The solution’s objective is to provide a Portal for the Town Hall Council Executive, giving full-support to meetings where important decisions take place. This solution seeks a greater agility in the decision-making process and the removal of all paper-supported documentation related with it.

Using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, ASP.NET, WF (Windows Workflow Foundation) and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 technologies, and the OpenXML standards, this solution makes all the proposal evaluation process more agile, from its creation and validation to its evaluation at the Town Hall Council. All the workflows are based in WF, and the related documents are created in standard OpenXML, which allows mapping all processes involved in the Council Meetings.

This solution comprises the following processes in Council Meetings:

• Meeting scheduling process.
• Proposal scheduling process.
• Agenda and attached documentation distribution process.
• Meeting attendance and ongoing process.
• Meeting ending process.
• Access to the meeting minutes through the Executive Portal’s webservices allows for integration with other systems.

All processes in this solution are supported by forms, which will be treated as workflows for all the participants.

In order to ensure the solution’s security, users have to login before accessing the system.

Meeting Scheduling Process:
Town Hall support services (Secretary services) schedule new appointments in the calendar, providing date, time, meeting number and meeting type (ordinary/extraordinary, public/non-public).

Agenda Items Scheduling Process:
Proposals are released to the Executive Portal with related documentation attached, and afterwards, are submitted to the Municipality Director for approval. Afterwards, the support services (Secretary Services) schedule the approved proposals and submit the meeting agenda for Mayor’s approval.

Agenda distribution and attached documentation process:
Support services (Secretary services) schedule the proposals approved by the Municipality Director and submit the meeting agenda to the Mayor for approval.
The agenda is distributed by e-mail to all the meeting participants (Mayor and Councilors), providing them access to the meeting items and related documents, after a successful authentication in the system.
Substitute town councilors, properly authenticated, can access the documentation. The entity that manages the meeting is responsible for their permissions.
After the agenda’s distribution, it is possible to schedule new items in the meeting, which will be classified as an Addendum and order by Addendum I, Addendum II, Addendum III, and so on.

Meeting attendance and ongoing process:
Support services (Secretary Services) mark the beginning of the meeting in the system, checking immediately all the previously registered participants (Executive Members) and citizens (if the meeting is extended to the public). This procedure ensures that only the Executive Members present at the meeting, can participate in all its activities, especially consulting and voting for the agenda items. While the meeting is in progress, it’s possible to introduce new proposals (extra items to the agenda) and unfold the agenda items to sub items.

Meeting Ending Process:
At this stage, the support services (Secretary Services) mark the meeting’s end in the system, not allowing more changes to the data. Once the meeting is closed, it is possible to automatically generate the meeting minutes, which gathers all the information related to deliberations and other actions, such as agenda items, addenda and agenda extra items in the meeting. The minutes are then submitted to the Mayor and the other Executive Members who were present during the meeting. Once approved, it is possible to consume it by web service.

Document availability for later distribution in the City Council:
All the documents intended to be sent to the City Council will be stored in a proper document library. Afterwards, they will be processed by the administration services.

Access to the meeting minutes through the Executive Portal’s webservices allows for integration with other systems:
This is a native Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 webservice and it will allow access to the meeting minutes file, so it can be consumed by other systems in the Town Hall.
Note: consult the following link for more information about web services.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480728.aspx#wsmsplat_topic2