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Groups can plan and run committee meetings from the site, end to end: book the meeting on the calendar, send the invite, hold the call inside NGX-Ramblers on a meeting server run for every group, and have the minutes written up and published to the committee page afterwards. This note brings the whole video meetings feature together as delivered across builds 838 to 877, so there is one place to read about it.
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The Meetings page: booked meetings at the top, plan a committee meeting on the left, start or join a video call on the right
\nPlan a committee meeting on the walks calendar: pick a date, choose in person, online or hybrid, draft an agenda, and invite guests and lists by email with a calendar attachment. Open an existing meeting from the calendar or the booked-meeting banner to edit it, or cancel it and notify everyone who was invited. In-person and hybrid meetings show a venue on the agenda and invite; online and hybrid get a join link. The banner lists the next AGM and committee meeting when those types exist, and clicking one opens the calendar on that date with the invite already up. Booked Other meetings show on the calendar too, while the calendar only shows committee meeting file types, so financial statements and the like stay off it.
\nOpening a planned meeting shows a Replies table of who has answered. Accept, Decline and Maybe on the calendar invite are recorded against that meeting, so the replies are there when you open it again.
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Planning a meeting: pick a date on the plan calendar, with booked meetings kept in view
\nCalendar files preview as events in the inbox and composer rather than just downloading, and PDFs can be previewed too. Meeting invites include Accept, Tentative and Decline, and the organiser is told your reply. Walks in Related Links offer the same calendar choices - Calendar, Google Calendar or Outlook - ordered for the device you are on, and Add to Calendar opens the calendar on the machine instead of saving a file to Downloads.
\nGuest invite emails come from the committee email address of the person who sent them, and the join link in each invite is personalised: the recipient joins under their own name without logging in, and a logged-in member still joins as themselves. The send dialogue has an optional invite note that goes in the email body, and offers Send to committee role addresses when everyone on the chosen list holds a committee role.
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Opening a planned meeting: the details, the invited list and guests, and a Replies table showing who has answered
\nMeetings start straight away, and you join as yourself - there is no unexpected sign-in box and no random room name; the on-screen meeting name is the meeting title. A check screen shows your camera preview and lets you choose your microphone and camera before you enter, and phones, tablets and in-app browsers get a clear Join step so camera and microphone permission is not skipped; a guest opening the link from Mail or Facebook is told to use Safari or Chrome instead. Guests can type the name everyone should see, and a guest who joins again from another device replaces their first connection rather than appearing twice.
\nWhen a few of you are together in one room, Join without sound lets one device carry the audio so there is no echo, and the meeting can notice another device in the same room and offer to switch yours to no sound. During the call a Sound button switches microphone, speaker or camera with a live level bar, and if your microphone is on but producing nothing the meeting says so and offers the picker.
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The meeting is run from a single Ramblers toolbar: Record, Chat, People, Raise, View, Notes, Invite, Sound, Camera, Mic, Share, Full, Quality and Leave. People lists who is in the call, Invite uses the same recipient chips as the rest of the site and always shows a join link you can copy, and View and Quality show the choice in force. A shared screen takes over the large view for everyone and the previous layout returns when sharing stops; Full screen uses the browser's real full screen where it is allowed. Speaker view keeps the people strip along the bottom, and the chevron shows or hides it.
\nOnly committee members have moderator controls; guests join without them. Leaving by accident is hard: Leave asks you to confirm, clicking elsewhere on the site during a call asks first, the browser warns before a reload or tab close, and if you do drop out a Rejoin meeting banner on every page takes you straight back in. Start-now rooms appear on the Meetings page, so a leftover call can be joined or deleted instead of vanishing.
\nNothing is recorded unless someone chooses Record, and a notice explains what is captured and how to stop it before capture begins. When it is on, speech is transcribed by the site's own notes service and stays within the group. Minutes are written only from the captured record - the spoken words, the chat and any typed notes - and that record is saved before it is summarised, so a long call still produces a draft even if the write-up takes a while. Transcription knows who is in the room and labels each line with its speaker, so the minutes credit the person who said something rather than whoever pressed Record. Notes can also be taken by hand during the call from the Notes button, in the same large dialog used for committee invites.
