Running meetings in Nestr

Meetings are the heartbeat of self-organising teams. In Nestr, structured meetings help your team coordinate work, process tensions, and evolve your governance — all in a focused, time-boxed format.

This guide covers everything you need to run effective meetings in Nestr: circle (tactical) meetings, governance meetings, and role meetings.

Types of meetings

Nestr supports three types of meetings:

• Circle meetings (also called tactical meetings) — for operational coordination: project updates, checklist reviews, metrics, and processing tensions into concrete next actions.
• Governance meetings — for evolving your organisational structure: creating or modifying roles, circles, accountabilities, domains, and policies.
• Role meetings — for processing work within a specific role. This meeting type is optional and must be enabled by a workspace admin (see below).

How to start a meeting

Starting a circle or governance meeting

1. Navigate to the circle where you want to hold the meeting.
2. Click the Work tab, then select the Meetings sub-tab.
3. Click New circle meeting or New governance meeting from the actions menu.
4. A dialog will appear with a title field and an optional due date.
5. Click Start meeting to begin immediately.

It is also possible to start a meeting using the '+ Create' button in your navigation bar on the left.

1. Click the '+ Create' button
2. Click the Meeting option.
3. On the pop-up, select/change the circle you want to run the meeting in.
4. Select the type of meeting (structure/circle) you wish to start.
5. Click Start meeting.

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If your workspace has both circle and governance meetings enabled, you may see a meeting type selector with radio buttons to choose between them.

Scheduling a meeting for the future

Instead of starting a meeting immediately, you can schedule it for later:

1. In the new meeting dialog, set the due date to a future date and time.
2. The button label will change from "Start meeting" to Schedule meeting.
3. Click Schedule meeting to save it.

Scheduled meetings appear in your Meetings tab with a countdown showing "Meeting starts in..." and a Start meeting now link if you want to begin early. Team members can add agenda items to a scheduled meeting before it starts.

A meeting that repeats every week

Most circles do not schedule a tactical meeting once, they run one every week, and a governance meeting every month or quarter. Set the repeat on the meeting rather than creating a new one each time: open Dates & Schedule on the scheduled meeting and choose how often it comes back.

Nestr keeps the next occurrence ready, so there is always a meeting for people to add agenda items to, and each occurrence keeps its own agenda, attendance and minutes. Moving or cancelling one week asks whether you mean that occurrence or the whole series, so skipping a public holiday does not disturb the rest. See Recurring meetings and tasks.

Starting a role meeting

Role meetings are not enabled by default. A workspace admin can enable them by navigating to Workspace settings → Applications and toggling on role meetings. Once enabled, who can start, edit, or close meetings can be tuned per role on the Pro plan through rights management.

Once enabled:

1. Navigate to the role.
2. Click the Work tab, then Role meetings.
3. Click New role meeting.

Preparing agenda items before a meeting

You don't have to wait until the meeting starts to add agenda items. Nestr lets you prepare tensions (agenda items) in advance:

1. Navigate to the circle.
2. Click the Work tab, then the Meetings sub-tab.
3. Click Add agenda item from the actions menu.
4. In the dialog that appears:
   • Give your agenda item a short title in the "Name your agenda item in just a few words" field.
   • Optionally add detail in the "Describe your agenda item" field.
   • Choose the type: Circle meeting tension or Governance tension.
   • Select which role is sensing this tension.
5. Click Create agenda item.

Prepared tensions appear in a Prepared tensions list section below the agenda during an open meeting. You can add them to the active meeting by clicking Add to agenda, or remove them with Remove from agenda.

The meeting flow

Once a meeting is started, Nestr guides you through a structured set of tabs. Here's what each step covers:

Circle (tactical) meeting steps

1. ‍Check-in: A round-robin where each participant shares how they're arriving. Click a person's name to mark them present or absent.
2. ‍Checklists (if app enabled): Review recurring responsibilities tied to roles. Each role holder confirms whether checklist items were completed.
3. ‍Metrics (if app enabled): Review key performance indicators owned by specific roles in the circle.
4. ‍Projects: Review project status across the circle's roles. See what's current, waiting, or done.
5. ‍Process agenda: Process agenda items one by one. For each tension, capture outcomes: actions, projects, or governance proposals assigned to specific roles and people.
6. ‍Reflect: A closing round where participants share reflections on the meeting.
7. ‍Close meeting: Finalise the meeting. A report is saved and emailed to all participants.

