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Manage members and roles

Members are the people in a governance body; their role is what Decidesk checks before letting them act. This page covers adding participants, assigning roles, and the details that affect votes — voting rights, party affiliation, proxies.

Goal​

By the end you will have a governance body whose members are set up with the right roles, so meeting scheduling, motion submission, vote operation, and minutes signing all land on the right people.

Prerequisites​

  • A governance body to add members to (see Configure a governance workflow).
  • Admin, or the chair of the body — both can manage that body's membership.
  • The list of people, their roles, and (if relevant) their party affiliations and voting rights.

Steps​

  1. Open the governance body and go to its Members tab. It lists the current members with their role; click Add member.

    Members tab on a governance body

  2. Add a participant — link a Nextcloud account (or record an external participant with a display name and email), set the role (chair, vice-chair, secretary, voting member, observer, …), and the party affiliation if the body tracks one. Save.

    Add member dialog

  3. Repeat for the rest of the body. The role each person holds is what the app enforces — only a chair opens and closes voting rounds, only a secretary drives the minutes lifecycle, observers see but don't vote.

    Members list with assigned roles

  4. Manage participants more broadly under Participants in the navigation — a person can sit on more than one body, each with its own role. The participant detail page shows their roles and an Audit trail of membership changes.

    Participants list

  5. For a meeting, the chair (or whoever has the right) confirms who is present; an absent voting member can have a proxy assigned for that meeting's votes, if the body allows proxies. Proxy limits and whether proxies are allowed at all come from the body's workflow.

    Meeting participants with a proxy assigned

Verification​

The body's Members tab lists everyone with the role you set, a chair can open a voting round (and a non-chair can't), a secretary can submit minutes for approval, and proxy assignments only stick where the body's workflow permits them. Membership changes show in the Audit trail.

Common issues​

SymptomFix
A member can't do something you expectedCheck their role on this body — rights are role-based and per-body, so a chair on one body is just a member on another.
Can't assign a proxyThe body must allow proxies, the proxy must be a present member of the meeting, and one member can hold only a limited number of proxies.
The same person appears twiceThey're a member of two bodies — that's expected; each membership is separate, with its own role.
External participant has no account linkThat's fine — Decidesk records external participants by display name and email; they just can't log in to act themselves.

Reference​