Dane County staff trained on compiling and publishing agendas in Legistar

Dane County staff participated in a training session on July 26, 2025, on using the Legistar system to schedule meetings, compile agendas and publish agenda packets and accessible agendas to the county's Insight page and to the Legislate application.

The session, led by a Granicus trainer, walked attendees through the end-to-end agenda workflow in Legistar: scheduling an agenda date, creating legislative files, generating an agenda from the county's predefined agenda template (agenda definitions), making on-the-fly edits, running draft reports, and the steps required to publish the final agenda and any subsequent amendments.

Trainer: "This training is going to encompass putting together and publishing an agenda from your Legistar system," the trainer said at the start of the session, emphasizing the session would show "how to schedule an agenda date in the system." The trainer repeatedly demonstrated features and settings while answering staff questions.

Why it matters: correct use of Legistar controls what items appear on a public agenda, how attachments are linked, and how subscribers are notified. Misconfigured template rules or file statuses can cause items to be omitted from a generated agenda; publishing steps also control when the public can view the agenda documents and accessible versions online.

Key points from the training

- Scheduling and local settings: The default agenda search window shows 90 days forward and 90 days back; attendees were shown how to change that default (for example to 180 days) and how to set a default meeting body when creating a new agenda. The trainer noted some clients' historical data go back to 2013'2014 in their system.

- Agenda generation and templates: The trainer explained that the generate button pulls items into the agenda from the system's agenda definitions (the county's standard template). Each section header in agenda definitions can be set as "forcing" (always shown) or not forcing (shown only if matching items exist). Files are pulled under a header only when they meet the header's required metrics (meeting body, file type, and/or file status). The trainer demonstrated how items with mismatched file status will not appear when an agenda is generated.

- Manually adding and editing lines: Staff were shown how to add a section header on the fly, insert legislative items, and use the "add many lines" feature to pick files that lack a final action date. The trainer explained how to drag-and-drop to reorder lines, copy lines, and delete lines from the agenda view (deleting from the agenda view does not delete the legislative file from the system).

- Special formatting: The group learned to add a page break by inserting a header whose description is typed as PAGE BREAK (all caps) so the generated PDF breaks pages at that point.

- Drafts, reports and formatting options: The meeting agenda report can be run in multiple formats (PDF, Word, RTF, HTML). Report checkboxes control whether to show a cover page, file IDs, agenda notes, attachments hyperlinks, recommended actions, and other formatting options. The trainer recommended saving frequently used report settings.

- Auto-numbering and selected-lines reports: Auto-number assigns sequential numbers to legislative items (the trainer demonstrated reapplying numbering after reordering). The meeting agenda report can be limited to highlighted (selected) lines so staff can generate a partial draft for review.

- Publishing steps and timing: To publish an agenda the trainer outlined these steps: change the meeting status from draft (or hidden) to final and click save; use Tools ' Export Data to push the meeting data to Legislate; run the meeting agenda report and choose the destination "Publish to Insight calendar PDF." The trainer cautioned that documents take roughly 5'10 minutes to sync from Legistar to the Insight public page, so the agenda and accessible agenda links may not appear immediately after publishing.

- Amending a published agenda: To amend an agenda staff must unlock the published agenda, make edits, set status to Final Revised, export data again, and republish (and optionally use Send Agenda to notify subscribers of the update).

- Closing an agenda date: The trainer demonstrated the agenda closed status; when a meeting is closed the system prevents drafters from scheduling new items on that date and displays a message that the deadline has passed.

- Template maintenance and administration: The trainer walked through the administration area where agenda definitions and header styles live (Tools ' Administration ' Workflow Control ' Primary Legislative Body). Attendees were shown how the sequence number controls header order, how to set forcing vs nonforcing, and how file type/status/body metrics determine where files land on the agenda. The trainer advised using the header style reference (a styling guide in the system) rather than relying on the pick list alone.

- User and Legislate management: The trainer demonstrated the new, web-based Legislate application (replacing the older iLegislate install) and reviewed user group membership in the media manager (dane.granicus.com). The trainer advised periodically removing users who are no longer serving to prevent stale access.

Concerns and administrative directions recorded during the session

- Items appearing unexpectedly: Staff noted that some draft or older files (from 2018 and 2021) without final action dates were showing in generated agendas. The trainer recommended cleaning up old items, setting final action dates for closed files, or deleting unused draft files so they do not surface on future agendas.

- Columns and reporting feature requests: An attendee requested a column showing file type on the agenda view; another asked for an option to regenerate the agenda without losing manual edits. The trainer said she would submit those feature requests to the development team.

- Subscriber notifications: The trainer reminded staff to use the Send Agenda function to notify subscribers (the public or internal users) when a new agenda or a revised agenda is published.

Quotations and attributions

Trainer (Granicus): "This training is going to encompass putting together and publishing an agenda from your Legistar system. ... I'm gonna be showing you first how to schedule an agenda date in the system."

Kaylene (Dane County staff): "I don't think so. No, I think that this was helpful," in response to the trainer's summary near the end of the session.

Next steps and follow-up

County staff and the trainer agreed on follow-up sessions: an admin training scheduled for Thursday (two hours) and a separate minutes training to be coordinated with Carolyn. The trainer also said she would mark the test meeting hidden so it would not appear on the public Insight page and would submit the two feature requests discussed in the session.

Ending

The session closed after a question-and-answer period and a short demonstration of user management and the Legislate app. The training materials (including the recorded session) are available in the county's media manager for staff reference.