Filter By Groups

Hi Viv,

The quickest way I have found to do this is to add something to all of those meetings either in the group name or the meeting name. I am using the District for it. My naming structure is Namegroup – town – (D1) for District 1. Or something like that.

When you have a look at the documentation, you will see an example file for uploading meeting details into the plugin through a comma separated file (CSV).

Your upload syntax should something like this:

Time,Day,Name,Location,Address,Region,Location Notes,Group,District,Group Notes,Types
“7 PM”,”Tuesday”,”GroupName – City (D1)”,”Location Room – City”,”499 Dieppe Road
City ON L0M1C0
Canada”,”City”,”Wheelchair Accessible”,”Groupname – Borden (D1)”,”District 1 – Muskoka”,”Group ID: 00000, District 1 – Muskoka. Meeting type: ProgramName. Focus: Regular. Open to whatever is relevant to you”,”Wheelchair Accessible”

If you were to set up an Excel sheet to keep all of this info in the correct columns, it would all come over into your website.

Then, you will see the District in the dropdown with city/towns as an alternative search method. Or the type of meeting. In the backend in WordPress you can perform a search by (D1) to find all meetings of that District. If you wish to make a further distinction, add your own shortcode. (D1) (something else). As long as it makes sense to you and to the general audience.

In your real import, you would not have a blank line between the column names and the actual content. So paste the below into a simple Texeditor, make sure to remove formatting, and import it like this:

Time,Day,Name,Location,Address,Region,Location Notes,Group,District,Group Notes,Types
“7 PM”,”Tuesday”,”GroupName – City (D1)”,”Location Room – City”,”499 Dieppe Road
City ON L0M1C0
Canada”,”City”,”Wheelchair Accessible”,”Groupname – Borden (D1)”,”District 1 – Muskoka”,”Group ID: 00000, District 1 – Muskoka. Meeting type: ProgramName. Focus: Regular. Open to whatever is relevant to you”,”Wheelchair Accessible”

I hope this is what you are looking for?

Nicky D

I was advised a while ago that once my meeting database was set up on the website to NOT upload the CSV file. Occasionally, we do download it, but any corrections or changes are manually made on the website.

What I was asking for was to be able to view and sort by Groups. Right now the available columns when viewing meetings in the back-end are Meeting Name, Day, Time, Region, Date. It would be great if we could choose other columns such as Group.

It would be great if a visitor could filter by groups.

Hi @octotoot–

You are correct that it isn’t advisable to repeatedly upload a CSV. This feature is really intended for initial creation of the database.

If you’re willing, please come over to our development area and create an issue–>feature request to describe what you’d like to see. We have a small number of developers and we can discuss the idea there.

Thanks!

I should add that if someone starts to type the name of a group into the search field, the group will show up as a group, and then the use can select it and the meeting list will be filtered by the group.

Is this sufficient for most as people?

I should add that if someone starts to type the name of a group into the search field, the group will show up as a group, and then the use can select it and the meeting list will be filtered by the group.

@tech2serve, yes that could work — and it doesn’t matter if the name of the group is even in the meeting name. Just need to train our visitors how to search.

Thank you.

Regarding GitHub, I am not a developer, but will put a comment there if it you insist. Otherwise, will just leave it here — and that is a feature very much requested.

Please have at a glance whether the meeting is open or closed, just as you currently display whether is is only men or only women.

Can somebody tell me why I would not use the upload? It works beautifully. I seldom have to do a complete replace of all groups, but depending on the type of change that is needed, doing the import is quicker with less chances of errors. Curious to hear why you were advised not to do this.

Also, even if you do all changes manually, would adding something to the group name not do that trick? If is is a city or any of the other fields that are available already in the interface (front end) you can use the open search to find it.

I initially did not know how to get the district in the search bar. No matter what I tried it would not work. So I added (D) to the group with the relevant District #. At least the free search would then work and I could also use it myself in the backend. Find all groups for one district in one simple search by (D1) etc.

Later I was told by the support people that I can include this in the import csv. The only thing that I had not understood was this: you need to repeat the name of the group:

Time,Day,Name,Location,Address,Region,Location Notes,Group,District,Group Notes,Types

I put in the group in ‘Name’ and in ‘Group’. It is the second one that will then ‘understand’ that I have a group with a meeting and that, in the case of my program, they are identical. Up until now I do not have a group with two meetings that each have their own description. I have a ‘Thursday and Thuesday” group. But not GroupA with Thursday meeting (group A) and Tuesday meeting (group A) but apparently in AA or other programs this does happen. Only when I adjusted my database output in this way did I get ALL the fields that can be visible by default in the searchbar.

My reasoning for the separate database was also that I am now able, based on the same source data, to produce reports for my Area within seconds that do not per se abide to certain rules. This is not a plug for my way of doing things or even for FileMaker. That just happens to be the tool I am very familiar with. It has a reporting feature that does not touch the data, it is not query or something like that. It is very visual and it acts as a window to the data and I can change that window. I can stick with groups in one district, or I can find al groups whose name starts with A and stuff like that, and then still show the report in the same format.

