Most of your government's meetings are probably regular, recurring sessions — a monthly City Council, a quarterly Planning Commission, a weekly staff meeting. For those, the Meetings Scheduler does the heavy lifting (see Scheduling Recurring Meetings). But every government also runs one-off meetings — a special session, an emergency hearing, a joint meeting that doesn't follow either body's normal cadence — and those need to be created individually.
This article walks through the New Meeting dialog: how to open it, what each field does, the auto-population behavior that saves you typing, and the validation that catches scheduling conflicts before they cause problems.
When to use the New Meeting dialog
Use it for any meeting that doesn't fit a recurring pattern, or for any meeting you need to add in advance of running the Scheduler. Typical examples:
A special session of an existing body — Council convenes outside its normal schedule to address an urgent matter.
A joint meeting of two or more bodies — Council and Planning Commission meeting together on a code update.
A public hearing held outside the regular meeting calendar.
A workshop or study session where formal action isn't expected but a record needs to exist.
For regular monthly/weekly meetings of a single body, the Scheduler is faster — it'll generate a year's worth of meetings in one pass.
Opening the dialog
Click the + New Meeting button in the top-right of any of the three meetings list pages: Live & Upcoming Meetings, Past Meetings, or Calendar. The button appears identically on all three.
[IMAGE: The Live & Upcoming Meetings page with the +New Meeting button highlighted]
A dialog opens titled Create Meeting Event with a scrollable form.
[IMAGE: The Create Meeting Event dialog with all fields visible]
The fields, in order
The form is laid out top-to-bottom and a few fields cascade — picking a Meeting Body auto-fills the Agenda Template and the Title. Save yourself the time by going in order.
Meeting Body (required)
The first field is the Meeting Body for the meeting — which board, commission, or council is meeting. The dropdown searches across both:
Regular meeting bodies (City Council, Planning Commission, etc.)
Joint meeting bodies (configured separately under Admin → Joint Meeting Bodies) — pre-defined combinations of two or more bodies that meet together. If your government has these set up, they appear in the same dropdown.
Pick one. As soon as you do, two other fields auto-populate:
The Agenda Template fills with the body's default template (if one is configured).
The Title fills with "{Body name} - {Template name}" — e.g., "City Council - Regular Meeting Template."
Agenda Template
The agenda template determines the section structure (Call to Order, Public Comment, Regular Business, etc.) the agenda will start from.
The dropdown auto-filters to templates associated with the selected meeting body, plus a None option at the top. Templates with the body's Default marker are visually flagged. If the body has no associated templates, every active template across your government shows up so you have something to pick from.
You can:
Accept the auto-filled default (most common — your bodies have a normal template they use).
Pick a different template — useful for special sessions that use a workshop template, or hearings that use a hearing-format template.
Pick None — the meeting will be created with no agenda. You can build one from scratch later, or never create one at all if the meeting doesn't need a formal agenda.
Changing the template after the title is set keeps the body part of the title and swaps in the new template name.
Title (required)
The meeting's display name everywhere it appears (lists, calendar, public portal). Auto-populated from Body + Template, but freely editable — overwrite to whatever you want.
Common patterns:
Default ("City Council - Regular Meeting Template") works for monthly business.
"City Council - Special Session" for one-offs.
"City Council - Joint Meeting with Planning Commission" for joint sessions.
"Public Hearing: Downtown Rezoning Code Update" for hearings — descriptive, plainly visible to citizens.
Location
Where the meeting is held. Two ways to populate:
Saved location — a dropdown of locations configured under Admin → Locations. Picking a saved location is the preferred path because it gives you a structured address that the public portal can display nicely and (on the meeting day) generate map links to.
Free text — type an address directly. Useful when the meeting is somewhere unusual that isn't worth adding as a saved location.
If your government uses live streaming and a saved location has an associated Media Encoder, the Media Encoder field below auto-fills when you pick that location.
Meeting Date and Meeting Time
Two separate inputs:
Meeting Date — calendar picker with a month/year dropdown navigator for jumping years quickly.
Meeting Time — 12-hour time picker with minute precision.
Date and time are entered in your government's timezone (configured in your government settings), so what you see is what you mean. If you're a clerk in Pacific time entering a 7:00 PM Eastern meeting, set your government timezone correctly first — Govinity stores everything internally to be displayed in the right zone.
Overlapping meetings check
Below the date/time fields, Govinity runs an automatic conflict check that surfaces any already-scheduled meetings on the same day with overlapping:
The same meeting body, or
The same location.
[IMAGE: The overlapping meetings warning showing a conflict with another meeting]
If it finds overlaps, you'll see a warning panel listing the conflicting meeting(s). The form refuses to submit while overlaps exist — you have to either adjust your meeting's date/time or accept the conflict by canceling or moving the other meeting first.
