Diligent Boards Software for Board Governance Training Course

Course overview

Board and governance teams must deliver secure, accurate meeting materials while giving directors enough time and context to make defensible decisions. When agendas, board books, late papers, annotations, approvals and minutes are managed through email or shared drives, version control weakens, sensitive information can be exposed, and the audit trail is difficult to reconstruct. This course addresses the practical operating challenge of configuring and using Diligent Boards to support disciplined board and committee governance.

Participants work through the Diligent Boards workflow from administrator and director perspectives. They learn to structure entities, groups and committees; build meeting calendars and agendas; assemble, publish and update board books; set permissions; manage secure distribution; support director annotations and voting; and record decisions, actions and meeting minutes. The course also covers governance controls for confidential material, retention, access reviews and reporting, connecting platform activity to sound governance practice.

Instruction combines live platform demonstrations with guided configuration labs, board-meeting scenarios and peer review of governance records. Participants complete a simulated committee cycle: they create a meeting workspace, produce a controlled board pack, manage a late-paper update, capture resolutions and actions, and prepare an operating checklist for their own organisation. They leave with a completed Diligent Boards governance workflow pack, including a meeting setup template, permissions matrix, publication checklist and post-meeting action-tracking process.

The course suits governance professionals, board administrators, company secretarial teams and executives who own the quality, security or timeliness of board information. It is equally valuable for managers sponsoring a Diligent Boards rollout or seeking consistent use of an existing implementation across boards and committees.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Configure Diligent Boards entities, groups, committees and user roles for a defined governance structure
• Build a board meeting calendar and agenda using Diligent Boards meeting-management features
• Assemble and publish a version-controlled board book with sections, documents and late-paper updates
• Apply role-based permissions and distribution controls to confidential board and committee materials
• Guide directors in using secure annotations, bookmarks, document search and meeting voting features
• Create a decisions, resolutions and action log from meeting records and assigned owners
• Produce a permissions matrix and publication checklist for a repeatable board-pack process
• Assess Diligent Boards operating controls against ISO 37000 governance principles and internal policy requirements

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Company Secretaries — who coordinate board governance and need reliable meeting and record-management controls
• Board Administrators — who assemble agendas, distribute board packs and support directors before and during meetings
• Governance Managers — who need consistent committee workflows, access controls and evidence of good practice
• General Counsel and Legal Operations Managers — who protect privileged board information and oversee formal resolutions
• Executive Assistants to Boards and CEOs — who manage high-sensitivity meeting logistics and last-minute paper changes
• Board Portal Administrators — who configure users, permissions and meeting workspaces in Diligent Boards

Requirements and prerequisites

This is a foundation-to-intermediate course. Participants should understand the basic purpose of a board, board committee, agenda, board paper, meeting minutes and action register, and should be comfortable using a web browser, PDF documents and spreadsheet-style lists. Experience supporting board or committee meetings is helpful but not essential. No prior Diligent Boards configuration experience, coding knowledge or technical administration qualification is required. Complete beginners should expect to learn the vocabulary and operating sequence of a secure board-meeting cycle before progressing to hands-on portal configuration and governance-control exercises.

Training methodology

The instructor uses a realistic board-secretariat scenario to demonstrate each Diligent Boards workflow, then participants complete the same task in guided labs. Exercises include configuring committee access, constructing an agenda, assembling a restricted board book, processing a late paper and converting discussion outcomes into resolutions and assigned actions. Short case discussions examine confidentiality failures, missing audit trails and poorly controlled meeting records. Teams review each other’s permissions matrices and publication checklists, then finish with an individual implementation plan for their own board or committee environment.

Course outline

Day 1: Board governance workflows and Diligent Boards foundations

• Board and committee information lifecycle from paper request to approved record
• Diligent Boards navigation for administrators and directors
• Entities, groups and committee workspace structure
• User profiles, roles and role-based access concepts
• Governance responsibilities of the company secretary, chair and board administrator
• ISO 37000 principles relevant to governing body information and oversight
• Board portal operating model, naming conventions and workspace standards

Workshop: Participants map a sample governance structure and configure entities, committees, users and basic roles for a simulated organisation.

Day 2: Meeting setup, agendas and board-book production

• Meeting calendar creation and recurring meeting setup
• Agenda architecture aligned to board decisions, reports and consent items
• Agenda item ownership, sequencing and paper deadlines
• Board-book sections, document upload and PDF preparation
• Document ordering, labelling and board-pack navigation
• Version control and controlled replacement of meeting papers
• Publication status checks and pre-release quality assurance

Workshop: Participants build a complete audit committee agenda and assemble a structured board book from a supplied set of reports and decision papers.

Day 3: Security, confidentiality and director collaboration

• Permissions matrix design for directors, executives, observers and administrators
• Secure access controls for confidential and committee-specific documents
• Director annotations, bookmarks and personal meeting preparation
• Document search and navigation across published board materials
• Late-paper workflow, notification discipline and replacement controls
• Secure messaging practices and separation from informal email distribution
• Access review, user offboarding and evidence for audit review

Workshop: Participants resolve a confidentiality case by creating a permissions matrix, publishing restricted papers and processing a controlled late-paper update.

Day 4: Decisions, voting, minutes and action accountability

• Resolution wording and decision-record requirements
• Using meeting voting features for formal board and committee decisions
• Capturing discussion outcomes, approvals and dissent where required
• Minutes drafting workflow and linkage to agenda items
• Action log design with owners, due dates and status fields
• Post-meeting distribution, approval and record-finalisation controls
• Reporting overdue actions and unresolved governance matters

Workshop: Using a simulated committee meeting, participants record resolutions, create actions, draft a minutes extract and produce an action-status report.

Day 5: Operational governance and implementation planning

• End-to-end Diligent Boards operating procedure design
• Board-pack production calendar and service-level milestones
• Administrator quality-control checklist and exception handling
• Director onboarding and adoption support plan
• Data retention, records management and internal policy alignment
• Usage review metrics, access-control testing and continuous improvement
• Implementation roadmap for a board, subsidiary board or committee rollout

Workshop: Participants present a Diligent Boards governance workflow pack containing their meeting template, permissions matrix, publication checklist and 90-day implementation plan.

Tools & standards covered

Diligent Boards, Microsoft Excel, Adobe Acrobat, ISO 37000

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions