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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62467

  • SteveTheTechie
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I wanted to start a new discussion about the printed agenda. As I have pretty well fleshed out the updated Agenda Email functionality, it is appropriate to shift attention to the printed agenda. My intention has always been to add features and functionality for the printed agenda feature. In the short run, though I chose to work on the emailed agenda first because I felt that it had more potential to gain greater benefits in a short time frame. As I am starting to see that clubs are noticing the benefits of that update, I think we can shift attention to the printed agenda.

Let's face it. Many people have strong opinions about the printed agenda feature. There have been a number of times when I made a small change to the template, and got lots of "irritated posts".

Because of that, I thought it would be best to solicit input on changes to this feature. Please read on...
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Steve James, DTM
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62468

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Here is what I am thinking...

1. The printed agenda really starts as a template file on the server that gets filled in with agenda rows and other information, then is dumped to the screen. HTML really does not support many printing features, but there are more print-specific features that can be supported in the template. (such as margins and maybe font scaling.)

2. Because the template is a file, I can create additional templates that just add to a drop-down for you to choose from. At the current time, my thoughts are "FTH Standard" and "TM Recommended"... the second being a template that is closer in design to the agenda layout that TM touts. Keep in mind our standard template has been approved by TM Intl.

The TM Recommended would require a sidebar panel on the left side be added containing officer information. However, as we also support a meeting description at the top, I would need to alter their layout to accommodate that.

3. I would basically copy many of the options from the Email Agenda feature to allow selecting them for the printed agenda also. Role Times, Member Photos, Role Descriptions, Attending, Not Attending, Meeting Notes, etc. would be options. These options would be saved on your computer so you do not have to re-select them each time.

4. We would need a way to save the current selections as a website default. Reason: The printed agenda can be activated by a link... and I want to continue to support that. Given that a link will not likely have all the options included (could though) we need a way to support the link via default options somehow. Note that this is different than how the Email Agenda feature works since we do not email agendas from a link. (and I would not want that)

5. At some point in the future, we may want to be able save the printed agenda directly to a PDF file... (kind of complicated) For now, you can just use one of the PDF printer tools that are freely available on the web.

Those are my thoughts.... This is where you all chime in... :)
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Steve James, DTM
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Last edit: by SteveTheTechie.
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62469

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Variable font size

reduction in spaces, especially in the Speech area

remember the more options to give them the more they will want.

Thank you,

Brian McDonald DTM, PDD D61
FTH Lead Technical Support
member Cataraqui Valley Toastmaster 9560
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62474

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I agree...
#1 Reduction in spaces, especially in the Speech area (go back to the way in used to be in the speech area)

#2Variable font size
Thank You

Sunshine, ACG, ALB

Castro Valley Toastmasters
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62478

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A tough problem with lots of variables...thanks for digging into it!

Love the direction of adding the "TM Recommended" sidebar with officer info, etc, and I hear you about the scaling and formatting complications that will arise. But it's a worthy cause, to add the formal look of the TM agenda to the ease, functionality, and record-keeping of FTH.
Matt Benedict, CC, CL
Member #03844283
Pinnacle Toastmasters Club #2227960
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62482

  • tund3r
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Hi,
I agree with the reduction of spaces, especially when someone input all the data, I think Title: and the title of the speech, and Project with the name of the project should go on the same line, otherwise, it adds 4 lines every speaker

ex:
Project: Competent Communicator #1 (4-6)
Title: My vacation

or something like this

Also, I would really love the possibility to move the speakers, sometimes they sign up in the spot that is free but we need them to speak in a different order and if they have already put all the information about their speech it's tedious from the admin since we need to move them and after reinsert all the information.
Andrea Dalle Molle
VPE Miami Beach Toastmasters
Club: 1293723
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62483

  • SteveTheTechie
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Also, I would really love the possibility to move the speakers, sometimes they sign up in the spot that is free but we need them to speak in a different order and if they have already put all the information about their speech it's tedious from the admin since we need to move them and after reinsert all the information.


Could you please put this in an improvement suggestion in that forum... You can reorder them now via the agenda editor (drag and drop), but the piece that is missing is the re-numbering part.
Regards,

Steve James, DTM
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Last edit: by SteveTheTechie.
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62484

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I started to mock something up a few months ago on my development website (this does not function yet):



We would need some spots to address scaling and other print options, etc.
Regards,

Steve James, DTM
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Officer Emeritus, Mindful Communicators (Club 1966, District 52) A President's Distinguished Club for each of the last 10 years.

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Attachments:
Last edit: by SteveTheTechie.
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62486

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Oh nevermind then, I never thought of using it after publishing the agenda ... i feel dumb :P

The renumbering is not that necessary but definitively useful, I'm sure someone will get confused, especially the evaluators on who they need to evaluate
Andrea Dalle Molle
VPE Miami Beach Toastmasters
Club: 1293723
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62488

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A tough problem with lots of variables...thanks for digging into it!

Love the direction of adding the "TM Recommended" sidebar with officer info, etc, and I hear you about the scaling and formatting complications that will arise. But it's a worthy cause, to add the formal look of the TM agenda to the ease, functionality, and record-keeping of FTH.


The challenge of doing the TM Recommended version is just one of available horizontal space to put things. Essentially, we would have to squeeze everything down that we currently have in a full width page to accommodate the width of the sidebar. To do that, we either have to use a smaller font (hence the need for font scaling) or we end up creating a longer agenda that might spill onto additional printed pages.

So, while this layout is doable, there are caveats. This is why I think we will need to still keep the existing agenda layout... we will just add layouts and let clubs choose what they want to use.
Regards,

Steve James, DTM
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Last edit: by SteveTheTechie.
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62492

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Love the ideas presented so far.

My thoughts:
  • It would be useful to have the speech title rather than Speaker #1 as the title for a speech
  • The information for each speech is useful but takes up too much space. It would be good to see Speech Title (Project details/manual)
  • There are some parts of the meeting that serve as groups - introductions, speeches, table topics, evaluations are examples. Allow them to be grouped and moved as a group and made collapsible/expandable.
  • When I choose my manual speech, adjust the time automatically. This should be able to be turned on or off as an option for the whole agenda
  • Allow agenda items to be added between existing items rather than added then moved
  • Allow duplication of an existing agenda from the admin pages
  • Allow creation of custom agenda files to be uploaded. Provide field names to incorporate OR give us a WYSIWYG online editor
  • Some clubs use agendas to prompt roles what to do. I'm not sure how to handle this and I thought it might be nice to be able to print additional info on page 2 (AKA the back of a double-sided print)
  • Times are really important for tracking. A start time for each item and the number of minutes it runs for should always be included and this should work for groups too (see above)
  • For complete customisation please provide a Word template that can be modified and used with some sort of export option

That's my shopping list. I might think of other things so do these quickly and close this out B)
Last edit: by deedubbleyoo.
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62493

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deedubbleyoo, thanks!

Some of your ideas, while good, are not related to the agenda print out, which is the topic of this thread.. While I certainly do now want to kill off contributions, I do want to keep this thread focused on the printout. Could you post Improvement suggestions (in that forum section) for the ones that are not really related to the *printed* agenda? (see my comments below) Thanks! -Steve

Love the ideas presented so far.

My thoughts:
  • It would be useful to have the speech title rather than Speaker #1 as the title for a speech I do not understand this
  • The information for each speech is useful but takes up too much space. It would be good to see Speech Title (Project details/manual) Thx!
  • There are some parts of the meeting that serve as groups - introductions, speeches, table topics, evaluations are examples. Allow them to be grouped and moved as a group and made collapsible/expandable. This is good, but it needs to be set up in the agenda editor, not the printout--I was thinking of outline levels.... again needs to be handled in the agenda editor
  • When I choose my manual speech, adjust the time automatically. This should be able to be turned on or off as an option for the whole agenda Good, but not related to the printout
  • Allow agenda items to be added between existing items rather than added then moved Ok, but not related to the printout
  • Allow duplication of an existing agenda from the admin pages Not related to the printed agenda
  • Allow creation of custom agenda files to be uploaded. Provide field names to incorporate OR give us a WYSIWYG online editor Declined... would not be widely used and overly complicated for the resulting benefit
  • Some clubs use agendas to prompt roles what to do. I'm not sure how to handle this and I thought it might be nice to be able to print additional info on page 2 (AKA the back of a double-sided print) Double sided printout is controlled by your browser and printer, not by FTH
  • Times are really important for tracking. A start time for each item and the number of minutes it runs for should always be included and this should work for groups too (see above) Ok, thanks! This could maybe be an option, but groups not related to the printed agenda... they have to be set up in editor..
  • For complete customisation please provide a Word template that can be modified and used with some sort of export option Well, I could output the agenda as a word doc maybe, but not doing template... not going crazy w/ stuff that only a few clubs would use.

That's my shopping list. I might think of other things so do these quickly and close this out B)

Regards,

Steve James, DTM
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Officer Emeritus, Mindful Communicators (Club 1966, District 52) A President's Distinguished Club for each of the last 10 years.

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Last edit: by SteveTheTechie.
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62499

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I have put a lot of work in to making an agenda printable in a specific template and can help with this .
It is also important to be able to print out the speakers information and introduction entered on a separate paper for each meeting just for the Toastmaster to use to introduce speakers .
XSLT is a useful tool to format data into a specific template, if each club had its own XSLT it would be trivial to print to their own agenda format.
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62502

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My club prints the member photos on the agenda. The cell size seems to be twice the width of the photo. If the cell size was narrower there would be more room for the role descriptions.

