Creating meetings

• Creating a new meeting
• Sending a meeting appointment with Outlook
• Creating a follow-up appointment
• Create multiple follow-up appointments
• Procedure for recurring meetings
• Troubleshooting appointment invitations for the Mac mail program

Create a new meeting

A new meeting can be created directly in the project under meetings or via the menu navigation. In the session creation form, you can now enter the general session information, define the organization, add the participants and edit the options.

The following information can be filled out in the session creation form:

1. A title can be entered here and the categories for the meeting can be selected. The categories Categories are used for thematic categorization and filtering.
2. A Meeting type is selected in the general information and the date, time, duration of the meeting, location and room are specified. The meeting type is used to classify the meeting (e.g. Planner meeting) and controls stored agenda items and minutes templates.
3. The Meeting organizer and, if necessary, other organizers are defined under Organization. Persons who are entered here can administer the meeting and edit meeting information.
4. The participants of the meeting are selected under Participants. Excused participants are only added shortly before the execution in order to keep the attendance list. The additional distribution list is used for people who are to receive the final protocol for information purposes but do not attend the meeting. Contact groups or entire teams can be used to quickly select participants.
5. The meeting can be defined as a target date (milestone) and thus appears as a milestone in the Task planning.

The following image shows a completed example session.

Create meeting, create agenda, create meeting

Sending a meeting appointment with Outlook

After saving, the meeting date can be linked to Outlook or another calendar program. As a result, the participants receive a calendar invitation and the appointment is entered in the calendar.

The appointment can also be sent retrospectively via the meeting options.

There are two options available. You can either download the appointment file or send the appointment directly via Outlook Online. Downloading the appointment file is particularly suitable if it is to be sent via a local calendar program such as the classic Outlook or MacOS calendar. With both options, changes to the title, date, time and participant list are automatically applied.

If the appointment file is downloaded, it can be opened or imported in the desired calendar program.

After opening, the appointment is displayed in Outlook. It can be customized and sent. The invitation text contains the project title of the respective meeting.

Calendar invitation, calendar synchronization, Outlook appointments

Create a follow-up appointment

By creating a follow-up appointment, existing meeting information such as title, categories, meeting type, participants, etc. Can be transferred, saving time and ensuring continuity of content. To do this, open the meeting from which a follow-up appointment is to be derived. The role is then selected in the options.

Only the date and time need to be added or adjusted in the new meeting date. The numbering in the session title is continued automatically.

Create multiple follow-up appointments

Several follow-up appointments can also be created at the same time. To do this, open the follow-up appointment options in the session options. Both the desired time interval and the number of follow-up appointments can be defined there. A maximum of 10 follow-up appointments can be created at once.

Once created, all appointments open in the window navigation. The individual meetings can be edited there again if necessary. Each appointment can then be deleted with Outlook linked.

Series dates, follow-up dates

Procedure for recurring meetings

You cannot create recurring appointments in buildagil as you can in Outlook. If the appointment series are to be managed in Outlook anyway, the following procedure is recommended for recurring meetings. First, the appointment series is created in Outlook. This serves as a time blocker in the calendar for the participants. Then a new meeting is created in Buildagil as the basis for the series. The required follow-up appointments can now be created using the role "Create follow-up appointment". These meetings do not contain any content for the time being and only the organizer is entered as a participant. As soon as a meeting is scheduled, the actual participants and the Meeting contents can be added. The meeting can then be sent to the participants via "Inform participants". This procedure enables flexible content planning with simultaneous calendar synchronization via Outlook.

Series meeting, calendar blocker, content variants, participation series, Outlook series, series management

Troubleshooting appointment invitations for the Mac mail program

When using the Mac mail program, it can happen that appointment invitations are received as "winmail.dat" instead of an ".ics file". This file cannot be read in the Mac mail program and cannot be opened as a calendar invitation. The cause usually lies in the configuration of the sender's or recipient's mail server.

The following solutions can help:

• Change the mail format in Outlook to "HTML" or "Text only"
• Check whether the appointment arrives correctly for another Mac user in the same company
• Send the invitation to an Outlook account on the Mac as a test
• Check the settings of the Mail app on the Mac

Updated on: 19/09/2025