What is the Shared Governance Document Library?
The Shared Governance Document Library in SharePoint is a centralized repository for meeting agendas, minutes, motions and other official records maintained by UWRF shared governance groups. This KB article includes instructions and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for use and maintenance of the document library.
Shared Governance Document Management
University shared governance bodies are expected to post all meeting agendas, minutes and other official documents, such as motions and resolutions, to the Shared Governance SharePoint Document Repository. Starting November 2026, new materials should no longer be stored on or shared from the T: drive.
Annual Access Request Process
- Each August, the designated leader of every shared governance body and subcommittee needs to submit a DoTS service request identifying the individuals responsible for posting documents to the Shared Governance SharePoint Document Repository. DoTS will review the request and grant the appropriate access permissions to the listed individuals.
Posting Documents
- Once access has been approved, DoTS will share this KB article for instructions and how-to information.
Technical Support
- DoTS will provide technical assistance and support to users who require additional help as well as one-on-one training. There is also a recorded video training of how to use this repository available to view on demand.
This process ensures that shared governance documents are stored in a centralized, secure and accessible location for the University community.
Link Meeting Agenda, Minutes, & add Additional Supporting Documents
- Visit the related SharePoint Shared Governance Web Page
- Choose the appropriate list that will host the link to the posted document and click "new" (upper right corner)
- Examples of formatting each field:
Title : 8-10-2026
Meeting Date: Select from widget
Agendas: Add URL that was saved, Add title to include the month day name
Minutes: Add URL that was saved, Add title to include the month day name
Status: "Current" (each of these should be changes to "Archive" in July of each year. See "Annual Review and Maintenance" section)
Academic years: 2026-2027
Include attachments if applicable (if they are not included in the agenda or minutes PDF document)
- Close the dialog box.
Corrections and Edits
In the meeting list, click the title of the meeting in the title column and edit the fields accordingly.
Annual Review and Maintenance
Upon a new academic year, a member of the respective shared governance group, likely the secretary, should change the status of each of the previous years entries to "archive" under the status field (Reference: Corrections and Edits.). The links will then be listed in the archive section.
Search Best Practices:
- Use the search bar at the top of Shared Governance site to search for your content. Once you've searched, you can use filters to further refine and reduce your results (for example, if you only wanted PDF documents, or wanted to search for documents uploaded/modified within a specific time frame (click the below image to expand):
1) This “File Type” filter allows you to quickly filter out incorrect file types. For example, if you’re looking for a presentation, you can filter to “PowerPoint”, which will greatly reduce your search results.
2) This “Last Modified” filter allows you to filter to a range of dates (either specific dates, or a period relative to today, such as “Past 3 months”) to filter your list on. If the document you’re looking for is recent OR if you’re very confident that a document has not been touched since its upload and you know that date, this is a great way to filter out other possibilities. However, note that this filters on “Last Modified”, NOT “Date Uploaded”. If a file is uploaded on one date, then modified later by anybody, the second date is what will be filtered by. Thus it is not a perfect date-based filter and use caution, as you may accidentally filter out your desired document.
3) This allows you to sort by one of four options: Relevance (the default option), Date Modified (newest to oldest), Date Created (newest to oldest), and Date Created (oldest to newest). This is a great tool for getting the sought documents to the top. If you know a unique detail about your document, search for that detail and keep this to “Relevance”. If you know it was recently updated, search what you know and use “Date modified (newest)”. If you know it’s a very recently-created document, use “Date created (newest)”. And if you need an old document – maybe you want to find the first time an initiative was mentioned – use “Date created (oldest)”.
4) This top filter is used mostly when searching for things other than documents. If you’re searching for something different, click the relevant option here. If you’re searching for a document, you can hit “Files” here, but it likely won’t have a large impact on your results.
For more advanced searches, additional capabilities are available:
- If you are searching for an exact phrase (either in a document or in a document title), enclose your search term in quotes for an exact match (e.g "committee members")
- Boolean operators: you can use AND/OR to search documents that match multiple criteria (e.g committee OR board, committee AND board)
- Title search: If you know your search term is in the title of a document, you can use a title search: title:Committee minutes (this can be combined with quotes to exact match the title of a document)
- You can combine various combinations of the above to optimize your search further (e.g "committee" title: agenda OR title: minutes)