Meetings & Calendar Invites

Calendar Invites

An e-mail template can carry a meeting invitation, with its details mapped from the record the e-mail is about.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → Layout & Pages:

• E-mail Templates — the template that carries the invite

Architect Panel → Integration & Connections:

• E-mail Accounts — the mailbox that becomes the organiser

Mapped from the record

Start, end, location, notes and any online meeting link come from the record, using the same field and variable vocabulary the subject and body already use. So one template produces a correct invitation for every appointment.

Described early, rendered late

The invitation is resolved into a description when the e-mail is generated, and turned into calendar data only at the moment of sending. That split is deliberate and it is what makes the invitation work.

Generation knows the record but not the recipients or the sending mailbox — the caller supplies those. And both matter:

• Gmail shows no RSVP controls unless the recipient’s own address appears as an attendee.
• Outlook shows no Accept or Decline unless the organiser is a real mailbox.

An invitation built any earlier would be addressed to nobody and be silently impossible to accept — which looks exactly like a working feature until somebody tries.

Sent twice, on purpose

Every invitation goes out both as a calendar part inside the message and as an attached file, carrying identical content.

Outlook shows its Accept and Decline banner only for a calendar part whose method matches the payload; some other clients look only at attachments; and Google’s own outbound mail sends both, so both is what client de-duplication expects.

Use a real mailbox as the sender

The practical consequence. An invitation sent from an address that is not a genuine mailbox loses its RSVP controls in Outlook, and no amount of configuration elsewhere recovers it.

Updates and cancellations

Each invitation carries a sequence number and a method. An update raises the sequence so calendars supersede the previous version rather than adding a second entry; a cancellation withdraws it from the recipient’s calendar rather than leaving a meeting nobody attends.

Send the cancellation. A meeting silently abandoned stays in everybody’s calendar.

The joining link is stored

Rather than regenerated. That is what keeps a reminder e-mail pointing at the same meeting as the original invitation — a link that changes between the invitation and the reminder is a meeting people cannot join.

Links are emitted in the forms Teams and Google Calendar each recognise, so the join button appears rather than a bare URL.

Replies are captured

Acceptances and declines arriving back at the monitored mailbox are picked up, so attendance is visible in the platform rather than only in somebody’s inbox.

Get the time zone right

An invitation carries one, and an hour’s error is the most noticeable failure this feature has. Check an invitation against your own calendar before sending any to customers.

Test in more than one client

Outlook and Gmail at minimum, and a phone. They differ in exactly the areas that decide whether somebody can accept.

Worked example

An appointment confirmation carries an invitation mapped from the booking, sent from a genuine monitored mailbox. Changes raise the sequence so calendars update in place, cancellations are sent rather than implied, and the joining link is the same one in the reminder. Testing in Outlook, Gmail and on a phone found the RSVP controls missing until the sender was changed to a real mailbox.

Recommendations

• Send from a real, monitored mailbox or RSVP will not work.
• Always send cancellations rather than abandoning a meeting.
• Check the time zone against your own calendar first.
• Test in Outlook, Gmail and on a phone.

Teams and Google Meet Links

Beyond a plain invite, the platform can create the online meeting itself and put the joining link in the appointment. Microsoft Teams and Google Meet are supported.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → Communication:

• Manage Meetings — meeting records and their joining details

Architect Panel → Integration & Connections:

• Azure AD Tenants — the Microsoft connection behind Teams meetings
• Google Registrations — the Google connection behind Meet

What this replaces

The usual arrangement is somebody creating a meeting by hand, copying the link, and pasting it into an email. That is fine for one meeting and fails at scale: links get pasted into the wrong message, or the meeting is never created and the recipient joins nothing.

Connecting

Teams meetings are created through your Microsoft tenant and Meet links through your Google connection, so those must be configured first.

Use a service identity, not an individual's account. Meetings created under a person's account behave badly when that person leaves — links stop working, recordings become inaccessible, and nobody can tell in advance which meetings are affected.

