Meetings & Activities

Compliance officers, DPOs, and risk managers use the Meetings & Activities module to create a structured, auditable record of every data-protection meeting, workshop, or compliance event their team runs — turning informal gatherings into traceable evidence they can present to supervisory authorities or internal auditors on demand.

The Meetings & Activities module gives your team a dedicated place to document, track, and govern every data-protection meeting or compliance event your organisation runs. Instead of scattered calendar invites or email threads, each meeting becomes a structured record with a date, participants, linked tasks, linked policy documents, and a full change history. When a supervisory authority or internal auditor asks "did this work actually happen?", you can open the record and show them exactly what was discussed, who was responsible, and how the record evolved over time.

The module has two main surfaces: the Index screen, which lists all your activities, and the Detail screen, which shows everything about a single activity across several tabs. Both surfaces follow the same navigation patterns you already know from the rest of DPMS.

How to open it

In the left sidebar, click Meetings & Activities. The index screen opens immediately — no sub-menu is needed.

Access to this module depends on the permissions assigned to your role:

Read access lets you see the full list and open any record.
Read (own) lets you see only records where you are the Responsible Person.
Edit access lets you change fields, update status, and reassign responsibility.
Create access lets you add new records.
Import access lets you upload bulk records from a file.

If your role does not include at least one of the read permissions, you will see a "Forbidden" page when you try to open the module. If this happens, ask your DPMS administrator to review your role configuration.

What you see

The index screen is divided into a few key areas. Across the top of the list you'll find a row of status filter tabs — All, Active, Draft, Inactive, and Review — that let you instantly narrow the table to records in a specific lifecycle stage. Next to the tabs sits the search bar, and to its right are the export buttons (JSON and XLSX) and the Create button.

The main table shows three columns: Name (clickable to open the record), Type (the category of the activity, such as "Workshop" or "Committee Meeting"), and Date (when the meeting took place or is scheduled). Hovering over any row reveals a small ⋯ (ellipsis) icon on the right-hand side — clicking it gives you quick row-level actions such as deleting a record without opening it first.

When you open a record, you move to the Detail screen. On the far left, a narrow panel lists the record's tabs as a vertical menu: General, Tasks, Documents, and Workflows. Clicking a tab name switches the main content area on the right. At the very top, a breadcrumb strip shows your exact location and lets you navigate backwards and forwards. Below the breadcrumbs, a sticky header bar displays the record's current status, its Responsible Person(s), and the last-updated timestamp — all editable inline without opening the full edit form.

Working with this screen

Logging a new meeting or activity for the first time

When you need to document a meeting that has just taken place — or one that is coming up — start by clicking Create in the top-right corner of the index screen and selecting Create Meeting & Activity from the dropdown. You are taken to the creation form.

At the top of the form, use the status badge to set the initial lifecycle stage. Most teams start with Draft while they are still filling in details, then move to Active once the record is complete. Use the Responsible Person picker to assign yourself or a colleague as the accountable owner — this is the person who will have edit rights under a restricted "own records" permission.

In the Name field, type a clear, searchable name for the meeting (for example, "Q3 GDPR Committee – October 2024"). If your DPMS instance is configured for multiple languages, the field will accept a value for each active language.

Use the Type dropdown to classify the activity. The list is drawn from your organisation's tag settings. If the type you need does not exist yet, simply type it in and select Create — DPMS will add it to the tag list on the fly. Bear in mind it is better practice to agree on a standard taxonomy in advance (see Tips below).

Add the people who attended using the Participants field. This is separate from the Responsible Person — participants are documented for the record but have no special system permissions. You can also add external participants who do not have a DPMS account.

Set the Date and time of the meeting using the combined date-and-time picker, then paste or type the agenda, minutes, or any relevant notes into the Meeting Notes area.

Once everything looks right, click Save. DPMS creates the record and takes you straight to its Detail screen, where you can see the breadcrumb "Meetings & Activities › [Name] › General".

Reviewing and completing records in bulk before an audit

If you are preparing for a quarterly audit and need to work through a batch of Draft records, the index screen makes this efficient. Click the Draft tab — the table immediately shows only Draft activities, hiding everything else.

Click the first record's name to open it. On the Detail screen, review the General tab to confirm the information is accurate. If you need to correct anything, click Edit to open the full edit form, make your changes, and save.

Once you are satisfied, click the status badge in the header bar and select Active. The badge updates instantly and the PATCH is saved in the background — no separate save button is needed.

To move to the next record without going back to the list, click the › (next record) arrow in the breadcrumb strip. DPMS jumps to the next activity in your filtered list. When you reach the last record, the arrow is greyed out to let you know you have reviewed them all.

You can also use the small ‹ › arrows that appear immediately before the tab label in the breadcrumb to step through the tabs of a single record (General → Tasks → Documents → Workflows) without touching the left menu.

Linking tasks and documents to a meeting record

Action items from a meeting should live as Tasks in DPMS, not just as notes. After you save a new activity, click the Tasks tab in the left menu to see the full Tasks tab.

