NA Meeting List Administrator iOS App

NOTE: You cannot use the Server Administrator account with this app! This is a meeting maintenance app; not a server maintenance app! As a matter of policy, you SHOULD NOT be using the Server Admin login for regular meeting maintenance!

ABOUT THIS APP

The NA Meeting List Administrator iOS App is an iPhone/iPad app that has been specifically designed as a tool for designated Meeting List Administrators for BMLT installations.

It is not to be used for Main Server administration. It is meant only for meeting list administration. This means that you need to have a Service Body Administrator account (not an Observer or Server Admin account) that is allowed to edit meetings for at least one Service body (It works great for administrators allowed to edit multiple Service bodies).

The app will support Touch ID (and Face ID) for devices that support Touch ID (iPad Mini 4, iPad Air 2, iPad Pro, and iPhone 5s and beyond), making logging in easier than ever.

It is designed to be a primary editing tool, allowing administrators to eschew computers in favor of mobile devices.

NOTE: Because of the ease of use of this app, it can be quite easy to make significant changes to your meeting list! Remember that this is an administration utility, working “live” on your database! You’re playing for keeps!

That said, one of the nice features of the app is the ability to easily undo changes.

A significant feature of this app, is that it allows restoration of deleted meetings; something that the Web interface can’t do.

This is the app on the Apple App Store

This is the source code repo for the app. The default branch is the Master Branch, which means that it may have code checked in for as-yet-unreleased versions.

APP REQUIREMENTS

• This app is ONLY for BMLT servers! It won’t support any other meeting list database system.
• This app is iOS (iPhone/iPad) only. It will not support Android or other mobile systems.
• The device needs to be running iOS 10.0 or greater.
• You need to have a Meeting List Administrator login for the Root Server to which you’ll be connecting. THE MAIN SERVER ADMIN ACCOUNT WILL NOT WORK.
• The account needs to be authorized to edit at least one of the Service bodies managed by the Root Server.

There are also some requirements for the Root Server, itself, which will be discussed below.

USAGE INSTRUCTIONS

The following are step-by-step instructions for using the app.

INITIAL CONNECTION AND LOGIN

CONNECTING TO THE SERVER

When you first start the app, you are presented with this screen, which requests that you give it the URL (Web address) of the BMLT Root Server (This is the “blue screen” where you log in to administer; not the place where you search for meetings).

You’ll be entering this URL in the text field in the middle of the page.

At the bottom, right corner of the page, you will see a little “gear” icon. This will be used to access the Settings and Info Screen (which we’ll discuss later).

REQUIREMENTS FOR THE ROOT SERVER

The Root Server needs to have a couple of things set up:

• It has to be SSL (HTTPS). This means that the URL needs to begin with “https://”
• It has to have Semantic Administration enabled.
• It needs to be Version 2.8.10 or greater (not an issue, these days).

If these are not all in place, it won’t work, and you need to contact whomever is in charge of the Root Server, and request that they address the issue[s].

Assuming all of the above conditions are met, you simply enter the URL into the text field, like so, and touch the “CONNECT” button, which appears as you begin to enter the URL.

If the URL is bad, or the Root Server does not meet the requirements above, you will be shown this error code:

Otherwise, the next screen will be the Login Screen, shown below.

LOGGING IN

If you have already logged in, it’s possible that TouchID will be enabled (if you have a valid device). The app will remember the last login, and will set the login picker to the last saved login, and you can use TouchID, instead of a password to log in.

It should be noted that, at this point, the app has connected to the server, so you will see a “DISCONNECT” button at the bottom of the screen. Touching this will completely disconnect the app from the server, and return you to the URL Entry Screen.

STANDARD (PASSWORD) LOGIN

In this case, you simply enter both the login ID and password, then touch the “LOG IN” button.

You can have multiple saved logins, and the app will remember the last login that you used.

TOUCH ID/FACE ID LOGIN

Whenever you successfully log in for the first time, if your device supports Touch ID (or Face ID), the password for that login is stored behind a Touch ID/Face ID entry.

After that, the stored logins are stored in a picker, and you can select a previously entered login. Touching “LOG IN” after this will bring up the Touch ID verification alert:

You put your finger on the Touch ID sensor, and the app will complete the login.

If the Touch ID fails, you will get this alert:

If you tap “Enter Password”, then you need to enter the password into the “Password” text entry field, as if Touch ID was not supported. The Manual Login screen will be displayed, with the login ID field pre-filled.

Upon too many failures, you may get this alert:

…which means that you need to try again. The app is not designed to lock down the phone for too many login failures.

Once you have successfully logged in, you will be taken to one of these screens:

AFTER LOGIN

NOTE: The app will always disconnect you if you close it, or send it into the background for more than just a few seconds. This is a security feature.

