Agenda Setup and Customization

Here is a detailed walkthrough of the tools available for creating and customizing your meeting agendas using the Toastmost system, including some helpful new features. For those who don’t have the time or patience to watch the video, I’ve included key details below.

See also Updating Your Meeting Event Template and Future Meetings.

The basic agenda blocks

Instead of paragraphs, headings, and images, the basic formatting of your agenda is handled with custom blocks representing meeting roles and organizational “stage directions.”

Here are all the basic blocks, starting with the ones used most frequently.

Role

The Role block appears as a on the signup form for members to sign up or be assigned to a role. The list of roles and assignments is then displayed on the agenda. In the editor, you specify a count for each role (Example: 1 Toastmaster of the Day, 3 Speakers, 3 Evaluators) and, optionally, the time associated with that block of roles (23 minutes for 3 speakers).

Time can also be associated with the Note blocks (see below).

A standardized list of roles is supplied, but you can also define a custom role that is unique to your club or to a specific meeting. The screenshot below shows how you would do that for one particular meeting or event template.

Go to the Toastmasters->Settings screen if you want to add a custom role that will appear as an option for every agenda.

Optionally, you can add an explanatory note for the role that will appear on both the signup form and the printable agenda.

Agenda Note

An Agenda Note represents the “stage directions” of your meeting. Example: 5-minute break, with Time Allowed set to 5. It’s not a role people can sign up for, but it’s an activity that takes up time on the agenda. Or it’s text that you may want to change from week to week, for example the meeting theme and word of the day.

You can set the default text for an Agenda Note in your meeting templates, for example “5-minute break” might be something that doesn’t change for every meeting — but if you really wanted to change it for some reason, you could.

For items such as Theme and Word of the Day, you would set the heading and leave the text blank in your template. Then you would fill it in, either from within the editor or on the front end as part of the process of organizing that specific meeting.

Note: There used to be two types of Agenda Note blocks, only one of which was editable on the front end. You may see the two types referenced in some older tutorials, but now there is only one that counts.

Signup Form Note

A Signup Form Note only appears on the signup form.

Absences

The Absences block displays an option on the signup form where members can indicate that they will be out of town or unavailable.

Hybrid

If you have a hybrid online/offline club, the hybrid block allows you to track members who are planning to attend in person.

Agenda Wrapper

Allows you to place standard content blocks such as images, headings, and paragraphs inside a wrapper that selectively displays them in a specific context. In this example, the image will be displayed on the signup form and email version of the agenda but not the printable agenda or other contexts.

Milestone

Displays the elapsed time at a given milestone such as the end of the meeting.

New and improved agenda tools

The latest update to the Toastmost system includes the following new blocks and block settings options.

The agenda privacy separator

When you add this block to your agenda, any content placed below the separator will ONLY be displayed to logged in, authorized club members not to visitors.

I’m using this at my own clubs to guide visitors toward filling out the RSVP Now! registration form and omitting role signup details that are not relevant to a potential guest. In the example shown below, my marketing content and the the widget for the Theme and Word of the Day are above the separator and all the role blocks are below that dividing line.

A potential guest sees this:

A logged in member sees the role signup options and an option to edit the Theme/Word of the Day content:

In the editor, here’s where the Agenda Privacy Separator block is placed, below the placeholder for the Editable Note used for Theme/Word of the Day and above the first role signup block.

In the video, I also cover the use of the Agenda Context block that can be used as a wrapper around content that you only want to be displayed only to members, only to guests, and displayed or not displayed on the printable agenda.

Add “Show title prompt” to any role

The Speaker role automatically prompts members to add their speech title, path, and project. Now you can automatically prompt members to add a title for any other role — in this example, the custom role of Tip of the Day we do at Online Presenters Toastmasters. The title (if set) will then appear below the name of the member who has signed up for that role, just as it would for a speech.

Time display within the editor

It’s now easier to see the time allowed for each activity on your agenda and whether your meeting will end on time. For each role and each “stage directions” agenda note, you can set the time allowed for that activity. As you make changes, the time for the next activity will update.

Another recent enhancement is that if you change the number of speakers, the number of evaluators will also change, along with the default time associated with those activities. The software calculates # of speeches times 7 as the default number of minutes, and you can adjust as appropriate to allow time for longer speeches and the transition between speakers.

As always, let me know if you have questions.

David F. Carr, DTM, david@toastmost.org or 954-290-6788.