History: Managing Roundtable Meeting Pages and Calendar Events

Over the years, a lot of people have taken care of the tasks around Roundtable meetings, like making the pages, adding the events to the calendar, sending reminder messages, etc. Most of this is routine because it is done each month. Other things are related but not routine, like editing the Roundtable Meeting content template that is used to input the initial content of the meeting page, and hopefully being a little creative about the event descriptions now that the Tiki.org homepage lists the next three upcoming events.

These are some notes that may be useful to people handling these tasks.

Using the Roundtable Meeting page content template

The meetings' wiki pages use Tiki's content template feature, which allows editors to create and save content that can be applied at the creation of a new page. The wiki content templates are at https://tiki.org/tiki-admin_content_templates.php and the Roundtable Meeting content template is here (edit screen): https://tiki.org/tiki-admin_content_templates.php?offset=0&sort_mode=created_desc&templateId=10&cookietab=2 .

Of course the page content, including the content added by the content template, can be edited after the content template is applied, if there is a change in the meeting page that will repeat in the future, such as when PluginConvene was removed or recently when the recording URL changed, the content template should be edited accordingly so it provides an accurate and up-to-date starting point for the page content, so people don't have to make the same edit month after month.

The content template feature doesn't provide a version history, so a wiki page can be made to record the template content and then be updated when the content template is edited. This page, Monthly_Roundtable_Meeting content template copy, was just made for this purpose (accessible to Admins group members). One use is to compare the current content of the template with the actual content of recent meeting pages and edit the content template to match. For example, currently the location of the "Recording" section, which gets moved from near the bottom of the page to near the top every month, should be changed in the content template.

Making the meeting pages - when and how many

The main thing about the timing of making the wiki pages for the meetings is that they should be made early enough so that there aren't dead links pointing to the page, such as the "Next meeting" link on active meeting pages or links pointing to the page from the calendar event information.

In practice this probably means the meeting pages should be made for at least the next three months. (The coming events module on the home page lists three events.) Making all the pages for a year, for example, would be ok, too. If the meeting template changes after a meeting page is made, the page content could be deleted and the template reapplied, as long as any content added such as actual meeting date and previous/next links is re-inputted.

Initial meeting page content

Typically, right after the content template is applied, there isn't much editing to be done, but there are these things:

• The meeting date and time should be input.
• The "Previous meeting" and "Next meeting" link placeholders at the bottom of the page should be replaced with the real information.
• ?

Adding calendar events

When the pages are added, the meetings should be added to the "Community Events" calendar as events.

Event information fields

• Calendar: Community Meetings
• Title: Tiki Roundtable Meeting - November
• Created by (the user who created the event - filled automatically)
• Recurrence - I didn't ever check this box, I guess because the date and time wasn't consistent before. Practically speaking, it is a recurring event but I'm not sure what difference it makes for the site information handling - something to test.
• Start/end: When I last created these events, I couldn't avoid having my local time specified. Even when I used a VPN to access tiki.org from the UK, the date/time info was Japan time. It should be tested whether this is still a problem. I just tested again, and even with a UK location and not logged in, the meeting times in Japan are shown to me. I'm curious if the times are correct for other people. (By the way, when not logged in, it seems I could create a calendar event, at least the form was displayed along with a trivial "anti-spam" measure. Do we want to allow anonymous to add events? I didn't create the event so don't know if it's published immediately or if it needs to be authorized by site admins, etc.
• Description: It's best if some specific information can be input here, but if there isn't any specific information available yet, something like this is a good general description:

It's nice to vary this information if possible. The descriptions of meetings from May to December 2023 are all different to avoid the same information repeating in the tiki.org homepage module. Also, if there's something that's pretty certain to be on the agenda, like a release, that would be good to mention.

• Status: I believe this used to have the options "tentative" and "confirmed" but now the selector says "no data" so this should be checked. Then all the meetings are "confirmed".
• Location: This should be the URL as it's an online meeting, so https://tiki.org/live .

More information

Please add information or update this page as necessary.