Who is the organiser

The organiser controls the lobby, recording, and who may admit participants. Decide this deliberately, because the default may not be the person who will actually run the meeting — and the person running a hearing needs to be able to admit and remove attendees.

External participants

Check what your tenant policy does with external attendees. Some configurations hold everyone in a lobby, which is fine if somebody is watching it and a poor experience if nobody is.

Test with an address outside your organisation before relying on it. This is the single most common surprise, and it surfaces in front of the participant.

Where it fits casework

A remote hearing, assessment or review with the joining link in the appointment removes a whole category of missed attendance, and the meeting record on the case is evidence it was arranged and when.

Worked example

A tribunal service creates a Teams meeting per hearing under a service account, with the clerk as organiser. Participants outside the organisation are admitted from the lobby by the clerk, which is what the process requires anyway. The joining link, the meeting record and the invite all live on the case.

Recommendations

• Use a service account as organiser, always.
• Test with an external address before go-live.
• Decide the lobby policy deliberately — it is a process decision, not a technical one.
• Keep the meeting record on the case so the arrangement is evidenced.

Published Meetings and Agendas

Council committees, board and trustee meetings, patient participation groups, works councils, school governing bodies, AGMs, planning and licensing panels — all the same shape. A body holds a meeting with an agenda of items, some of which are not for everyone.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → Communication:

• Published Meetings — meetings, their agendas and publication state
• Meeting Bodies — the committees, boards and panels that meet
• Meeting Exemption Reasons — the grounds you may cite for closing an item

Architect Panel → Data:

• Compilations — the agenda pack, assembled and paginated
• Documents — reports, minutes and recordings

The published agenda is served on a public page with no login required.

Exposure is three-valued — and this is the important part

In almost every regime that has one, the existence of a closed item is public — its number, its title and the reason it is closed — while its report is not.

A system that hid the whole item would breach the same rules it was built to satisfy. One that published everything would breach them the other way. So exposure has three settings, not two:

• Full — title, summary and documents are all public.
• Title only — the title and the cited exemption reason are public; the summary and documents are not.
• Withheld — only the fact that an item exists at that number.

"Title only" is the setting most exempt items should use, and the one people reach for least because two-valued thinking suggests hiding it entirely. Getting this right is the difference between a compliant agenda and a complaint.

Citing a reason

Meeting Exemption Reasons holds the grounds you may cite. Configure these to match the schedule your regime actually uses so members select from real grounds rather than typing free text — a cited reason that does not correspond to a legal ground is worse than no reason.

Classification drives exemption

Where a report is classified, that classification informs what may be published. The two systems connect, so an item carrying a restricted report does not need its exemption managing separately from the report's own sensitivity.

The agenda pack

The pack is a compilation — reports assembled in agenda order, paginated and indexed, as a single document. That is what members receive and what gets published, and building it from the items means it cannot disagree with the agenda.

Publication timing

The Meetings task publishes agendas whose time has come, so you can prepare an agenda in advance and have it appear on the statutory publication date without anybody doing it manually on the day.

That matters: most regimes require publication a set number of clear days before the meeting, and "clear days" excludes both ends. Set the publication date deliberately rather than counting backwards in your head.

Minutes and recordings

Minutes and any recording are documents attached to the meeting, published under the same exposure rules as the items they relate to.

Worked example — a district council

The Licensing Sub-Committee is a body. Each hearing is a meeting with numbered items. Items 1 to 6 are Full. Item 7 concerns an individual's personal circumstances and is Title Only, citing the relevant exemption ground — so the public agenda shows "Item 7 — Application by [redacted]: exempt under ground 1" rather than a gap. The pack publishes five clear days ahead automatically; the minutes follow, with item 7's minute withheld.

Recommendations

• Default exempt items to Title Only, not Withheld. Withheld is for the rare case where even the title discloses.
• Configure exemption reasons from your actual legal schedule.
• Set publication dates from the clear-days rule, and let the task publish.
• Check the public page as a member of the public would, logged out, before the first real meeting.