath it, every item carrying its number, title, and a one-line description.
Item numbers come through exactly as they appear in the source (ex: R1, C-3, 2.A, and so on) because many boards publish agendas that depend on those exact prefixes. On the right, a microphone marks the items that will open for speaker registration. If something looks wrong — a misnumbered item, the wrong section, a missing piece — the fix is to type in the feedback box what you'd like to adjust and rerun the import.
💡 You can provide feedback and rerun the import up to 5 times.
When the reader flags something
If the reader ran into trouble, it says so above the draft before the admin commits — most often a long PDF that got truncated (the last few items may be missing, so check the total), or one file in a multi-file upload that had no readable text and was skipped while the rest came through. These don't block the import; they're the signal to compare the draft against the real agenda before clicking through.
Step 4. Import Complete
Success! Your agenda has been uploaded.
From here it behaves like any hand-built agenda — items can be edited, reordered, given statuses, and have speaker rules adjusted on the Agenda tab as usual.
PDF/HTML vs. CSV/Excel (cheat sheet)
All four formats are read by the same AI; the practical differences are mostly about speed and failure modes.
| PDF / HTML | CSV / Excel (.xlsx) |
How it's read | AI (Azure OpenAI) | AI (Azure OpenAI) — spreadsheet is converted to text first |
Speed | Seconds to ~1 minute (longer = bigger agenda) | Usually a few seconds (small, simple text) |
Best for | The agenda file the board already publishes | A clean export or the downloadable CSV template |
Failure mode to know | Scanned/image-only PDFs have no text → error | Truly empty file → error; otherwise the AI does its best with whatever columns it finds |
The AI reads spreadsheets best when the columns are clearly labeled — Title, Section, Item Number, Description (the downloadable template uses exactly those). If a board's export uses odd column names (e.g. "Agenda No.", "Cat", "Item Name"), the AI will usually still map them correctly, and a one-line Custom Instruction ("the Cat column is the section") removes any doubt.
Common Questions
Will importing overwrite the agenda I already built? Only if you choose Replace (or Update with "Remove items not present" turned on). Plain Update never deletes — it updates matching items and adds new ones. If the meeting has no items yet, there's no choice to make; it just creates them.
I re-imported an updated agenda the morning of the meeting. Did I lose the registrations people already submitted? Not if you used Update mode (the default for a meeting that already has items). Update keeps speaker registrations, comments, votes, and statuses on items it can match. Replace would lose them — that's why it has a destructive warning.
The draft put an item in the wrong section / merged two sections / dropped a number. Type the correction into the Feedback box and click Rerun — no need to re-upload. Repeat until it's right, then Import. (For a spreadsheet you can also just fix the file and upload again, but Rerun works the same way.)
My PDF import says it couldn't extract any text. The PDF is almost certainly a scanned image (no real text layer). You'll need to export a text-based PDF, or use the CSV template instead.
The CSV imported but everything landed in one section. The AI couldn't tell how the rows grouped — usually because there's no clear Section column. Add a Section column (or use the downloadable template), and/or add a Custom Instruction describing the grouping ("group by the Category column"), then re-upload.
Can I rerun a spreadsheet import with feedback? Yes — type your correction in the Feedback box on the review step and click Rerun, exactly as you would for a PDF. (You can also fix the spreadsheet itself and re-upload, but you don't have to.)
Can I import several files at once? Yes — drop multiple files and they're combined into a single draft (e.g., a main agenda plus a supplemental). If one file can't be read, the others still come through and you'll see a note about the one that failed.
Are speaker registration toggles set automatically? Yes — items come in with sensible defaults (a microphone icon in the draft shows which are on). The admin can change any of them on the Agenda tab after import.
Where do the board's saved instructions live? Board-Level Instructions are saved per customer (not per user or board), so any admin on that account benefits from them on every future import. Update them any time from the Board-Level Instructions panel in Step 1.