Governance meeting steps

Governance meetings follow a similar structure but with a different processing step:

1. ‍Check-in: Same as circle meetings.
2. ‍Process agenda: Process governance proposals: create or modify roles, circles, accountabilities, domains, and policies or hold elections for electable roles. Includes clarifying questions, reactions, objections, and integration.
3. ‍Reflect: Closing round for reflections.
4. ‍Close meeting: Finalise and send the governance meeting report.

Adding agenda items

Anyone in the meeting can add agenda items to the meeting simply by typing in the 'Add an agenda item...' section in the left top. It will auto assign it to the user adding the agenda item. If there are prepared agenda items, you can simply drag them from the prepared list, onto the agenda to add them to the meeting. You can also open them from the prepared list, edit them if needed, and use the 'Add to agenda' button at the bottom to add them to the meeting agenda.

Assigning agenda items

If you are capturing for someone else (if you are the Secretary for example), you can simply use @name... in the agenda item to assign it to another user. You can also use the ... when you hover over the agenda item and choose the Assign

Removing agenda items

You can remove an agenda item simply by backspacing the title of the agenda item and remove it from the meeting or you can use the context menu found under the ... on the item to remove it.

Reordering agenda items

You can always drag the agenda items around to change the order in which they will be processed.

Processing agenda items during a meeting

The Process agenda tab is where the real work happens. For each agenda item:

1. The facilitator opens the tension.
2. The tension owner explains what they need.
3. Depending on your meeting process (Sociocratic, Holacratic or other) the agenda item is processed into operational or structural outcomes.
4. Use the Add outcome button to capture each outcome:
   • Choose a type: Action, Project, or a governance proposal type.
   • Assign it to a role (or select "Individual action" for personal actions).
   • Assign it to a specific user using the "Select User" dropdown.
   • Describe the outcome in the text field.
5. Move to the next agenda item. The agenda header will show your progress: "(X done, Y to go)".

Capturing notes on an agenda item

Outcomes cover actions, projects and proposals. Sometimes there is nothing to assign and you only want a record of what was discussed or decided. Agenda items are tensions, so you can give every agenda item its own notes field by adding one to the tension label. A workspace admin goes to Workspace settings → Labels, Fields & Tabs, selects the tension label, and adds a multiline text field or an HTML text field called Notes. From then on every agenda item carries it. The same approach works for anything else you want to record per item, such as a decision, a discussion owner or a follow-up date. See Custom fields.

Closing a meeting

When all agenda items are processed, click the Close meeting tab to finalise:

• A meeting report is automatically saved with all agenda items and their outcomes.
• An email summary is sent to all circle members.
• Unprocessed agenda items can be discarded or moved back to the prepared agenda items for the next meeting.

Note: If a meeting is left open for more than 8 hours without activity, Nestr will automatically close it and send the email report.

If a governance meeting removed a role, circle or policy, the report keeps it visible. Hover over the removed item to view it as it was just before removal. See governance lookback.

Downloading the minutes as a PDF

You can save any meeting as a PDF, before or after it is closed. Open the ... menu at the top of the meeting page and choose Download as PDF.

Nestr captures the meeting page as it appears on your screen, including the agenda, the outcomes for each item and your meeting notes, and saves it as a multi-page A4 file named after the meeting. Expand anything you want included before you download, because collapsed sections are captured collapsed. This gives you a copy of the minutes to file or share outside Nestr, alongside the report that is emailed on close.

Elections

Elections for governance roles (circle lead, facilitator, secretary, rep link) are handled as part of governance proposals. During a governance meeting, you can create a proposal with the election label to nominate and elect someone into a governance role. The election follows your workspace's configured governance process (Holacracy IDM, Sociocracy consent, etc.).

Meeting process customisation

You can change the available steps for your meeting by navigating to your Workspace settings -> Labels, fields & tabs. There you can select the Circle or Governance meeting label and change what tabs are visible or add custom tabs.

The same screen is where you add fields to meetings, agenda items and anything else in Nestr. See Custom fields.

Tips for effective meetings

• Prepare tensions in advance — Encourage your team to add agenda items before the meeting so everyone can see what's coming.
• Use the facilitator flow — The step-by-step tabs keep meetings structured and prevent tangents.
• Capture outcomes immediately — Assign every action or project to a specific role and person during the meeting, not after.
• Review checklists and metrics regularly — These recurring items build accountability over time.
• Keep it time-boxed — The tension review is designed to process items quickly. Each item should result in a clear next step.