Guide for US/TU facilitators and Committee members to add public meeting notes to this UrbanSoil notion database. The video gives you a 2 minute overview, or scroll down for written guide:

https://www.loom.com/share/a806761d0a284b09be5961d455f55ef4

1. From the USTU Meeting Notes by year page click on the current year (e.g. 2021, when this guide was written):

   

   Main public-facing notes landing page. Notes are collected by year.

2. This brings you to a table listing all the notes in the database for that year. Click on the New button on the top right of the page to add a new page of notes:

   

   You can also directly choose a template (the next step in this guide) when making a new page by clicking the little down-arrow ᐯ to the right of the New button and select "Meeting Page Template" from that drop-down menu.

3. You now have a new blank entry. Click on the light grey Meeting Page Template option in the body of the page to apply the template. You can also just proceed with an empty page if you prefer your own format for notes, this is just a handy template with many of the common meeting items pre-populated to save some time:

   

   Adding a new page to the database.

4. With the template applied to the page, fill in the relevant attributes for the meeting including, at minimum, a *Title*, *Meeting type*, and *Date.* Committee names have changed a lot throughout the years so a committee ****tag is enough for a committee meeting—the name of the committee can be put in the meeting title, if desired:

   

   Clarification: a Summary of meeting decisions should be recorded within the notes, but the optional step is adding it to the meeting attributes box—this is very helpful for quickly finding decisions later down the line, but is not required.

5. Click the Open as page button in the top left to view the page in a full-window view:

   

   Clicking "Open as page" maximizes the notes doc within your browser window.

6. To share a direct link to the Meeting Notes page you have just created click the Share button in the top right corner of the window:

   

   Click Share to reveal a drop-down menu with various sharing settings. Most of these are inherited from the main page, and should be left alone unless you have a specific reason for changing them (such as creating closed session/hidden notes.)

7. Click Copy link in the drop-down menu that appears. This is the link to distribute to folks if they request a direct link to the meeting notes:

Page share link—paste into Zoom chat for participants to view/collaborate with notes as you type, or add to an email for the listserv after meeting is done.

That's it! Changes on Notion.so are saved automatically. People who are logged into their own Notion can see your notes live as you type (à la Google Docs,) but one quirk is people who are viewing the notes publicly on the web will have to refresh their browser page to see new changes. There is no need to "publish" the page afterwards as when posting to the wiki, this is done automatically.

Addendum: How to add Closed Session/Hidden Notes

There is a database on the ‣” page called “‣“ where you can record notes only as required for Closed Session items, or notes that should otherwise be “Hidden” from public-on-the-web, for privacy or other reasons.