Setting up a meeting means getting a lot of small things right: registration fields, who can comment, whether the conference line records, which confirmation email goes out. Meeting Templates let you make those decisions once for a board or committee, then reuse them on every meeting you create there.
New to meetings in PublicInput? Start with the Guide to creating a meeting. This article assumes you have created at least one meeting and are tired of re-checking the same boxes.
Where to find Meeting Templates
Meeting Templates live on the board or committee page. Open the board you want to configure and click the Meeting Templates tab.
The tab lists every template already set up on that board, which one is the default, and an Add Meeting Template button. A new board starts with an empty list.
Today the Meeting Templates tab is the only place templates are managed. Support for other parts of the application is planned.
Creating a template
Click Add Meeting Template and fill in three things:
Name, which is what people see when they pick a template. For example, "Board of Supervisors Regular Session" or "Planning Commission Public Hearing".
Description, a short line of context for your own team.
Active status, which controls whether other users see this template when they go to create a meeting. Leave a template inactive while you are still building it out.
Save it, and the template appears in the list ready to configure.
Configuring the settings
Click Template Settings on any row to open the settings editor. The settings are split across five numbered steps, grouped much like the meeting editor you already know:
General
Registration
Comments
Conference & Video
Emails
Each step shows a running count of how many settings you have configured in it, so you can see at a glance where the template is filled in and where it is not. Move between steps with Back and Next, and click Save template when you are done.
How "Set" works
This is the one concept worth understanding before you start clicking.
Every field in the template has a Set control next to it. A field is either set or unset:
Set means the template supplies a value, and every meeting created from this template starts with that value.
Unset means the template stays out of the way, and the field falls back to the normal system default, or stays blank.
So if you leave Default title unset, new meetings start with a blank title as usual. If you set it, every meeting created from the template is pre-filled with that title. You do not have to fill in the whole template. Set the handful of things your board actually repeats and leave the rest alone.
What is in each step
General covers the basics of the meeting itself: default title and description, the address you usually meet at, time zone (which overrides the board and organization defaults), length in minutes, which sets the end time from the start time, and meeting format, meaning in person, virtual, or hybrid.
Registration covers your registration options, including the languages you offer and which of the standard registration fields appear.
Comments, Conference & Video, and Emails follow the same pattern, with the familiar options from the meeting editor grouped under each step.
Two things to know about the Registration step right now:
Custom registration forms are not yet supported in templates. The standard registration fields are available. Support for custom forms is planned.
You can reorder the registration fields, but only the ones you have selected. Unselected fields cannot be sorted, so select a field first, then drag it into position.
Setting the default and ordering the list
Each board can have one default template, marked with a Default badge in the list. The default is the template that is preselected when someone creates a meeting on that board, so make it the kind of meeting you run most often.
On each row you also get:
Make default, to promote that template.
Up and down arrows, to control the order templates appear in.
An edit button for the name, description, and active status, and a delete button.
Using a template when you create a meeting
Once a board has templates, the Create a new meeting screen leads with them. Your default template sits at the top under Start from a meeting template, ready to click.
Under or start another way you have three more options:
Blank meeting, to start from scratch with no template applied.
Use a template, to choose a different template from the library.
Copy a meeting, to base the new meeting on a past one.
Picking a template fills in its settings for you. Nothing is locked. You can still change anything on the meeting before or after you save it, so a template is a starting point rather than a restriction.
Good to know
A template is applied when the meeting is created. Editing a template later does not reach back and change meetings that already exist. To roll out a change, update the template for future meetings and edit any already-scheduled meetings directly.
Templates belong to a single board or committee. Set them up on each board that runs its own kind of meeting.
You do not need many. If your board runs one kind of meeting, a single default template holding your usual settings is enough.
If you are not sure whether to set a field, leave it unset. An unset field behaves exactly the way meetings behave today.
Related articles
Guide to creating a meeting, the standard meeting setup flow.
Best Practices for Naming Your Public Meeting, worth reading before you set a default title.
How to create a Meeting Series, for recurring meeting cadences.
Introducing Meeting Series, one phone code and link across multiple meetings.
Day of Meeting Guide, what to do once your meeting is live.