granicus-archiver documentation¶

What is this?¶

granicus-archiver is a tool for users of the Granicus and Legistar platforms for Government meeting management. It provides a way to archive meeting data locally for backup purposes or other uses.

The archived content for each meeting may include:

Agenda (PDF)
Agenda Packet (PDF)
Minutes (PDF)
Video (MP4)
Audio (MP3)
Video timestamps (WebVTT)

Data for all items will be stored in human-readable JSON format with the local filenames and URLs for each meeeting as well as the following metadata:

Meeting date
Meeting title
Meeting location

For Legistar Items, the following additional metadata will be included:

Agenda Status (e.g. “Final”, “Draft”, etc.)
Minutes Status (e.g. “Final”, “Draft”, etc.)

How do I use it?¶

The tool was written in Python and must be run from the command line, so familiartiy with both is recommended. See the Installation documentation for more information on how to install the tool.

Some initial setup is required within Granicus beforehand which will require a user with administrative permissions. See the documentation for Granicus Setup and Legistar Setup for more information on this.

If you have many years of data (especially video) to archive, it is recommended to run the tool on a machine with a fast internet connection and plenty of disk space. For example, with around 7-10 years of data, you may need 1-2 TB of disk space.

Tip

External SSD’s are pretty inexpensive and can be a good option, not only for speed and portability, but for their longevity and shelf-life.

Other Features¶

Google Drive Integration: The tool can upload the archived content to Google Drive for backup purposes. This is useful for both redundancy and for sharing the data with others.
AWS S3 Integration: The tool can upload the archived content to an AWS S3 bucket. This can be used for redundancy as well as serving the data to a website or other application.
Web Interface: There is a built-in web application that allows you to view the archived content in a browser. This is useful for quickly finding and viewing content without having to navigate the file system.