TOPIC:

As an incoming VPE, I'm aiming to move our club from workbooks to an online meeting / agenda management. I've used Easy-Speak ("ES") in other clubs as the VPE but would like to know if FTH can also do some of the things I'd want in the system. I tried to read through support articles, this forum and find videos but have still some questions.

1) Are the club members able to indicate in their response / enrolment to a meeting whether they'll be attending in-person or online (Zoom)?
2) Are we able to cap the number of members signing up to the venue, i.e. attending in-person? Once the venue capacity has been exhausted, all subsequent sign ups are forced to online attendance.
3) Can the VPE easily see how long has it been since a member has last performed a meeting role? ES has this very handily available in the name list drop-down and I use it heavily to ensure the role allocations are well balanced over time. The data point drives the automated role allocation in ES but I allocate the roles manually using the data to influence the work.
4) Can FTH send the mentors an automatic message whenever a member chooses a meeting role or the VPE allocates them a role?
5) With members who belong to multiple clubs, do they have a centralised view to their progress and past roles across clubs? Are the VPE's able to see the the speeches given across clubs?
6) If a member delivers a speech somewhere else, can that be added to their records in FTH?
7) Can guests create accounts and sign up to meetings? Or, if they already have an account in FTH, can I (or VPM/VPPR) add them to our club as guests?

I really like the idea of having a consolidated club management system & website. FTH has lots of functionality which we could use in addition to a webpage which we currently have. Besides, FTH seems to provide a more pleasing user interface which a great bonus, especially for non-tech-savvy members.

FTH is club concentric, member's information does not cross clubs.

The only valid source of a members progress is the Toastmasters International Pathways system we do not try and duplicate its functionality.

Guests are not club members and because of privacy laws cannot access any of the club area where members names or information published by FTH is available. If a club publishes that information in the public that is up to them.

The number of times a member holds a role is available beside their name in the agenda assignment pull down.

Any suggestions you have as far as how FTH works please submit in the Suggestion forum.

Also read the documentation
support.toastmastersclubs.org/doc/documentation-index

tdimdad wrote:

As an incoming VPE, I'm aiming to move our club from workbooks to an online meeting / agenda management. I've used Easy-Speak ("ES") in other clubs as the VPE but would like to know if FTH can also do some of the things I'd want in the system. I tried to read through support articles, this forum and find videos but have still some questions.

Welcome to FreeToastHost (FTH)! We do not try to be like "Queasy-Speak"... we try to be like FreeToastHost. We have our own ethos and philosophy. We certainly have room for improvement, but we are not trying to be like anyone else. Additionally, we are interested in our users input and feedback... I take that into account (& other things) when I create system updates.

tdimdad wrote:

1) Are the club members able to indicate in their response / enrolment to a meeting whether they'll be attending in-person or online (Zoom)?

Not at this time. There is some ongoing discussion around that in these forums. It is likely something I will implement at some point when I am satisfied that I have all the relevant issues sorted out in my head. This is much more involved than you might think because it gets into the whole way attendance tracking is integrated throughout FTH.

tdimdad wrote:

2) Are we able to cap the number of members signing up to the venue, i.e. attending in-person? Once the venue capacity has been exhausted, all subsequent sign ups are forced to online attendance

Not at this time. I suggest you create an improvement suggestion for this... if there is enough interest from other users/clubs, then I will look for a good way to build it into the system. There are a lot of practical logistics issues that would have to be sorted out with something like this.

tdimdad wrote:

3) Can the VPE easily see how long has it been since a member has last performed a meeting role? ES has this very handily available in the name list drop-down and I use it heavily to ensure the role allocations are well balanced over time. The data point drives the automated role allocation in ES but I allocate the roles manually using the data to influence the work.

As Brian notes, this type of information is available in the drop downs. Additionally, there is a more detailed pop-up report available (in the tool tips) when you hover the mouse over a name in the drop-downs.

tdimdad wrote:

4) Can FTH send the mentors an automatic message whenever a member chooses a meeting role or the VPE allocates them a role?

This already exists. I refer to it as "role change notifications". These are enabled/configured in the Agenda Global Settings.

tdimdad wrote:

5) With members who belong to multiple clubs, do they have a centralised view to their progress and past roles across clubs? Are the VPE's able to see the the speeches given across clubs?

Not across clubs, since FTH is club-centric as Brian notes. Doing this across clubs would require some additional considerations around giving people access to information for clubs that they are not a member of. (e.g. the person viewing the report.) e.g., there are data privacy issues involved here

tdimdad wrote:

6) If a member delivers a speech somewhere else, can that be added to their records in FTH?

They would need a dummy agenda created for this, as agendas are the means by which participation is planned and recorded.

tdimdad wrote:

7) Can guests create accounts and sign up to meetings? Or, if they already have an account in FTH, can I (or VPM/VPPR) add them to our club as guests?

As Brian notes, we believe that this is inappropriate and do not support it.

Many thanks Brian and Steve for your replies! I appreciate you diving into the questions and also making it clear where you see the boundaries of FTH.
It seems that ES does some things well and FTH is superior in different aspects. If only we lived in the world where the best of both would live in a single service. Perhaps once day, one day...