New: Random Assignment of Roles - WordPress for Toastmasters*

When filling the gaps on the agenda for a particular meeting, you can now get the software to randomly assign members who have not taken a role to fill each opening.

Here is how that looks:

You will see the “show random assignments” link in both the edit signups and recommend modes of the agenda editor. When you click that link, the software will automatically plug members who have not been assigned a role into the open slots. Note that the software also displays some clues as to how recently the member has attended a meeting and how recently the member has filled that particular role. You have the opportunity to change the assignments or recommendations before submitting the form. If someone hasn’t shown up in months, you might think twice before counting on them to fill an important role.

In the editor’s edit signups mode, submitting the form will assign members to roles. In the recommend mode, the member receives a recommendation that they take the role and must confirm before that role is firmly assigned to them. I’ve learned that some clubs rely more on volunteers, while others dictate what roles users will take in upcoming meetings, so the software tries to support both styles.

I have received a few of requests for this feature, which apparently exists in some other software for Toastmasters clubs. This feature is available on toastmost.org websites and included with version 2.2 of the open source version, RSVPMaker for Toastmasters. It may still require more fine tuning.

You can try it on the demo site (demo.wp4toastmasters.com user: member, password: member).

Also new in this update, you can now change the number of future meetings to be displayed on the signup sheet from the default, which is 3. If you go up to 5 or 6, you will probably want to print the page in landscape rather than portrait orientation. This wouldn’t work well for my club, which has a fairly long list of roles, but might for some others. This was added on request of one particular VPE.