In the Detail view the task list is read-only — you can see which tasks are already linked, but to add or remove links you need to click Edit (via the ellipsis menu or the Edit button on the General tab) and make changes from within the edit form. Once linked, any update to a task in the Tasks module automatically reflects here, so the meeting record always shows the current state of its action items.

The Documents tab works the same way. Link the policy or document that was discussed in the meeting so there is a clear, auditable connection between the record and the version of the policy that was in scope.

Reviewing the change history of a record

When an auditor wants to know who changed a record and when, click the clock icon in the top-right area of the Detail screen, just to the left of the ellipsis menu. This opens the Activity Log drawer — a panel that slides in from the right showing a timestamped list of every field change and status transition.

The drawer shows the previous and new values for each change, the name of the user who made it, and the exact date and time. You can scroll through the full history. To close it, click the × in the drawer header or click anywhere outside the panel.

Heads up: The Activity Log feature for Meetings & Activities is still being rolled out. If the clock icon does not appear for your records, this feature has not yet been enabled for this module in your instance. Contact your DPMS administrator for the current status.

Importing a batch of historical activity records

If you have activity records from a previous system or a DPMS export from another instance, you can bring them in using the Import option. On the index screen, click Create and then Import. Your operating system's file picker opens, filtered to .json files only.

Select the file and confirm. DPMS uploads the records and reloads the page — all imported entries appear in the list. To spot-check the result, click the XLSX export button to download the current list as a spreadsheet you can review offline.

Field reference

Name — The meeting's title. Required. Supports multiple languages if your DPMS is set up for them. This value appears as the record's heading throughout the system.
Type — A tag-based classification (e.g. "Workshop", "Training", "Committee Meeting"). Optional. Choose from the existing tag list or create a new type on the fly. Appears in the Type column on the index screen.
Participants — The people who attended or are expected to attend. Optional. Can include both DPMS users and external people who do not have accounts. Participants are for documentation only — they do not gain any additional system permissions.
Date / Time — The date and time of the meeting. Optional, but leaving it blank means the Date column on the index will appear empty. Hours and minutes are captured, not just the calendar date.
Meeting Notes — Free-text notes, agenda, or minutes. Optional. Supports multiple languages. Rendered in a formatted text viewer on the Detail screen.
Status — The lifecycle stage of the record: Draft, Active, Inactive, Review, or any custom statuses your organisation has configured. Set at creation and editable inline from the header bar on the Detail screen.
Responsible Person — The DPMS user(s) accountable for this record. Affects who can edit the record under restricted "own records" permissions. Different from Participants.

How this connects to the rest of DPMS

Meetings & Activities sits at a crossroads of several other modules. The Tasks you link from the Tasks tab are the same objects managed in the Tasks module — changes made there appear here automatically. The Documents you link from the Documents tab point to records in the Policies & Documents module, letting you trace which policy version was under discussion.

The Workflows tab connects this module to your organisation's formal approval process. If your organisation uses workflow templates (configured in Compliance Settings), you can attach a review-and-approval workflow to a meeting record. When a workflow is active, the record's Workflows tab gains a "Required Action" sub-tab showing the steps waiting for a response. Workflow notification emails and in-app alerts can deep-link a reviewer directly to that sub-tab, so they land exactly where they need to act.

After you finish setting up a record here, typical next steps are:

Link action-item tasks in the Tasks tab (edit mode) so owners can be tracked in the Tasks module.
Trigger an approval workflow from the Workflows tab if the record needs a reviewer's sign-off before it goes Active.
Export the list for inclusion in a compliance report.

Tips & common pitfalls

Tip: Set the Responsible Person and the Participants correctly from the start. These are two different fields with very different purposes. The Responsible Person drives edit permissions and determines which records appear in a user's "My Assigned" view. Participants is purely informational. Forgetting to set a Responsible Person means a colleague may not be able to edit the record.

Heads up: Status changes in the header bar save instantly with no confirmation dialog and no undo. If you accidentally select the wrong status, open the Activity Log to find the previous value, then set it back manually.

Search and status filters stack. If you type a search term and then click the Draft tab, DPMS applies both filters at once. This is useful for targeted queries ("all Draft activities mentioning GDPR"), but can look like "missing" records if you forget a filter is active.
Import only accepts DPMS-formatted JSON files. The import endpoint expects a file that was previously exported from DPMS. Converting an Excel sheet or a differently structured JSON file and uploading it will not work as expected — the upload may appear to succeed (the page reloads) but the records will not appear, with no detailed error message shown.
New activity types are created globally. When you create a new Type tag on the fly from the creation form, it becomes available to every user in your organisation. Agree on a standard taxonomy in Compliance Settings → Tags first to keep the Type dropdown consistent across teams.
The back link in the breadcrumb is context-sensitive. If you opened a Meetings & Activities record by clicking a linked-activities reference inside a Task, the breadcrumb back-link returns you to that Task — not to the Meetings & Activities index. This is by design, but it can be surprising. Click the bold "Meetings & Activities" text in the breadcrumb to always go back to the index.