TOPIC:

With the new Sign-up sheet page, we are running into a problem similar to print multiple meeting sign up, data missing #4976 .

The name of the person who signed up to be "Backup Speaker #2" ends up in the spot for "Speaker #2" and the name of the person who actually signed up as "Speaker #2" is lost.

We would prefer if the Sign-up sheet did not compare the names of roles "fuzzily" and if it did not lose roles and assignments in the process.

The UI does not seem to allow me to rename the "Backup Speaker #2" role to the "Backup-Speaker #2" that you recommended in the referenced posting as a way to work around the problem.

We have two options I think:

1. Ask you to mass rename "Backup Speaker" to "Backup-Speaker", and "Backup Speaker #2" to "Backup-Speaker #2". Would that fix the problem?
2. Stick to our own sign-up sheet system based on the old XLS export. How long will the XLS export remain supported?

What do you recommend?



To make it clear what the problem is, here is a specific example: The column of the sign-up sheet for 2012-08-09. (I shortened names to three letters for this post.)

Here is what that day's column would look like if the sign-up sheet were correct:

Toastmaster	Kat
Word of the Day Master & Grammarian
Speaker #1	Gal
Speaker #2	Sri
Speaker #3	Lyn
Backup Speaker	Chu
Backup Speaker #2	San
Table Topics	Chi
Evaluator #1	Ann
Evaluator #2	Bri
Evaluator #3
General Evaluator	Han
Wizard of Ahs
Timer	Sow
Ballot Counter
Competent Leadership (CL) Role Evaluator

And here it what actually comes out:

Toastmaster	Kat
Word of the Day Master & Grammarian
Speaker #1	Gal
Speaker #2	San
Speaker #3	Lyn
Backup Speaker	Chu
Table Topics	Chi
Evaluator #1	Ann
Evaluator #2	Bri
Evaluator #3
General Evaluator	Han
Wizard of Ahs
Timer	Sow
Ballot Counter
Competent Leadership (CL) Role Evaluator

Note how the "Backup Speaker #2" role is lost, and how "San", the person who signed up for that role, ends up "Speaker #2", erroneously displacing "Sri".

I am not official FTH2 support, but here are some thoughts:

1. Try temporarily renaming Speaker #2 to be Speaker #9 (some unused number), so that maybe you can "break" the association with Backup Speaker #2. Then try the rename. If successful, then revert Speaker #9 back to Speaker #2.

2. You may also do the reverse: temporary rename of the Backup Speaker #2 to Backup Speaker #9, then save and try inserting the hyphen.

3. You might also try using a non-breaking space as an alternative to a hyphen. It is a space that is not treated as a word separator. To insert it, you have to do the special keystroke Alt+255 The 255 must be punched into the num keypad (right hand) while holding down the Alt key (e.g., with your left hand).

4. If you really don't need the # sign in the Backup Speaker #2 role name, ditch it.

A rigorous solution would be if FTH2 had an "ignore the following" character such as a backslash or if you could use two # or * in a row to mean "hey, I really just actually want of these characters left here and no special processing please".

SteveTheTechie wrote:

You might also try using a non-breaking space as an alternative to a hyphen.

I went with this trick (clever, clever!) and it worked. Thank you, Steve!

I stand corrected: one can mass-rename a role: that is done by simply renaming it in the default agenda.

It turns out that the XLS export feature mishandles the nbsp character (U+00A0) and the generated spreadsheet has U+00C2 U+00A0 instead: I can easily work around that, and we can have both our old sign-up sheet system and the official FTH sign-up sheet work!

The system looks for the word before the # and the number after.

This makes "Speaker #2" and Backup "Speaker #2" Equal
Change Backup "Speaker #2" to "Backup-Speaker #2" and you agenda will work.

Brian wrote:

Change Backup "Speaker #2" to "Backup-Speaker #2" and you agenda will work.

Yes, that would have worked. I worked around the fuzzy behavior in a similar but not identical way: I used the non-breaking space as SteveTheTechie cleverly suggested. It looks just like a space, which I personally prefer over a dash in the name of the role.