Once the agenda's structure is built and items are placed, the next stretch of work takes the agenda from "draft and editable" to "locked, polished, and publicly visible." This is a deliberately gated, four-step process — Finalize, Generate Outline, Generate Package, Publish — because each step is a meaningful checkpoint and reversibility gets stricter the further you go.
This article walks through each gate, what each button does, what happens when you click it, and how to back out if you need to. The agenda's editing side is covered in Building the Agenda: Sections and Structure and Placing Legislative Items; this article picks up where those leave off.
Where to find the controls
All four lifecycle actions live as buttons in the top action row of the Agenda tab, the same row that has Auto Number Sections and Edit Sections (covered in Sections and Structure).
[IMAGE: The agenda top action row with Auto Number Sections, Edit Sections, Generate Document, Finalize Agenda, Publish Agenda buttons]
The buttons appear or disappear depending on the agenda's current state:
Generate Document — always visible when the agenda has sections.
Finalize Agenda — visible only when the agenda hasn't been finalized.
Generate Package — visible only after finalization.
Publish Agenda — visible only after finalization, before publishing.
Unpublish Agenda — visible only after publishing.
You won't see all five buttons at once. Govinity surfaces the next-step button at each stage.
The four-step gate
The lifecycle is deliberately four steps:
Finalize Agenda — locks the structure (no more edits to sections or items).
Generate Document — produces the Agenda Outline PDF.
Generate Package — produces the Agenda Package PDF (outline + every item's documents/attachments combined).
Publish Agenda — makes the agenda publicly visible on the citizen portal and fires notification emails.
Each step is reversible up until publish, after which reversibility requires unpublishing first. There's intentionally no single "go live" button — the model is "review the agenda, lock it, generate the artifacts, then make it public," with checkpoints at every transition.
Step 1: Finalize Agenda
Click Finalize Agenda (lock icon, success-outline color) in the top action row. A confirmation appears: "Are you sure you want to finalize the Agenda?" Click Yes.
[IMAGE: The Finalize Agenda confirmation prompt]
What happens immediately:
The agenda's editing controls are removed. No more Edit Sections, no Add Legislation Item, no item moves, no section renames.
A blue "Agenda Finalized" alert appears at the top of the agenda, showing the finalizer's name and the timestamp.
Two new buttons appear in the alert: Undo Finalize and Generate Package.
[IMAGE: The Agenda Finalized alert with Undo Finalize and Generate Package buttons]
What hasn't happened yet:
The agenda isn't published — citizens still don't see it.
No PDF documents have been generated (unless you'd already clicked Generate Document earlier).
No notification emails have been sent.
Finalize is a structural lock, not a publishing action. It's your "I'm done editing — do not touch" moment, and the gateway to the rest of the document generation flow.
Undo Finalize
If you realize you need to make a change before publishing, click Undo Finalize in the Finalized alert. A confirmation appears:
Undoing will make the agenda editable again. You will need to finalize again in order to create documents and have the ability to publish the agenda.
Click Yes. The agenda unlocks, you're back in editing mode, and you can make the change. Re-finalize when ready.
Undo Finalize is available only when the agenda is finalized but not published. Once published, you'd need to Unpublish first.
Step 2: Generate the Agenda Outline document
The Agenda Outline is a single-document PDF that mirrors the agenda's structure as a clean, citizen-readable document. Section titles, item titles, item codes — but no item bodies, no attached documents, no exhibits. Think of it as the "table of contents" version of the agenda.
Click Generate Document (file-text icon) in the top action row. A dialog opens.
[IMAGE: The Generate Document dialog for the Agenda Outline]
If an outline document already exists from a previous generation, a warning appears: "A version of the Agenda Outline created on [date] already exists. If you continue the existing version will be overwritten." The dialog also has a link to view the existing documents.
Click Generate Document to confirm. A toast appears: "Your document is being generated…" The dialog closes, and the agenda outline document opens in a viewer pane on the right side of the page (replacing the items picker, which is gone now since the agenda is finalized).
