TOPIC:

Hi Everyone,

There appears to be a make-or-break issue for our club (Famous Toastmasters Mainz, Germany) regarding using FreeToastHost and I would like to check that this is not a misunderstanding on my part before sadly having to walk away and close our account. From my personal point of view it is a good system, but lacks one feature that is considered essential by some members.
The feature that EasySpeak offers to see who has signed up for:  attend the meeting/will not attend/uncertain seems to be crucial for some members. It appears that on FreeTastHost the TM of the day (and sys admin) can see this, but not other members. Is this correct?
Names of people who have signed up for roles are openly published in the Agenda. Could a list of members and their intention to attend be added? Having worked (briefly) with GDPR and read the GDPR document cover-to-cover it is clear that there is no objection to listing the name of club members planning to attend or not - this is not "sensitive information" as defined in the GDPR. Again, as far as I can see, publishing the name of a club member to other club members does not have any implications at all for GDPR, and indeed EasySpeak publishes this list openly to all internet web users. (And we should remember that GDPR does not care if this information is electronic or written on paper - the same rules apply). The TM of the day can access this information and re-post to all club members but this is so inconvenient as to be unworkable. If this function could be automated and a list of members planning to attend, planning to not attend, or uncertain, could be automatically sent that might be a solution. But including this list for signed-up members to see on the website would be ideal.

Without a resolution of this issue it is likely that club members will reject the move to FreeToastHost and the club will have to continue to use EasySpeak.

Thanks for any feedback/comments - or even better, a workaround.

Russell.
Sys Admin Famous Toastmasters Mainz   sysadmin9730@freetoasthost
 

1) we added the attendance tab in the agenda editor as a nice to have but we do no feel it is accurate as most people who are not planning on attending don't bother to mark themselves at not attending.

2) the attendance tab can be seen by all those who have edit access to that agenda. In most cases that would be the admin, vped, and 2 other officers as designated by the admin. Also those roles on the agenda that have update authority.

3) the information is not hidden, all those who have access to the agenda editor can see it.

Hi Brian 

Thank you for your reply. All your points are noted - but for this particular club the sign-up attendance agenda works quite well, and has become a widely used organizing tool; access by all members is an issue in this particular case (viewing access rather than editing access). I'm sure that plenty of other clubs are happy with the current set-up and don't find the attendance list useful.

User interface is indeed a tricky thing, what one person wants is what another person avoids. Right now, this issue probably makes FreeToastHost a no-go for this one club, though maybe that will change. Bloated feature-sets so that everyone gets everything they want as one of a vast array of options is certainly not a good way forwards and a way to make almost everyone unhappy.

Again - thanks to you and all at FreeToastHost for useful software, and good user support. Much appreciated.

sysadmin9730 wrote:

access by all members is an issue in this particular case (viewing access rather than editing access). 

While it's not a explicit list of Yes/No/Uncertain, there is a way that all members can view attendance information; 'Print this meeting agenda' (make sure the two attendance checkboxes are selected in the options). 'Uncertain' are the club members not listed at the bottom as attending/not attending. Emailing the agenda also shows this info but that's a few extra steps.

Any member can access the attendance report for various periods.  If you set the start date to the current date, it will report the current attendance status for all future meetings.  Documentation is here: support.toastmastersclubs.org/doc/item/r...ts-and-signup-sheets
 

sysadmin9730 wrote:

Names of people who have signed up for roles are openly published in the Agenda. Could a list of members and their intention to attend be added?

 

This is already available in the emailed agenda.  There is an existing option (in the options drop-down) to include it in the emailed agenda. 

Many club members do not want to bother logging in.  This is why I purposely built out the emailed agenda functionality a number of years ago.  Emailed agendas aren't perfect (they are static snapshots of the agenda at the time it was emailed out) but they do offer a lot of features that many clubs find particularly helpful.