The margins seem very wide on A4 paper. Can the printing be adjusted to suit paper size?
Pam Holley, DTM
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Redlands Toastmasters Club, Secretary 2023-2024 redlands.toastmastersclubs.org/
HOT, President 2023-2024 hot.toastmastersclubs.org
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62503

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My club prints the member photos on the agenda. The cell size seems to be twice the width of the photo. If the cell size was narrower there would be more room for the role descriptions.

The margins seem very wide on A4 paper. Can the printing be adjusted to suit paper size?


I think the content width is currently set as a fixed size. If it were instead set as 100% of the available width with the margins set (vs the content width) it would adjust for page width.
Regards,

Steve James, DTM
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62505

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It would be useful to have the speech title rather than, say, Speaker #1 as the title for a speech, or whatever is entered as the item on the agenda as the title for the speech slot.

Some clubs use agendas to prompt roles what to do. I'm not sure how to handle this and I thought it might be nice to be able to print additional info on page 2 (AKA the back of a double-sided print). Could we have an option to include role descriptions on the end of the printed agenda, or on a separate page?
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62509

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It would be useful to have the speech title rather than, say, Speaker #1 as the title for a speech, or whatever is entered as the item on the agenda as the title for the speech slot.


Speaker #1 is required for the role reports / history, but I like the idea of adding the speech title to the role title line - that would save some space, e.g: Speaker #1 - My First Speech
Pam Holley, DTM
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62513

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I would keep the options simple. The most important features in my opinion should be:
  • Variable font size;
  • Variable line spacing (i.e. space between agenda items).

Also, the speech area should be reworked. My suggestion is to put the speech title directly underneath the header (e.g. "Speaker #1"), followed by the speech manual, project, and time, as follow:

Speaker #1
My First Speech
COMPETENT COMMUNICATION
1 - Icebreaker (4-6 min)


For clarity, get rid of any text that is not truly useful (e.g. "Speech Title:", "Manual / Speech / Time") and keep line spacing tight.

I like the recent improvements to the agenda features so far. Keep up the good work!
Daniel Riendeau
Kanata, Ontario

West End Toastmasters (#7751)
wetm.toastmastersclubs.org

Kanata Francophone (#5146515)
kanatafrancophone.toastmastersclubs.org
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Last edit: by driendea. Reason: Formatting changes. Never use tables in forums.
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62514

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since the format, in the end, is an html template, is it possible to enable a club to upload his template? we can have "default" "tm recomanded" "custom".
Andrea Dalle Molle
VPE Miami Beach Toastmasters
Club: 1293723
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62517

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since the format, in the end, is an html template, is it possible to enable a club to upload his template? we can have "default" "tm recomanded" "custom".


I may support that in the future, but I am not going to do that in this update. Can you please post that as improvement suggestion so that it does not get lost?

There are a lot of other areas in the system that I want to invest some time, so I have to adhere to a sort of "time budget" for each area. All the things that have been suggested above would fit well within my "budget". (most are just template tweaks and options)
Regards,

Steve James, DTM
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Last edit: by SteveTheTechie.
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62518

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So for those of you who are also "techies", the current print agenda template is attached, plus an updated one that I have been working on for a while to add enhanced printing styles support.

As you can see, it is a very basic template with a lot of fill-ins (the {{...}} ). The key fill-in is {{agendarows}} ... that is the "guts" of the agenda that is generated and filled-in by the server code.

My plan is to define more classes in the style block and reference those in the agenda rows.

BTW, the code that generates {{agendarows}} is the exact same function used for the sign-up screen and the agenda email. They are all 3 column layouts with some minor (in most cases) differences handled by the code depending on the specific "view" (MVC parlance). So I am not inclined to make huge layout changes in the agenda rows that would also impact the other views (like going to a 4 column layout).

{{attending}} and {{notattending}} will be added to the template to support those options when selected.
Regards,

Steve James, DTM
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62536

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My clubs would like to see the amount of allocated time included on the agenda e.g. instead of
6.45pm Speaker #1
6.53pm Speaker #2
we would like to see
6.45pm Speaker #1 5-7 minutes (as per the manual speech selected)
6.53pm Speaker #2 8-10 minutes (as per the manual speech selected)
We always allow a buffer of 1 minute for the Toastmaster to complete introductions e.g. for a 5-7 minute speech project, I allow 9 minutes but would love the 5 - 7 minutes to appear on the agenda as guidance for the timer.
Thank you for considering this request.
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62550

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Please don't require the speech information to be on the agenda, it won't fit on a single page and so many users don't have the ability to print dual sided.
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62563

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"Please don't require the speech information to be on the agenda, it won't fit on a single page and so many users don't have the ability to print dual sided."

Our club has been using two-sided agendas for years. Can't those printing the agenda simply print page one first and then re-insert the paper to print the second side? I've had success doing this with 3 or 4 different printers over the years.
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DESIGN DISCUSSION: Printed Agenda Feature 6 years 11 months ago #62564

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Yes they could do that - but they don't - removing the requirement makes the agenda fit on a single page & we read the objectives as part of the intro - so it isn't needed, thus the suggestion to make them optional
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