Add Chairman's Worksheet Notes to Customize Lists

[stecchio66]

I need to add notes for the chairman for all midweek meetings. So, I add this text for each week:

Announcements:<ul><li>Announcement 1</li><li>Announcement 2</li></ul>

The result is this:

Announcements:

• Announcement 1
• Announcement 2

Is it possible to add custom text for chairman notes to the Customize List window?

[ajtruckle]

@stecchio66 I am sure we can do something for you. Question: Do you need the ability to add announcements to both Opening / Closing Comments? This would make it as flexible as possible.

[stecchio66]

@ajtruckle If you want you can add this for both comments. As you say it would be more flexible.

[ajtruckle]

@stecchio66 I have been thinking about implementation and this is my proposal:

1. We add two new buttons to the Chairman's Worksheet window:
   • The button text will be Announcements.
2. Clicking the Announcements button will display a new popup window. This window will have a checklist of all available announcements. These announcements will be saved in the MWB data files.
   • You can choose the ones you want to include on the worksheet.
   • There will be Add / Edit / Remove buttons to let you directly update the list of announcements.
   • Up / Down spinner will let you change the order of the announcements.
3. We could possibly (not sure 🤔 ) have a multi-line tooltip that shows what the selected announcements are. The tooltip would display when you hover the mouse over the Announcements menu button.
4. We could also have an icon on the Announcements button:
   • An icon to indicate that one or more announcements have been selected.
   • Another icon to indicate that no announcements have been selected.
5. The editor will add the announcements into the XML data file. For example:

   <OpeningComments>
   <Theme>Opening Comments</Theme>
   <Time StartTime12="7:20" StartTime24="19:20" EndTime12="7:21" EndTime24="19:21" DurationShort="1 min.">1 min.</Time>
   <Announcements>
       <Announcement>Announcement 1.</Announcement>
       <Announcement>Announcement 2.</Announcement>
       <Announcement>Announcement 3.</Announcement>
   </Announcements>    
   </OpeningComments>

6. Finally, the default Worksheet templates can be updated to display these announcements in a bulleted list.

Like this:

Thoughts? 🤔

[stecchio66]

You always think bigger. You're too good. I would have content with much less but what your thought is exceptional.

[ajtruckle]

@stecchio66 Thanks for the kind words.😀 I have decided to simplify the popup window design:

• There will be no controls to change the order of the announcements.
• All announcements will be sorted in A - Z instead.

I came to this decision because it would not be possible to maintain a custom sort order week by week. So keeping the announcements sorted in A to Z seems the simplest to implement.

[ajtruckle]

@stecchio66 I have made another change. When you edit the announcement list for a given week it now add any announcements that are not in the list back into the list and sets them checked. Does that make sense? 😖 Just in case you delete an announcement that you are still using for other weeks.

[ajtruckle]

@stecchio66 I have sent you a new beta (privately) to test. Two default templates have been updated:

• Worksheet
• Worksheet RTL

Here is a snapshot of the new features in action:

The announcements are displayed on their own row on the schedule.

[ajtruckle]

@stecchio66 I have just sent you another beta to try. I have improved the logic of the XML and XSL data.

XML

<ChairmanNotes>
  <OpeningComments>
    <Comments>Opening Comments</Comments>
    <OpeningAnnouncements>
      <Announcement>Announcement 1</Announcement>
      <Announcement>Announcement 2</Announcement>
    </OpeningAnnouncements>
  </OpeningComments>
  <ClosingComments IncludeNextWeeksStudents="1">
    <Comments>Closing Comments</Comments>
    <ClosingAnnouncements>
      <Announcement>Announcement 3</Announcement>
    </ClosingAnnouncements>
  </ClosingComments>
</ChairmanNotes>

XSL

<xsl:template match ="OpeningComments | ClosingComments | Treasures1 | Treasures2 | Living1 | Living2 | Living3" mode="ChairmanNotes">
  <tr>
    <td colspan="4" class="cellChairmanNotes">
      <div class="textChairmanNotes">
        <xsl:choose>
          <xsl:when test="self::OpeningComments">
            <xsl:value-of select="Comments" disable-output-escaping="yes"/>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="OpeningAnnouncements"/>
          </xsl:when>
          <xsl:when test="self::ClosingComments">
            <xsl:value-of select="Comments" disable-output-escaping="yes"/>
            <xsl:apply-templates select="ClosingAnnouncements"/>
            <xsl:if test="@IncludeNextWeeksStudents='1'">
              <xsl:variable name="AssignHistoryPath">
                <xsl:choose>
                  <xsl:when test="//Settings/ForeignGroupMode=1">ForeignAssignHistory.xml</xsl:when>
                  <xsl:otherwise>AssignHistory.xml</xsl:otherwise>
                </xsl:choose>
              </xsl:variable>
              <xsl:variable name="AssignHistory" select="document($AssignHistoryPath)"/>
              <xsl:variable name="week" select="../../Date/@NextWeek"/>
              <div class="NextWeeksStudents-Container">
                <xsl:apply-templates select="$AssignHistory/AssignmentHistory/*[name()=$week]/StudentItems">
                  <xsl:with-param name="MainHall" select="//Labels/MainHall"/>
                  <xsl:with-param name="AuxClass1" select="//Labels/AuxClass1"/>
                  <xsl:with-param name="AuxClass2" select="//Labels/AuxClass2"/>
                </xsl:apply-templates>
              </div>
            </xsl:if>
          </xsl:when>
          <xsl:otherwise>
            <xsl:value-of select="." disable-output-escaping="yes"/>
          </xsl:otherwise>
        </xsl:choose>
      </div>
    </td>
  </tr>
</xsl:template>

This is closer to the original idea for implementation. 😊

[fstouma]

Announcements option is working fine for Arabic

[stecchio66]

@ajtruckle the last beta work very well. This is some example of announcements:

• Announcements and Reminders (October 2023)
• Monthly Congregation Accounts Report
• Assembly Preview
• Convention Preview
• Changes to the next midweek meeting
• Auxiliary Pioneers of the month

[ajtruckle]

@stecchio66 @fstouma Thanks for doing the beta testing brothers! 🙏 I'll use those sample announcements in the help documentation.

I have decided to re-work the Chairman's Notes window:

Benefits:

• Changed the name of the first button to Reminders. This is because announcements are usually given during the concluding comments of the meeting.
• Moved the Concluding Comments to the bottom right. This is the logical place. Thanks for the private feedback @cengizu.

[ajtruckle]

I have decided to remove the Reminders button. So now it is only possible to add announcements to the Concluding Comments section of the worksheet.

[ajtruckle]

This feature is now implemented and is available in version 24.1.2.

[!NOTE]
The online newsletter for version 24.1.2 is now available.