Agendas
An agenda is a published version of all the items, breaks, and structure for a meeting at a single point in time. Publishing captures the current state of every item as a fixed record.
Agendas vs. Meetings
A meeting is an event. An agenda is a document attached to that event. One meeting can have multiple agenda versions over its lifetime.
The meeting is "City Council, April 15 at 7 PM." The agenda is the document published April 12 listing what will be discussed. If items change, you publish a new agenda version — the meeting itself stays the same.
Noticing vs. Publishing
A common point of confusion:
Noticing a meeting (the Announce action in the app) makes its existence public — date, time, location. First legal step, no agenda content yet. The meeting appears on the public portal.
Publishing an agenda releases the full list of items, descriptions, recommended actions, and attachments. A separate, later step. It saves a copy of the items and makes the document public.
Both have compliance deadlines. See Announcing Meetings.
Versioning
Each publish gets a version number (v1, v2, v3…).
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
published | Published |
amended | Amended |
superseded | Superseded |
When a new version publishes:
- The previous "published" version is marked superseded
- Re-publishing the current version (minor corrections) marks it amended
- Each version carries a changelog of what changed
What Gets Captured
A publish snapshots:
- Items — title, description, type, recommended action, duration, planned start time
- Breaks — scheduled breaks (e.g., lunch) with duration
- Preamble — opening items (Call to Order, Pledge of Allegiance, etc.)
- Closed-session items — title only (details are confidential)
Closed-session items appear on the published agenda by title only. Descriptions, recommended actions, and attachments are never included in the public copy.
PDF Generation
A publish generates the PDF in the background. It doesn't hold up the publish — if it fails, the agenda is still published and the PDF can be regenerated later. See PDF Generation.
Related
- Meetings — the event the agenda is attached to
- Agenda Items — what gets snapshotted
- Announcing Meetings — deadlines that gate publishing
- Approval Workflow — items typically need approval before publishing