Edit a meeting or activity

Update notes, participants and linked items of a recorded meeting.

Editing a Meeting or Activity

The Edit Meeting or Activity screen is the central place in DPMS where you create and maintain the formal record of any data-protection-related event — a steering committee, a training session, an incident post-mortem, or a vendor review. DPOs, compliance officers, IT administrators, and risk managers all use this screen routinely. Everything that matters about the event — its name, type, date, participants, notes, linked tasks, and linked documents — lives here. Until a record is saved and properly filled in on this screen, nothing else in DPMS can meaningfully connect to it.

How to open it

Navigate to Meetings & Activities in the main left-hand sidebar. From the index list you can either:

Click Create to open a blank form for a brand-new record, or
Click on any existing row to open its detail view, then click the pencil (Edit) icon on the General tab.

You can also reach the edit screen directly if you have been given a link to a specific record. Users who need to edit records they own (but not records owned by others) can access this screen with the "Edit Only to Assigned" permission. Users who need to create new records require the Create permission. If neither permission applies to your account, you will see a "403 Forbidden" page instead.

Screenshot

What you see

The screen uses the same shell as every other object in DPMS. Across the very top sits the global navigation bar. Just below it, a breadcrumb trail shows your current location — for example, Meetings & Activities › Q3 Steering Committee › General. The module name on the left of the breadcrumb is a clickable link back to the index, and small left and right chevron arrows on either side of the record name let you step to the previous or next record in your current list without returning to the index.

On the left edge of the content area is a narrow, collapsible tab menu. A small blue circle icon at the very top-left lets you show or hide it to reclaim space. When expanded, the menu lists: General, Tasks, Documents, Manage Access, Trigger Workflow, and — if a workflow has been started on this record — Workflow Overview. The active tab is highlighted in blue.

The bulk of the screen to the right of the tab menu is divided into two zones. At the top, a sticky header (always visible as you scroll) shows the record's current status badge, its responsible persons, the last-modified date, and the last review date if a workflow review has been completed. Changes you make directly in the sticky header — such as updating the status badge — are saved immediately to the database without requiring a full form submit. Below the sticky header, the content of whichever tab you have selected is displayed inside a white card with a blue left-border accent. In the top-right corner of that card, a Save button appears whenever you are on an editable tab.

Working with this screen

Creating a new meeting or activity from scratch

When you open a blank form via the Create button on the index, the General tab is shown by default. Start by typing the meeting's title in the Name field. If your organisation works in more than one language, a small translation helper button next to the field lets you add or auto-translate the name into your other active languages — useful so colleagues who work in a different language see the record correctly in their own index.

Next, use the Type dropdown to classify the record. Types come from your organisation's tag library (configured in Compliance Settings), so you might see options such as "Steering Committee", "Training Session", or "Incident Review". If the type you need does not exist yet, simply type it into the selector and press Enter — DPMS will create a new tag in the library automatically. Be aware that this is convenient but can lead to duplicate tags if different users spell the same category slightly differently, so it is worth agreeing on a standard list before your team starts entering records in volume.

Use the Responsible Persons field to assign the owner or owners of the record. This is not just a label: whoever is listed here will be the person(s) the record is "assigned to" for access-control purposes. If your organisation uses the "Edit Only to Assigned" permission scope, only responsible persons (and users with broader edit rights) will be able to open this form.

Use the Participants field to record who attended or should attend. This is different from Responsible Persons — participants are attendees, not owners. You can search for existing users in the organisation or, if the external lawyer or consultant who was present is not yet in the system, type their name and add them on the fly. DPMS will create a new user record for them in the background when you save (and will refresh the user list throughout the system automatically after the save succeeds).

Click on the Date field to pick the date and time of the meeting from the calendar and time picker. Both date and time are stored together, so if the exact time matters for your records, make sure to set it before saving.

Finally, type the substance of the meeting into the Meeting Notes text area. This is the most important field for compliance documentation — write the key decisions, outcomes, and action items here. Like the Name field, this field supports multilingual content and auto-translation.

When you are ready, click Save in the top-right corner of the form card. DPMS sends the record to the server and redirects you to the new record's read-only detail view, where you can review everything you entered.

Updating an existing record

When you open the edit screen for a record that already exists, every field is pre-filled with the stored data. You can change any field freely — for example, correcting a typo in the meeting notes, adding a participant who was overlooked, or updating the date if a meeting was rescheduled.

One important nuance: the status badge behaves differently depending on where you change it.

If you click the status badge in the sticky header (the always-visible area at the top), the change is saved immediately to the database — no need to click Save.
If you change the status via the form fields on the General tab itself, the change is held in the form and only sent to the database when you click Save. Users who are not aware of this distinction sometimes believe their status update was lost.

After you save an edit to an existing record, DPMS keeps you on the edit screen (it does not redirect you to the detail view the way a brand-new record does). If you want to see the read-only detail view, use the breadcrumb trail or the back arrow to navigate there.

Linking tasks and documents after saving

Once a meeting record exists, you can attach related follow-up tasks and reference documents to it using the tabs in the left-hand menu.

Click Tasks to open the linked-tasks panel. Here you can search for existing tasks in DPMS and link them to this meeting — for example, attaching the "Review HR privacy notice" task that was assigned during the meeting. Each save on the Tasks tab updates the link relationship without affecting the General form data.

