Overview - getting meetings into Discourse
So, you want to have a solid record of a meeting here in Discourse? I’m talking about a place to store the agenda, minutes, chatter, and links that you need for the whole meeting package. No problem.
This stuff is under development with the Discourse team so things will hopefully get easier over the next year or so. There are a few steps that I’d advise taking if you’d like things to be as successful as possible.
I’ll demonstrate this for a CiLN Advisory Panel Zoom-based meeting.
Step 1: Set up the event as a Discourse topic
Decide where in Discourse it would be best to host the meeting. This might be a category (or subcategory) which is regularly used by your target audience, or even a group Personal Message.
In this example, we’ll put it in #nz-ciln-forum:ap-only. Select 
and open the composer. Make the Title obvious for your meeting and consider any relevant tags (we’ll use ciln-ap-meeting here)
@charis put your screenshot here
Then click the 
in the right of the composer bar, and select 
. This brings up the Create Event dialogue. Fill it in like this, including your videoconf link. You can leave the Title blank as it will use the topic title anyway. Add a group if that suits you, and put in any reminders that you think might be useful:
When you hit the Create button, Discourse will insert this sort of code snippet into your post:
[event start=“2021-09-01 02:30” status=“private” url=“https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85331534172” end=“2021-09-01 04:30” allowedGroups=“” reminders=“1.weeks,1.days”]
[/event]
I recommend that you leave the snippet at the top of the post, which seems to work well. A partial preview is shown on the right, and if you’ve made a mistake you can edit the code directly if you feel brave. Otherwise, wait until you’ve finished the post as you can then edit it via a much easier way.
Step 2 - Put in your blurb
Any text or links that you’d like people to see you can put in here. It will look like this on the right hand preview:
Hit 
and you are away. Your event will be automatically placed in the user’s upcoming events calendar and a the date / countdown will appear in the Topics list.
Editing the event
You can now edit the event by clicking on the three dots in the top right of the event bit of the post:
Only the original poster (i.e. you) or an Admin will be able to edit the event or the post - even if you make it a wiki. If you need wiki functionality (e.g. for your agenda or minutes) then I recommend you do it in either a reply to your event post or a totally new topic.
Step 3 - put it into people’s calendars
While people will get a notification about your meeting, I find that you will struggle to get them to attend unless you actively put it into their calendars. This bit is still under development, but we have a nice workaround to achieve this. It is a bit of work, but well worth it for the results:
- Got to your favourite email/calendar app (e.g. Outlook)
- Make a new event invite with the same details as the one you have just put in Discourse
- Include the link to your Discourse event so people go there, can see your agenda etc, and use your video link.
- Turn off RSVPs for this invite, and then send it.
- Alternatively, ensure that the Discourse event is Public so that it doesn’t give you a space for RSVP there. You don’t want this to be duplicated!!!
- Ideally, RSVPs are somewhere visible to all and recorded for posterity. And only asked for once!
Conclusion
Well done! It is a bit of a fiddle, but well worth the effort. If you need any help, personal message your friendly @moderators or me directly.