iSolutions has created a template to help with creating/managing a committee using SharePoint Online.

Note that this is fairly basic at present due to limitations in what we can customise efficiently.

1. See this article on how to create a SharePoint Online site and our best practice guidance
2. When selecting a Team Site, note the drop-down on the left to select a Committee site rather than a normal team site - select this
3. Fill in the other aspects of creating a site as per our other guidance
4. Once your site has been created there are two key differences that have been setup for you:
   1. A meetings calendar is linked on the left side (Meetings) - use this to enter dates for your committee meetings
      
   2. The main documents library is now set to operate based on meta-data within it, see below for how to operate this

Note you can add a list of the meeting dates from the calendar onto the homepage by editing the homepage and adding the Events web part.

Using a Committee site

update due to a flaw in how date grouping works, you now manually add dates for documents rather than selecting from a list.

You can use the committee site in the same way as any other SharePoint team site, however, we've configured a couple of things to try and help manage the content in an optimum way for SharePoint.

Select a document, click the i icon in the upper right (this opens the 'information panel') and then select which date the document relates to (time is optional you can leave this at midnight if you prefer). You can also select a type of document e.g. Agenda, Minutes etc.

Once your documents are associated to dates you will see them automatically group by date in reverse order - this makes it easier to browse. Because the documents aren't stored in folders you can easily use the sort and filter options at the top of columns to find documents or collections of documents should you need them.

Additional resources to help you make the most of SharePoint Online

1. LinkedIn Learning
2. Microsoft Training Center