\nLeaving a recorded call shows progress while the minutes are collected, then a link to review the draft; a Minutes ready notification also arrives in the NGX Inbox. A draft can be saved, edited, previewed, rewritten from its transcript or deleted, and Publish adds it to the committee documents page chosen in Committee Settings. The transcript is kept alongside as speaker entries with names and timestamps, and deleting a draft keeps the transcript so the minutes can be written again. If minutes were missed, the Meetings page lists recordings that still need a draft, with Write minutes and Discard recording, and recent minutes are listed there in a table.
\nOpening a committee document keeps the selected document and Edit or Preview mode in the web address, so it can be bookmarked or shared, and the Minutes breadcrumb returns to the Meetings page. On-screen previews flow continuously unless an editor deliberately inserts a page break, while printing keeps A4 pagination. Recent committee documents are sorted newest first.
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After a recorded call: the draft minutes arrive in the NGX Inbox, ready to review and publish
\nMeetings run inside NGX-Ramblers on a meeting server that is run once for every group - there is nothing for a group to install, host or pay for. Calls run on that server with no third party in the middle and no time limit, members join under their own name, and committee members are the moderators. The host and identity are set once by the platform administrator and carried to every site; a group only sets its own brand name and guest joining instructions. Video meetings stay off until they are switched on for the platform.
\nGroups can set their own guest joining instructions under System Settings, Video tab; the same wording is used in guest invite emails and meeting invitations. Committee Settings lets you choose which documents page new agendas and minutes are added to. Committee documents can be emailed as a link, the document content, or both. System Settings controls match the rest of that screen, and every notice on Video meetings uses the standard alert panel.
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System Settings, Video tab: the group's meeting brand name and guest joining instructions
\nBooking a meeting end to end: pick a date on the plan calendar and the meeting invite opens for that day, with the meeting type, a generated title and a draft agenda ready to adjust. Choose in person, online or hybrid - an online meeting notes that a video link is created and added to the agenda and invite. Pick a list to invite (each shows its subscriber count), add any external guests, and Send now. The invite email goes out with a calendar attachment, and the booked meeting then appears on the Meetings page banner and on the calendar.
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Pick a date and the meeting invite opens: type, draft agenda, time and title ready to adjust
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Choose online and a video link is created and added to the agenda and invite
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Choose a list to invite - each shows its subscriber count
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Send now asks for confirmation before anything goes out
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After sending: the Meetings page shows the booked meeting, with Calendar and Committee page shortcuts
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Once a meeting has minutes the banner adds a Minutes shortcut, and booked meetings sit on the plan calendar alongside the walks
\nA booked meeting appears on the plan calendar as a committee event chip. Opening it shows the invite with its details, and More actions offers Join, the Committee page, and Delete meeting. The chip also carries its own delete control. Deleting asks for confirmation first and names the meeting's date and time, so two meetings on the same day are easy to tell apart - this cannot be undone - and when people were invited, an option to email the cancellation to them.
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The booked meeting on the plan calendar, with its own delete control on the chip
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Opening a booked meeting shows the invite and its details
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More actions: Join, Committee page, or Delete meeting
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Deleting asks for confirmation, with the option to email the cancellation to anyone who was invited
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After cancelling: a clean slate, ready to plan the next meeting
\nThe meeting server is one container deployed from admin to its own app and pinned to a single machine so everyone joining a meeting shares one room; its internal service passwords are set automatically on deploy, so it starts first time, and it updates cleanly when redeployed. The token helpers gained unit tests, along with tests for the meeting-invite calendar file builder, transcription prompts, personalised join links and the microphone level meter.
\nA full architecture write-up - where calls run, how identity and moderation work, and how one server serves every group - is in the technical article: Video Meetings: One Jitsi Server for the Whole Estate.
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