Simbli Frequently Asked Questions
School boards, governments, non-profits and other decision-making bodies, including departments and committees, can all use Simbli.
You create and add your items. You can move items that you have already added, and add new items where you want them. Simbli will number your items according to the system that you choose. You can save a meeting as a template for future meetings, or copy an existing meeting and edit for a new meeting. Items can be assigned to staff and passed to the administrator for approval and inclusion on agendas.
You decide who sees what meetings, or what items within an agenda. The visibility options are: Public View, Board Member View, and Board Confidential. In addition, there is a “Ready for Meeting” checkbox, which allows a user to publish an agenda without publishing all of the items. An item that is NOT checked “Ready for Meeting” will not be visible to users who do not have access to see unpublished meetings. You can go back and edit these visibility settings even after the meeting has been published to the public.
Add a “Supporting Documents” field to the item, and browse for the document when editing. You can upload virtually any file type, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF or graphic files.
Paper documents can be scanned and added as PDF’s.
Yes, any video that is hosted on Vimeo, YouTube or any other hosting site can be integrated into agenda items. You need the embed code that you will see when you click the “share” option when you are looking at the video.
Documents can be uploaded in each of the modules using the supporting documents field. In addition, the Documents Module allows you to upload folders and files and set permissions much like you do on your computer, and provides a central repository for all your important documents (of virtually any file type), with permissions to allow board members, staff and the public to access exactly what they need while keeping sensitive data secure.
The “Sticky Notes” feature allows anyone with Sticky Notes permission (usually all Board members) to take personal notes for individual meeting items prior to the meeting, and to add more notes during the meeting itself. The Sticky Notes can be written using any computer, laptop or iPad, and are only visible to the person who created them.
In edit mode, there is a Spellchecker icon on the tool bar. Unknown words are underlined during typing, and clicking the icon will go through all the underlined words and offer suggestions for correction. Alternately, right-clicking an underlined word will give a list of suggestions for that one word.
Attendance can be easily imported from your list of voting and non-voting attendees for any meeting type. Once the meeting is published and attendance is taken, a tab to record votes is present on every agenda item. You may customize the order that attendees are listed, and you can choose to record unanimous votes individually or not. You are also able to indicate if a voting member was not present for a particular vote. The Minutes Administrator can capture the voting or the voting can be entered directly by each voting member using the online voting feature.
Using your laptop or iPad, you can start taking minutes right on the agenda item page during the meeting. For each item, you can import a recommendation, record the voting results, and add any other necessary information. Minutes are automatically saved as you type. When you are ready, a link from the meeting agenda gives you the choice to publish to authorized users only, or to the public.
On the Agenda page for any meeting, there is a list of print options where you can print the Agenda, an individual item, or the minutes. Attachments are not printed unless they are opened and printed separately. You can also download the meeting, which saves the compressed file on your computer. This can be stored on a local server for archive purposes, or used as backup during a meeting in case internet access is lost, or for individual attendees to review offline. In addition, the Meeting Administrator is able to create a full meeting packet in PDF form that includes the entire agenda and all the attached PDF supporting documents.
The Communications module can keep your community informed about all the latest news from your district or organization. News can be marked as either public or available only to users with permission.
The indexing of a video would be done at the video source rather than in Simbli. Once indexed, you can put individual videos on each agenda item.
You can not upload executable files, but there are not really any other restrictions. Simbli recommends that you upload your meeting content in pdf format to prevent unauthorized modification, but including your files in their original format is fine when that fits your needs.
There are multiple security levels that can be set at an agenda item level. The Meeting Administrator has full control over what an individual user sees in any given meeting.
All communication with Simbli servers is encrypted using strong ciphers, both during network transport and while resident on computing platforms. eBOARDsolutions is also SOC2 certified. eBOARDsolutions documented internal processes are independently audited yearly to ensure that they are using industry best practices for provisioning, change control, and procedural changes.
The Simbli system has built-in redundancy at every level, including web, application, file, database, and network. The application is monitored 24x7 from the network operating center. The system is also replicated real-time to secondary locations in case of a regional outage.