Click Documents to open the linked-documents panel. This works the same way: search for an existing document (such as the meeting agenda or a relevant policy) and link it. This creates a bidirectional connection — the document's detail view will also show a link back to this meeting.

Each tab handles its own saving independently: clicking Save on the Tasks tab saves the task links, not the General form.

Restricting access to a sensitive record

If a meeting record contains sensitive information — for example, board-level discussions about a data breach — you may want to limit who in your organisation can read or edit it, beyond the standard role-based permissions.

Click Manage Access in the left-hand tab menu. This opens a form where you can assign specific users or groups to the record, giving them read or write access directly. You can also reach this form quickly via the three-dot options menu (the ellipsis icon) in the top-right corner of the content pane.

Saving the Manage Access form navigates you back to the read-only detail view.

Starting a formal review or approval workflow

If your organisation uses DPMS workflows for approval processes, you can attach a workflow to a meeting or activity record to require a formal sign-off before it is marked Active.

Click Trigger Workflow in the left-hand tab menu. The panel shows the workflow templates that have been configured for the Meetings & Activities module. Select the template you want to use and trigger it. Once triggered, a Workflow Overview tab appears in the menu — this shows the current step of the workflow, who needs to act next, and whether any approvals are pending.

If a workflow was triggered by mistake, or you need to restart the process with a different template, you can click Cancel Workflow on the Workflow Overview tab while the workflow is still active. This button only appears when the workflow has not yet been completed or cancelled.

Heads up: You need the "Assign Workflow" permission to access the Trigger Workflow tab. If you see a 403 page when clicking it, ask your administrator to check your role settings.

Field reference

Name — The title of the meeting or activity. Supports multilingual entry via the translation helper button. This is the label that appears in the index and in other modules when this record is linked. Not technically required to save, but essential for identifying the record.
Type — A category tag chosen from your organisation's Meetings & Activities tag library. Used for filtering and reporting. You can create a new tag on the fly by typing a name that does not yet exist. Leave blank if the meeting does not fit a predefined category.
Responsible Persons — One or more users who own this record. Determines who the record is "assigned to" for access-control and notification purposes. Multiple persons can be selected. If you want someone to be able to edit this record under the "Edit Only to Assigned" scope, they must be listed here.
Participants — Attendees of the meeting or activity. Can include external users not currently in DPMS — these are created as new user records on save. Being listed as a participant does not grant any permissions over the record itself.
Date — The date and time of the meeting. Both date and time are captured together. If left blank, the date and time columns in the detail view will be empty.
Meeting Notes — Free-form text field for minutes, decisions, and outcomes. Supports multilingual content and auto-translation. Not required to save, but an empty notes field weakens the compliance record.

How this connects to the rest of DPMS

This screen is the starting point for almost everything else you can do with a meeting or activity record. The Tasks and Documents tabs you fill in here create bidirectional links — the linked tasks and documents will show this meeting in their own detail views, and vice versa. This cross-module visibility is what makes DPMS useful for end-to-end compliance auditing.

The Responsible Persons you assign here directly control who can see and edit the record when your organisation uses scoped permissions. Getting this right on creation saves troubleshooting later.

The status you set here can feed into workflow trigger rules and notification configurations. For example, you might have a workflow configured to fire automatically when a meeting record's status changes to "Review".

The Type tag you select is available as a filter dimension on the Meetings & Activities index, in reports, and in any risk dashboards that aggregate activity records by category.

After finishing this screen, the natural next steps are:

Check the Tasks tab to link any follow-up action items that came out of the meeting.
Check the Documents tab to attach the agenda, minutes, or any policies discussed.
If a formal sign-off is required, go to Trigger Workflow to start the approval process.

Tips & common pitfalls

Heads up: Changing the status badge on the General edit form does not save until you click Save. Only status changes made via the sticky header on the detail view save instantly. If you change the status on the edit form and then navigate away without saving, your change is lost.

Tip: Responsible Persons and Participants serve different purposes. Add someone as a Responsible Person if you want them to own the record (and be able to edit it under the "Edit Only to Assigned" scope). Add them as a Participant simply to record their attendance. A participant without a responsible-person assignment has no special access rights.

After saving an existing record, you stay on the edit screen. You are not redirected to the read-only detail view. This is intentional but can be confusing. If you want to review the formatted detail view, click the breadcrumb module link or navigate manually.
Creating a new Type tag is permanent. Because the Type selector can create tags on the fly, it is easy to accidentally build a cluttered tag library with variations like "Training", "Training Session", and "training session" all meaning the same thing. Agree on your taxonomy in Compliance Settings before rolling the module out to a wider group of users.
Adding a new external participant creates a system-wide user record. When you add someone via the Participants field who does not yet exist in DPMS, a new user entry is created for them automatically when you save. There is no confirmation prompt. The new contact becomes available throughout the application — for example, as a selectable user in other records.
The tab menu's open/closed state is shared across all records and modules. If you collapse the left-hand menu on this screen, it will also be collapsed the next time you open any other record in DPMS (ROPAs, assets, and so on). This is stored in your browser and is per-device, not per-record.
Empty Meeting Notes weaken your compliance record. While the field is not technically mandatory, regulators and auditors will expect to see substantive notes for formally documented meetings. A saved record with no notes is better than no record at all, but aim to fill this in before marking the record Active.