Generation is asynchronous. The document starts in Pending status and becomes Completed when the backend finishes (usually within a few seconds for a small agenda, longer for large ones). If something goes wrong, the status flips to Failed with an error message.
You can regenerate the outline any time by clicking Generate Document again — Govinity will warn about the overwrite and let you proceed.
Why generate the outline before the package?
The Outline is a prerequisite for the Agenda Package (Step 3). The Package combines the Outline with every item's documents and attachments to produce the full agenda packet. So:
Outline = just the structure.
Package = Outline + every item's docs + every item's attachments + everything combined into one big PDF.
You can't generate the Package without first generating the Outline. The Generate Package dialog enforces this and surfaces an error if no Outline exists.
Step 3: Generate the Agenda Package
The Agenda Package is the full agenda packet — the PDF citizens read to see everything for the meeting: agenda outline, plus each item's staff report, fiscal note, attachments, exhibits, and any other documents the item carries.
Click Generate Package (layers icon, info-alt2 color) — the button is in the Finalized alert area, or in the top action row depending on the layout.
A dialog opens.
[IMAGE: The Generate Agenda Package dialog showing the validation step]
If a package already exists, a warning appears: "A version of the Agenda Package created on [date] already exists. If you continue the existing version will be overwritten."
The items PDF validation wall
Before letting you generate, Govinity checks every item on the agenda and every attachment on every item — it can only assemble the Package if every component is already a PDF or has been successfully converted to one.
If any item or attachment has documents that are still Pending (in the middle of conversion) or have Failed to convert, the dialog blocks generation and lists each problem item.
[IMAGE: The validation panel listing items with pending or failed documents]
Each problem entry shows:
The item's code and short title.
The specific document or attachment that's pending or failed.
A status (Pending / Failed).
A Retry Item documents PDF conversion button at the bottom of the panel lets you re-trigger conversion for any items with failures.
While the polling runs (every 5 seconds), the dialog refreshes the validation. Once all items clear, the "Generate Document" button enables and you can proceed.
Generating
When validation passes, click Generate Document in the dialog. A toast appears: "The Agenda Package is being generated…" The dialog closes and the new package document opens in the right-side viewer pane.
Generation is asynchronous — large agendas with many item documents take longer. Govinity polls in the background; when the document moves from Pending to Completed, you'll see the status update in the documents pane.
When you'd regenerate
Common reasons:
An item's content or attachments changed after you generated the package, and you want the new version included.
The original package had a layout issue (rare — but if it happens, regenerate).
You unpublished the agenda, made an edit, re-finalized, and need a fresh package.
Each regeneration overwrites the previous version. The previous PDF isn't archived in Govinity's UI — you'd need to download and save it manually before regenerating if you want to keep a copy.
Step 4: Publish the Agenda
This is the moment the agenda becomes public.
Click Publish Agenda (send icon, success-outline color) in the top action row. A confirmation appears:
Are you sure you want to publish the Agenda? This will make it publicly available and send notifications.
[IMAGE: The Publish Agenda confirmation prompt]
Click Yes. What happens:
The agenda becomes visible on the public portal at the meeting's public URL. Every section, every item, every public document — all visible to citizens.
Notification emails fire to subscribers — whoever is configured to receive agenda-publish notifications for this meeting body. Email configuration lives under Admin → Email Templates and the recipient list is governed by Meeting Body Roles, subscribers, and any custom recipient rules.
The legislative items on the agenda flip to "Introduced" state — appearing on each item's page as part of the official record.
The "Agenda Published" alert (green, with the publisher's name and timestamp) appears at the top of the page, replacing the "Agenda Finalized" alert.
The status badge on the meeting card flips from Draft to Published.