This check has saved a lot of double-booked rooms. Don't dismiss it lightly.
Media Encoder (only if streaming is enabled)
This field appears only when your government has the Recording module (hasRecord) and the Media Streaming feature flag is enabled. If you don't see it, your government isn't set up for live streaming through Govinity (or streaming hasn't been turned on globally).
The dropdown lists every configured Media Encoder with its location and an optional description:
None at the top — no streaming for this meeting.
One option per encoder, formatted as "Encoder Name - Location - (Description)."
If you picked a saved Location that has an associated encoder, this field auto-fills to that encoder. You can override.
For setup details, see Setting Up Live Streaming for Your Government in the admin docs.
Virtual Meeting URL
A free-text field for a Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, or similar link. Citizens who view the meeting on the public portal see this link as a "Join virtually" button. Use it for hybrid meetings or remote-only sessions.
Placeholder: https://example.com/meeting.
Private Meeting toggle
A switch labeled "Private Meeting" with the description: "When checked the Meeting will not be visible to the public."
Use for executive sessions, closed sessions, attorney-client privileged sessions, or any meeting that for legal or operational reasons shouldn't appear on the public portal. The meeting still exists in Govinity (you can build an agenda, take roll call, etc.); it just doesn't surface to citizens.
Leave off for the vast majority of meetings.
Saving
The submit button reads Create (it becomes Save when editing an existing meeting). Click it, and:
Govinity creates the meeting record.
You're redirected to the meeting's Overview page at
/meetings/{id}/overview.A toast notification confirms "Meeting created successfully."
From there you can immediately start building the agenda (see Building the Agenda: Sections and Structure) or simply close the page and come back to it later.
A small wrinkle: editing after an agenda exists
The same form is used for editing an existing meeting. Click Edit Meeting from the Overview sidebar (only enabled while the meeting is still Upcoming) and the dialog reopens with current values.
Two fields are disabled when editing a meeting that already has an agenda:
Meeting Body
Agenda Template
The reason: changing these after the agenda exists would create a mess (sections from the old template still in the agenda, items associated with the old body, etc.). If you really need to change either, the path is: delete the agenda first (see Working from the Meeting Overview), then edit the meeting, then build a new agenda.
Title, Location, Date, Time, Media Encoder, Virtual Meeting URL, and Private toggle remain editable on existing meetings (as long as the meeting is Upcoming).
When to use this vs. the Scheduler
A quick reference:
Use the New Meeting dialog when... | Use the Scheduler when... |
You're creating one or two ad-hoc meetings | You're setting up a year of regular sessions |
The meeting is a one-off (special session, hearing, joint meeting) | The meeting body has a normal cadence (monthly, biweekly, etc.) |
You need fine control over a specific meeting's title or location | You're fine with auto-generated titles for the recurring set |
You're adding a meeting that the Scheduler missed | You're rolling out next year's calendar |
The two paths produce the same kind of record — a meeting event with a body, date, location, and (optional) agenda template. Once created, every meeting behaves identically regardless of which path created it.
Common questions
Can I create a meeting without picking an agenda template? Yes. Pick None in the Agenda Template dropdown. You can build a free-form agenda later from the meeting's Agenda tab, or skip the agenda entirely.
Can I create a recurring set from this dialog? No. The New Meeting dialog creates one meeting at a time. For recurring patterns, use the Meetings Scheduler.
Can I assign attendees / members here? Not directly. The meeting's attendees are derived from the meeting body's seat assignments (active members at the meeting date). You'd manage attendees by managing the body's seats in Tenure → Managing a Seat.
What if my body has no agenda templates associated? The Agenda Template dropdown shows all active templates across your government, plus None. Pick whichever fits, or set up template-to-body associations under Admin → Agenda Templates for future meetings.
Can I create a meeting for a date in the past? Yes, but unusual. Past meetings are typically created by the Scheduler at the start of a cycle, not manually. If you need to backfill a past meeting that wasn't recorded in Govinity, the dialog allows it.
The body I want isn't in the dropdown. Most likely the body is inactive or hasn't been created yet. Check Admin → Meeting Bodies. Inactive bodies don't show up in the picker.
What to read next
Scheduling Recurring Meetings — bulk-creating meetings via the Meetings Scheduler.
Working from the Meeting Overview — the Overview tab and the Actions sidebar.
Building the Agenda: Sections and Structure — the natural next step after creating a meeting.
Need help?
If the overlapping meetings warning appears and you're sure there's no actual conflict (different rooms, different bodies, etc.), double-check the saved location and meeting body — Govinity flags overlaps on either dimension. If the form refuses to save and you can't see why, check that Meeting Body is selected (it's required). For anything else, reach out to Govinity support.