Editing agendas and agenda templates with the front-end Organize screen

The new and more interactive role signup and agenda management functions introduced in 2023 revolve around 4 interaction modes, which you can switch between using a control panel at the bottom of the screen.

• Sign Up – Sign up for roles as an individual.
• Edit – Assign other members to roles and edit the notes that appear on your agenda (“stage directions” and elements like meeting theme).
• Suggest – Nominate another member to take an open role. The member will get an email notification including your personal note and can accept with one click (no password required).
• Organize – Add, remove, and reorganize roles and notes on the agenda and adjust the timing of activities.
• Template/Settings – Used by club leaders to adjust the standard meeting template and options.

By default, Sign Up, Edit, and Suggest are available to everyone, but an administrator can narrow that to Sign Up and Suggest or allow regular members access to the Organize screen.

Here is a video demo of the new features, current as of early February 2023.

Key features

On the edit screen, you can choose to assign a role to any member on the list recorded on your website, or you can enter a name of a guest who will be joining you. You can also enter path, project, speech title, and speech introduction details on behalf of another member.

Buttons to rearrange assignments

Buttons to allow you to rearrange the order of speakers, evaluators, and other roles assigned to multiple people appear on both the Edit screen and the Organize screen.

The buttons are Move to Top and Move Up (beneath all but the first assignment in a series), Move Down (beneath all but the last assignment for a role), and Close Gaps (when there is a gap such as in the example below where the Speaker #1 slot is open but others farther down the list are filled).

Reorganize your meeting or meeting template

The re-organize screen allows you to change the order of roles as they appear on your agenda, either for an individual week’s meeting or your standard meeting template.

Change your mind about whether Speeches or Table Topics should come first? Drag-and-drop to reorder them by “grabbing” the title bar of the role you want to move. Or use the up/down arrow buttons for more precise control.

You can also insert and delete items. The agenda items you can add are a Role, an Agenda Note (stage directions), an Editable Note (something that changes from week to week like a meeting theme), or a Signup Note (instructions for signing up).

The advantage to editing your agenda this way, as opposed to in the WordPress editor, is that you are only presented with options relevant to a Toastmasters meeting agenda — as opposed to those more appropriate for a blog or a web page.

Template / Settings

This screen is where you switch from editing an individual meeting to editing the template that governs all your meetings. Alternatively, if you like the organization of an individual week’s meeting, you can make that your new standard template. Or you can update the organization of a given week’s meeting to match a different template than you ordinarily use, such as a contest template.

If you have administrative rights on the website, you can also adjust the access to agenda editing features allowed to all members. I recommend allowing access to all functions other than the administrator-only ones, but club leaders who prefer to limit access can do so.