Numbered Roles vs Role Synonyms feature

For a long time, FreeToastHost has had a numbered roles feature that allows for handling of multiple occurrences of the same role in a meeting agenda. For example, Speaker #1, Speaker #2, etc.

Essentially, this functionality mainly comes into play in certain role reports... instead of listing Speaker #1, Speaker #2, etc., those reports just list multiple occurrences of "Speaker". In the past, this has been really the only specific use of the # signs in roles outside of the agendas themselves.

Additionally, with the recently added automatic role renumbering feature, the placement of the # sign enables the code to determine what part of the role is the number that should be changed. Therefore, if you are choosing to use the renumbering feature, then you must be using the # sign in roles.

However, if you do not want to use the # sign in roles and you do not care about the renumbering feature, you can alternatively use another recently added feature to accomplish the same result in role reports. If you set up Role Synonyms in the Agenda Settings, e.g. "Speaker=Speaker 1=Speaker 2", you can accomplish essentially the same results in role reports. The catch, of course, is that stating the roles in the agenda like this prevents the use of the auto-renumbering.

This illustrates how it is frequently the case with FreeToastHost that there is more than one way to accomplish the same thing.