I don’t blame WordPress or the meeting plugin for not being able to do that. It would be nice, but it is not their primary purpose. Their is to display and make accessible data in the realm of the internet. I am excited though to see what the future will bring.

Hi @octotoot, One doesn’t have to be a developer to create issues in Github, nor would I ever insist someone put a comment there. We simply decided to try and use WordPress support pages for plugin usage questions and discussions while moving feature enhancement and verified bug reports to Github.

@osnicky59, The concern I have with the repeated delete and reimport is that the importer code isn’t designed for repeated data exchange between a csv and the database, nor is the same level of error checking done; and we’ve seen situations where something in formatting in the CSV get messed up and that translates to errors in the database. So, no, it isn’t a recommended approach. I’m glad it has worked well for you but please keep these potential limitations and issues in mind. And keep backups ??

Thanks for that explanation and making me aware of it.
So, would this also hold true for a first time upload of a new group?

Fortunately my hosting plan included very regular backups and of course, my offline FileMaker system IS my backup…

I am fairly new to website building and if I were to limit corrections and changes to existing listings, I would need a lot more editing, sorting and finding tools.
I am not sure that this is even possible in a WordPress Plugin.
My maintenance in FileMaker is pretty fast, if only because certain known information is auto-entered. Once I have a location, I don’t need to re-enter it for the next meeting and stuff like that.

Looking at the workflow in WordPress: I simply have too many groups to make that work when there are a lot of changes. Go to the list. Find the meeting. Go to the details of the meeting. And then? there is no way back to the list as I had assembled it, for instance, with meetings of one particular district or city. This has little to do with shortcomings on the part of the plugin: it is just how the standard WordPress pages seem to work when you are editing.

Ideally the only reason for me to do all the work online, I’d have to be able to either easily switch between two windows without the found set changing, and, from the details view, have that breadcrumb think that leads me to the details of the next one in line.

It is not at all a must-have in a general sense. It is just at the top of my wishlist.
And the other thing is to have the ability to offer visitors of the site to build their own list of meetings and download it as PDF.

But although all info is in Sequel databases, I am aware that it is not easy to give us something like that in the front end. FileMaker is just an odd player in database land and I make the most of that…

So, another question:
If I have a lot of changes, like recently a change in how we describe the open or closed status of a meeting, I tend to delete all meetings and start with a fresh import. I am guessing that this is safe to do? I already did that multiple times when the site was still under construction and I have to say that the plugin handled it well. I was not very successful in deleting existing listings myself, but when, at the moment of import, I ticked the box to ‘delete everything’, I had no issues. Don’t want to jinx it, but I thought the plugin did (and does) an awesome job.

Finally, is there any way to produce an export of the meeting details online? Not a backup that I cannot read, but output from the live website?

Thanks for all that you do!

So, would this also hold true for a first time upload of a new group?

I guess I don’t understand why you need to “upload” a new group. The way the plugin is designed is that you add group information to a meeting and then you have an option of applying that group information to all meetings at that location. And if you need to change a piece of group information (say, an email address), you simply change it for one meeting and the other meetings will automatically reflect the updated information. You shouldn’t need to update each individual meeting’s group data.

This seems like it should work for 99.x% of the cases I think. Your situation may be in that tiny minority giving you a reasonable reason for wanting to do it differently. Admittedly, I don’t really understand how you’re using FileMaker (and that is okay; I don’t need to understand).

If I have a lot of changes, like recently a change in how we describe the open or closed status of a meeting, I tend to delete all meetings and start with a fresh import. I am guessing that this is safe to do?

I think that describes a reasonable situation where you would do a clean import. Our caution is simply to not use it the primary way of editing meeting data. We believe the WordPress database should be a user’s primary data source for meeting information; not just a copy of a data source used to display meeting information.

Finally, is there any way to produce an export of the meeting details online?

The answer depends on what format you’re looking for? We have an export option (look in “Import & Settings”, upper right hadn’t side of the page) that creates a CSV file.

Hi, thanks for the feedback.

I knew I had seen an export option: thanks for pointing that out to me. I totally overlooked it.

I will keep your feedback in mind when it comes to importing and no, I do not re-import for every little edit. But is sure is a time-saver for more structural edits!

I am using the plugin to publish over 300 meetings and multiple districts in an area. We have only just launched a month ago and had nothing to start with, except some Excel Sheets and MS Access query output. I dreaded having to enter all those meetings manually and then I discovered your plugin. I was so happy you had importing options! As I was having the info vetted, I played around with this feature and only recently stumbled upon the tutorial that talks about the CSV format. It solved the problem of showing maps in the details view and some other things that I had been unable to figure out. But now I am happy as a clam!

One of the things that made me use my FileMaker solution is that it helps me ‘groom’ the details as I receive them into a consistent format. Not everything in the plugin is present in the materials of my program, so I do the tweaking in FileMaker so that I can produce output that fits the plugin like a glove.

I heard about the plugin from an AA fellow and he just used it for his District. And for that purpose doing the initial entry of his 20-some groups was not an issue at all. But he blanched when I said I had over 300 groups… ??

But me? Happy as a clam and I tip my hat to you guys who built this. One of our program-miracles to have this available. Many newcomers will benefit from it!