The Event Planner

The Event Planner is one place to plan a whole meeting. Everything in the meeting is built from re-orderable Items, and each Item simultaneously feeds into your Summons, your draft Minutes, and your Running Order. Plan once, produce three documents.

Open any event → click the Planner tab.

The core idea — one Item, three outputs

Every Item on the Planner has a Title plus three independent text fields:

For the Running Order — the short version that appears on the printed running order.
For the Summons — the wording you want on the Summons sent to members ahead of the meeting.
For the Minutes — the longer narrative wording for the draft Minutes.

Tip: An Item can contribute to one, two, or all three documents. Leave a field blank and the Item will simply be skipped from that document. For example, an Item might appear in your Running Order and draft Minutes but not on the Summons.

Where it lives & how to open it

From any event page, switch to the Planner tab. The Planner screen has three areas:

Actions panel — buttons to add Items, manage your templates, change the Minutes title, and re-order Items.
Items list — each Item shows pills indicating which of the three documents it appears in. Click any Item to open and edit it.
Preview & print — preview, print, or publish the Running Order, Summons and Minutes.

Building your meeting from blocks

You build the meeting up from Items. Each Item is a block you can re-order, edit, and re-use across events.

Adding an Item

Click Add Item to open the picker. You can add Items from any of these sources:

Generic defaults — a library of common Items that work across all Orders.
Tailored to your Order — default Items pre-configured for your specific Lodge type / jurisdiction.
My Templates — Items your Lodge has saved.
My Template Groups — bundles of Items added to the meeting in a single click.
Confirmed Attendances — auto-builds an Item listing who actually attended (see Advanced Item types below).
Signature Block — adds 1–10 signature lines for printed documents.

Reordering Items

Click Re-order to open the drag-and-drop modal, then drag Items into the order you want. The order applies to all three documents.

Editing an Item

Click an Item in the list to open it. You can edit the Title and each of the three text fields independently — this lets you tailor the wording for each output (e.g. a short line for the Running Order, a fuller paragraph for the Minutes).

Linking Members

From the Item editor you can link one or more Members to an Item (for example, the Candidate at an Initiation). The Item then appears on each linked member’s career view, giving you a long-term record of which member did what, when.

Removing an Item

Inside the Item editor, click Delete to remove the Item from this event. Templates are not affected.

Saving an Item as a template

If you’ve crafted wording you’ll want again, click Save as template in the Item editor. The Item is copied to your Lodge’s My Templates library, ready to drop into future events.

Templates & Template Groups

Templates are the re-usable building blocks that make planning fast. There are four flavours, in increasing order of customisation:

Generic defaults

Built-in Items maintained by us that apply to all Orders — things like opening, apologies, minutes of the previous meeting, closing, and so on.

Tailored defaults

Built-in Items pre-configured for your specific Lodge type / Order. Set your Lodge type correctly in setup and these will appear automatically alongside the generic defaults.

My Templates

Items your Lodge has created or saved from a previous event. These are private to your Lodge.

Template Groups

A Group is a bundle of Templates added to the meeting in one click, in a defined order. For example, a single Group might add every Item that makes up a full opening ceremony — opening, hymn, apologies, minutes of last meeting, and so on. Groups save a lot of clicks for meetings that follow a regular shape.

Managing your templates

From the Planner click Manage Templates to open the Templates page. There you can:

Create new Templates and edit their three text fields.
Create Template Groups, add Templates to them, and choose the order Items will be added in.
Rename or delete your Templates and Groups.

Read-only system Templates.
You can only edit your own Lodge Templates and Groups. The Generic and Tailored defaults are read-only — if you want to change one, add it to an event, edit the wording, and use Save as template to make a customised copy in My Templates.

Advanced Item types

Signature Block

Adds a block of 1–10 signature lines to the printed Minutes / Running Order — useful for the Worshipful Master, Secretary, or any officer who signs off the document. Choose how many lines you need when you add it.

Confirmed Attendances

Adds an Item that’s automatically built from the members you’ve confirmed as attending the meeting. Add it after you’ve completed Confirm attendances on the event — the Item then lists everyone who actually attended for inclusion in the Minutes. See Confirming attendance on the Events help page.

Placeholders & blanks (`[[ … ]]`)

In any Minutes field you can use double square brackets to mark text as a blank — something to fill in on the night, or to be confirmed before publication. For example:

The Worshipful Master called upon [[ Bro Smith ]] to deliver the charge.
The Lodge was opened in due form at [[ time ]].

In the on-screen draft preview, anything inside [[ … ]] is highlighted so it’s easy to spot what still needs confirming. When you publish the Minutes as a PDF, the brackets are rendered as a clean blank ready to be filled in.

Previewing the three outputs

At any time you can preview each document straight from the Planner.

Running Order preview

Click Preview Running Order to see a compact, in-order list of every Item that has Running Order text. Ideal for handing to the DC or Director of Ceremonies.

Summons preview

Click Preview Summons to see the Summons wording, with a copy-to-clipboard textarea so you can paste it into your usual Summons format or email.

Need a fully-formatted Summons?
The Planner generates Summons text. To produce a designed, printable Summons document, use the Summons Creator under Documents.

Minutes preview

Click Preview Minutes to see your full draft Minutes assembled in order, with any [[ blanks ]] highlighted.

Printing & publishing

Print Running Order

Click Print Running Order to open a print-friendly layout in a new tab, ready to send to your printer.

Print Minutes

Click Print Minutes to open a print-friendly draft of the Minutes, with the Minutes title, intro, and Signature Block (if added).

Publish Minutes as a PDF

Click Publish Minutes to generate a polished PDF of the Minutes, save it to your Lodge’s Documents archive, and download a copy. This is the version you’d typically share with members or store as the official record.

Customising the Minutes header & intro

From the Planner click Edit Minutes Title to set:

Minutes Title — the heading at the top of your printed and published Minutes (e.g. “Minutes of the Regular Meeting held on…”).
Minutes Details — an introductory paragraph that appears below the title, before the first Item. Useful for noting the location, presiding officer, or any opening context.

Both are stored on the event itself, so they apply to that one meeting’s Minutes only.

Tips & FAQs

Why is one of my Items missing from the Summons / Minutes / Running Order?

Because the corresponding text field on that Item is blank. Open the Item and add wording to the relevant field; it will appear in that document on the next preview.

What’s the difference between an Item, a Template and a Group?

Item — an entry in this specific meeting’s Planner. Editing it only affects this meeting.
Template — a re-usable definition of an Item. Adding a Template creates a new Item in the meeting from its wording.
Group — a bundle of Templates that get added together, in order, in a single click.

Where do my custom Templates appear?

Only inside your own Lodge. Templates and Groups you create are private to the Lodge that owns them.

Where do I produce a fully-styled Summons document?

Use the Summons Creator under Documents. The Planner’s Summons output is designed to feed into that tool, or to be pasted into your usual Summons format.

Can I re-order Items after I’ve added them?

Yes — click Re-order on the Planner and drag the Items into the order you want. The order applies to all three documents.