Overview
The Meetings module serves as a digital boardroom. It centralizes the agenda, attendees, and supporting documentation for board, family, and investment committee meetings. By linking files directly from ORCA, you ensure participants always see the most up-to-date version of a document.
Creating a New Meeting
To start building your meeting workspace:
- Navigate to Meetings: Open the Meetings module from the left-side navigation menu.
- Launch Setup: Click the New Meeting button.
- Configure Meeting Details:
- Focus: Select the legal entity or person that is the primary subject of the meeting. This choice is critical as it drives the "Smart Participant" suggestions.
- Type: Categorize the meeting (e.g., Board Meeting, Annual Review, Investment Committee).
- Date & Location: Set the schedule and provide either a physical address or a video conferencing link.
- Participants: ORCA intelligently suggests participants based on the Focus and Type selected. For example, selecting a specific entity as the "Focus" will automatically suggest its board members and officers as participants.
Building an Interactive Agenda
The agenda is more than just a list of topics; it is a gateway to your data.
- Creating Items: Type your agenda items directly into the Agenda section.
- Linking Files: Use the "@" symbol to search for and link any file already stored in ORCA. This creates a secure, clickable link for participants.
- Direct Uploads: If a document isn't in ORCA yet, use the upload function within the meeting. The file will be added to the meeting and automatically stored in your "Files" section for future use.
Secure Sharing & Access Control
Once your agenda is ready, you can share it with participants—even those who don't have a full ORCA user account.
How to Share
- Click the Share button in the top right.
- Add Security: We highly recommend toggling on the Password Protection feature for an extra layer of security.
- Distribute: Copy the generated link and send it via your preferred communication channel (Email, WhatsApp, etc.).
Managing the Shared Link
You have full control over the lifespan of the shared meeting link:
- Deactivate: If a meeting is canceled or the link was sent in error, you can deactivate it immediately to revoke access.
- Prolong: By default, links have an expiration. If participants need more time to review materials post-meeting, you can extend the link's validity from the sharing panel.
Pro-Tips for Efficient Meetings
- Leverage Roles: Ensure your Persons and Entities have their roles (Board Member, Trustee, etc.) correctly defined in the "Setup" tab to make the Smart Participant feature work perfectly.
- Version Control: Because you are linking to ORCA files (using the "@" symbol), any updates you make to the file in your main vault will automatically reflect in the meeting agenda. No more re-sending "Final_v2" emails.
- Participant Emails: If you've already added email addresses to your contacts in ORCA, they will appear at the bottom of the sharing panel, making it easy to copy-paste the guest list.