[IMAGE: The Agenda Published alert with Unpublish Agenda button]
Unpublish Agenda
If you need to pull the agenda back, click Unpublish Agenda in the published alert. A confirmation appears:
Unpublishing the agenda will prevent it from being publicly viewed. You will need to republish the agenda if you want to make it public again.
Click Yes. The agenda becomes invisible to the public again, items revert to their previous state, and the workflow returns to "finalized but not published."
Unpublishing doesn't fire any "agenda unpublished" notifications — the public portal just stops showing the agenda. Subscribers don't get notified that it went away.
There's no separate "revise" flow
A common question: "How do I revise a published agenda?"
There's no dedicated revise flow. The pattern is:
Unpublish the agenda.
Undo Finalize to return to editing mode.
Make your changes (add an item, remove a section, change a description).
Re-finalize the agenda.
Regenerate the Outline (if structure changed) and regenerate the Package (if content changed).
Re-publish.
Re-publishing fires the notification emails again, so subscribers get a fresh notification. Generally this is the right behavior — subscribers want to know about substantive revisions.
For minor tweaks you don't want to notify subscribers about (a typo correction, a date format fix), the safer path is to handle the change outside the publish/unpublish flow — e.g., a "Revised Agenda" note shared via email, or a public-portal announcement post.
A common workflow
A typical pre-meeting agenda cycle, day by day:
Day -7 (a week out): Build the agenda. Place items in sections. Adjust section structure. Run Auto Number Sections.
Day -3: Final structural review. Verify all items are in the right sections. Click Finalize Agenda.
Day -3, immediately after: Click Generate Document to produce the Agenda Outline. Wait for it to complete.
Day -3, after outline is done: Click Generate Package. Wait through the validation step (if any item documents need to finish processing). Generate the Package.
Day -2: Final review of the generated Outline and Package PDFs. If everything looks right, click Publish Agenda.
Day -1 and through the meeting: The agenda is live. Citizens can read it. Subscribers received their notification email.
Day-of (rarely): If a last-minute change is required, Unpublish, Undo Finalize, edit, re-finalize, regenerate, re-publish. Citizens get a fresh notification. Plan to minimize this — it's confusing to subscribers when agendas change at the last minute.
Common questions
What if Generate Package keeps failing because of one item that won't convert? Look at the item in question. Most often it's an attached file in an unsupported format (e.g., a very old Word file, a heavily-formatted document, or a corrupted PDF). Open the item, remove or replace the problem attachment, and try again. If the issue persists, reach out to Govinity support.
Can I publish the agenda without generating the Package first? Technically yes — the Publish button doesn't require the Package to exist. But you'd be publishing an agenda where citizens see the structure (via the Outline) but not the full document set. Most governments publish only after both Outline and Package are generated.
What if I want to keep multiple versions of the Package? Download each generated version to your local files before regenerating. Govinity only stores the most recent.
Who gets notification emails when I publish? Anyone subscribed to this meeting body's agenda-publish notifications. Subscription is configured per user via Admin → Subscribers or per role via Meeting Body Roles. Specific notification email content is set in Admin → Email Templates.
Can I publish without sending notifications? Not from this UI — Publish always fires the configured notifications. To control whether and what's sent, configure your email templates and subscriber rules upstream.
Does the Outline include item content or just titles? Just titles and section structure. The full item content (staff reports, motions, etc.) is in the Package, not the Outline.
What to read next
Building the Agenda: Sections and Structure — the upstream agenda structuring article.
Building the Agenda: Placing Legislative Items — placing items before finalization.
Auto-Generated Meeting Documents — what the Outline and Package look like once generated, where they live, how to manage them.
Adding Your Own Documents to a Meeting — for supplementary documents beyond the auto-generated ones.
Need help?
If you can't finalize the agenda, the most common cause is an empty section that's marked required by the template. If you can't generate the Outline or Package, the most common cause is item documents that haven't finished converting to PDF — check the validation panel. If publishing didn't fire the expected notification emails, check the email template configuration and subscriber rules. For anything else, reach out to Govinity support.