Make either Online Meetings OR temporary closed

We are discussing a slightly broader way ahead, but don’t have it yet. So thank you for your thoughts.

GSO, for AA meetings, has asked that people mark as “Temporary Closure” any meeting that has been interrupted, and to add the “Online” type if a meeting has moved online. Those two types are in fact designed to work together.

The plugin doesn’t impose many rules in terms of use, by design. Addresses remain required, and any meeting designated as online must have a URL with it (the next release should make is so a URL *or* phone number is sufficient). The plugin doesn’t *impose* a requirement to make a meeting TC if ONL, but that is what GSO has asked, and it is, as I understand it, how the App works.

I am sitting here trying to think of why we (broader we…in a generic sense) would want to see a list of only meetings that are temporarily closed. What value does that add to the user? Interesting, perhaps, but it doesn’t help me find a meeting which is my goal. What I want to know are which meetings are open, either in person or temporarily online.

Most people I know continue to believe the majority of meetings will return to in-person, although there may be a few that keep an online component. For me, and I know of many others, we see the TC type as an alert that something is up with the meeting and we shouldn’t bother driving to that location. If we inspect it closer and it has online associated with it, we now know we can dial in to see/hear our friends.

As I said, we’re continuing to discuss a longer-term approach. Thank you again for your comments.

Hi Tech2serve,

Once this social distancing has past, we’ll be removing the TC from the groups.
Now that means two meetings F2F and Online are listed on the same meeting.
Assuming some Online meetings continue. That may be confusing to some.
Currently we at https://www.fortworthaa.org Central Office post the information the groups send us on separate webpages. Some send brief text, some send long context on PDFs, with multiple meetings, some Zoom run concurrently such as Men/Woman meetings, but different Zoom addresses.
My opinion is after the dust settles, we would make a separate meeting just for the Online Meetings that continue to exist. Keep them separate and easily identified.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by Eric.

You said GSO requested that we use both types to make their app work, but doing that makes no sense in our website with the plugin.

The meeting is not temporarily closed, it is meeting online. Only the location is temporarily closed.

My choice is to check both types to make the app work, or either temp closed or online to make it work better in our website. Because checking both yields incorrect results in that the TC type returns temp closed and meeting online.

Is it possible to make meeting online cross out the address the same way that temp closed does?

I do not understand why it couldn’t be a toggle on or off, the same way it should’ve been and should be in the future a toggle on and off whether a meeting is an open meeting or a closed meeting. They can’t be both at the same time.

I can appreciate this plugin and the GSO app was always intended for brick and mortar meetings and that we’d like to return to that as soon as possible. But it’s not looking so good for that to happen for a good long while. ??

Hey @ebartoletti, So I’m going to offer this in hopes that I’m not getting ahead of things, or that they don’t change. I believe groups are going to be asked to move management of purely online meeting so the Online Intergroup (https://aa-intergroup.org) when this is all done. What is really being discussed now are the local meetings that retain an online option. I don’t have a good answer for that yet.

@octotoot,

My choice is to check both types to make the app work, or either temp closed or online to make it work better in our website. Because checking both yields incorrect results in that the TC type returns temp closed and meeting online.

I’m still struggling to understand what isn’t working today beyond the definitional sense of what “Temporary Closure” means. I believe you raised the idea of renaming it to “Location Closed” which is part of our discussion. I personally am concerned that changing it now (when this is temporary) will lead to a different level of confusion; I suspect your valid concern can be addressed by letting people know in your area that TC means the location is closed and the meeting is temporarily not meeting unless an online (ONL) substitute has been added. I don’t see these two types as mutually exclusive like open and closed meetings are. ONL is complementary for meetings that may be fully closed (TC), or significantly limited because of the pandemic.

What I am contemplating proposing to the other devs is a wording change of “Online Meeting” to “Online Meeting Available” to show why it is there.

Is it possible to make meeting online cross out the address the same way that temp closed does?

It is possible to do that with local css, and I’ve provided samples in TIAA Forum (and I think here). The problem with doing it across the board is that there remain areas, AFAIK, that continue to have small meetings outside the building and for which they are also connecting with an online meeting. This would be an example where a group might check ONL but not check TC. For that situation, the address remains valid and shouldn’t lined out.

Again, thanks for the questions and comments. It has helped me solidify my thoughts a bit more.

I’m still struggling to understand what isn’t working today beyond the definitional sense of what “Temporary Closure” means.

The problem I’m having is that on my website when it says temporarily closed and also says it is an online meeting, it is not closed. Only the location is closed. And if I check temp close and online meeting, when I do a search for temporary closed meetings, I’m also returning online meetings into the mix. Not every meeting that was temporarily closed has become an online meeting. I wanted a quick way for people to distinguish between meetings that are online and meetings that are just temporarily closed. You say it’s complementary and I say it’s not complementary.

If it’s a choice between making the meeting guide app function properly and my website functioning properly then I will opt for the website and forget the app.

And yes, I know how to do the CSS to scratch out the address and all that for online meetings. It’s only came up with the release of the new version of the app in which it added the icons for phone and website, as well as added the actual hyperlinks for the Meeting and phone. Unless I also check temporary Closed, the app doesn’t take advantage of the new enhancements.

My apologies @octotoot. I really am trying to understand, and I’m not seeing the difference between the App and the plugin.

What is your city/area so I can use the App to look at the meetings?

I see that in order for this to work with the app, both temp closure and online meeting have to be checked.

Can we take this conversation to the TIAA forum? I can find you there. Perhaps I can do a screen share on Zoom to show you in real time.

Thanks

Yes.

I see that in order for this to work with the app, both temp closure and online meeting have to be checked.

It was my understanding that Meeting Guide was going to accept only the online type, and that on the main listing screen, the meeting would show as normal with distance to the meeting, and that when the user clicks on that to go to the details, the buttons for connecting online would show. Is that not what you’re experiencing?

This is what I posted in the forum.

Could the powers that be at GSO change the Meeting Guide APP to say for online meetings instead of temporary closure to say location closure?

I am looking at the App for an online meeting where I checked both types. It is confusing to have that say temporary closure. That makes sense only if the meeting has been suspended AND there is no online meeting substitute. We have several that are temporarily closed AND have not opted to go or publish online.

Same goes with the TSML plugin. Temporary Closure (TC type) should only be if there is both no meeting AND the location is closed. But if it is meeting online, then only the physical location is temporarily closed.

@tech2serve I’m still hoping you can respond to my last question.

I get it that the app needs to have both types checked, but it gives the impression that the meeting is closed when it actually is just meeting online. I would love it for our meeting data to be in sync with the app, but not at the expense of making the information on our website confusing.

I don’t want to do a search of meetings that are temporary closed on my website only to have in the mix meetings that are meeting online.

Moreover the app takes the real estate to explain what an open versus closed meeting is, it doesn’t list important information that’s in the notes such as a group email address to get more information such as passwords.

We’re gonna be doing online meetings for quite a while and I would really really be great if the plug-in and the app could at the very least remove the wording temporary closure for meetings that are online.

Thank you.

Hey Viv—-

We discussed this extensively with the App developers. Both the plugin update (released last night) and the App update (hopefully coming soon) are making minor tweaks with the intent to better show meetings that are available for users to access either through an online option or in-person.

Neither of the dev teams seem interested in creating/improving how we list meetings that are not available for users. That doesn’t feel like a useful way to spend our efforts. Most websites I’m reviewed have put up banners stating the all/most of the physical meeting locations are closed, and they are using various techniques to get online meetings displayed to users. We want to focus our efforts on making it so users can quickly add an Online Option for an existing meeting. This *may* stay in the plugin long term. And we relabeled Temporary Closure to Location Temporarily Closed to help make it clearer that it is the location that is not available temporarily.

If you provide a list on your website filtered by the Online Meeting type, users will see all meetings they can attend online. That display will also include meetings they might still be able to attend in person; we feel that removing the Location Temporarily Closed flag from the list may give people the sense, in areas where some meetings continue in person, that a meeting is still be held at the location. We feel it is better to make it clear by providing the additional information. However, you can use styling on your website to remove the flag from the listing and the single meeting page.

We’re exploring switching how we identify a meeting as temporarily not available in-person from a type (which was a quick and dirty to get something out quickly) to a status. This is long term look that I believe will improve filtering given some of the WordPress limitations while still allowing us to focus on what is available for users. One discussion point we’ve been having is how this should show on the front-end. We’ve engaged someone who is smarter at user research than we are, and we’ll hopefully have some ideas before too long.

Tim

Thank you for your response. I did install the update. I think my concern remains since renaming it to location temp closed, rather than temp closed still uses the TC type, and when I do a filter by that type /meetings/?tsml-day=2&tsml-type=TC, I am going to get online meetings in the mix.

May I assume the APP will continue list meetings that only have the TC type in red and saying it’s temporarily not meeting? It has not been updated as of this writing and so right now it still says when the 2 types are checked that the meeting is temporary closure.

The first sub-menu in my menu bar has been online meetings /meetings/?tsml-day=any&tsml-type=ONL which has been that way for a couple of weeks. I would suspect that is used the most.

If there are any ftf meetings going on, I will be appalled. So we have only marked those “closed” from what we’ve been told. And yes, lots of banners and now even pop-ups on the site hopefully alerting people to what they should be alerted to.

I am removing all references to finding temp closed meetings on the website, of course the filter by type will still exist, but I don’t even know if people actually use it.

Thank you for your support. These are crazy and sometimes scary times we’re in.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 7 months ago by TheViv.

It isn’t my place to discuss too much of what App might do, as I’m not a direct part of that team nor the approval process. ??

I can tell you we suggested a change that would make it clearer an online option was available even when TC is checked. And that the proposal we discussed with the App dev team has gotten traction. We believe it is a reasonable approach and would hope GSO agrees.

Question: the flag for online meeting still does not show for Al-Anon meetings. Is that still to come? I reported it as a bug so you should already have that original ticket.