THE STANDARD “LOGGED IN” SCREEN

This is the page that you’ll go back to, if you are successfully logged in, and touch the “Back” button in the Editor Screen.

The “LOG OUT” button in the middle of the screen will simply log you out, but leave the connection to the server, so you will be returned to the Login Screen.

The “DISCONNECT” button at the bottom of the screen will log you out AND disconnect the server, returning you to the URL Entry Screen.

The “Service Bodies” button at the top, left of the screen will take you to the Service Body Selection Screen (covered later), but will be disabled if the login ID that you are using is only authorized to edit one Service body (the usual state).

The “Edit” button at the top, right, will take you to the Editor Screen (covered later), and the “Gear” icon button at the bottom, right of the screen will take you to the Settings and Info Screen (covered later).

THE SERVICE BODY SELECTION SCREEN

This screen allows you to select which of the Service bodies will be editable with the Editor Screen. This will only be reachable if your login ID is cleared to edit more than one Service body, and only Service bodies for which your login is authorized to edit will be listed.

You select which Service bodies to edit, using the slider switches. It should be noted that, if you deselect all Service bodies, the “Edit” button will become disabled. You need to select at least one Service body to edit.

If a Service body “contains” other Service bodies (like a Region “contains” Areas), then the indentation of the switches will indicate this, and the “parent” switch will force all the “children” switches to follow its state en masse.

You will always be able to return to this screen to change which Service bodies you wish to edit, and the app remembers the Service body selection per login, so if you have multiple logins authorized for more than one Service body, each will remember its selection upon login.

You will only be taken directly to this screen on the first login. After that, you will be taken to the Editor Screen.

THE EDITOR SCREEN

This is the screen that you will usually be taken to upon login.

In most cases, Meeting List Editors are cleared for only one Service body, so you will always arrive directly at this screen upon logging in (or if you have already logged in once, and selected which Service bodies to edit).

This is a tabbed screen, with two tabs: “Current Meetings” and “Deleted Meetings”. Selecting either one will cause the app to fetch a list of meetings. It should be noted that this can take a long time; especially for the “Deleted Meetings” tab.

Upon opening this screen, “Current Meetings will be selected, and the app will populate it with all the meetings that the selected Service bodies contain.

Once all the meetings are populated, you can “filter” which ones are shown, using the weekday checkboxes or the town/borough picker wheel.

The “+” button at the top, right of the screen is for adding new meetings. If you touch that, a New Meeting Screen will appear (we’ll cover that later).

If you pull down on the scrolled list of meetings, it will start a new load.

If a meeting row is orange, then that means that the meeting is “unpublished” (we’ll cover that later).

Touching a meeting in the scrollable list will open an Edit Screen for that meeting.

If you left-swipe over a meeting, you will be able to delete it:

If you choose to delete it, you will be asked to verify the decision:

If you confirm the deletion, then the meeting will be IMMEDIATELY deleted. Remember that ALL confirmed changes happen DIRECTLY ON THE “LIVE” DATABASE.

The “What Meeting Am I At Now?” button is a “convenience.” If you are currently attending a meeting for which you are cleared to edit, touching this button will immediately open that meeting for editing.

If you touch that button, the app will look for your current location, and you may get the following alert:

If no meeting is found, you will be presented with this alert:

THE MEETING EDITOR SCREEN

If you touch one of the meetings (or access the current meeting that you are attending), then you will be taken to this screen.

This allows you to edit virtually all elements of a meeting. In the rare instances where there may be fields not listed here, you may need to log in via the Web interface; however, it is our belief that you won’t ever need to do that.

This should be a “one-stop shop” for your meeting edit needs.

If you select the image to the left, it will open up a very big, very long image. That image is the entire Editor Screen. It is a scrollable screen.

Most of the time, this is a yellow screen (meaning that the meeting is currently “live” and visible to users of the BMLT).

If it is orange, then that means that the meeting is “unpublished” (we’ll cover that later).

We’ll cover what it does next.

THE TOP BAR

This is just a couple of buttons and the BMLT (local) ID of the meeting. It will be visible at all times. Everything below the “View Meeting Change History” button scrolls.

The “DUPLICATE” button is the initial state of the rightmost button. If changes are made to the meeting, then this changes to “SAVE”:

If the button says “Duplicate”, then that means that no changes have been made to the meeting, and your only option is to save the meeting as a new meeting, exactly duplicating the current meeting. REMEMBER THAT. The saved meeting will be an EXACT DUPLICATE of the “live” meeting.

Touching the “Duplicate” button will present this alert:

If you touch “Save A Copy of This Meeting”, then the meeting will be saved in its current state as an unpublished duplicate meeting, and you should do things like change the venue or meeting time/day before publishing the meeting.

If you touch “Cancel”, then you will simply be returned to the Meeting Editor Screen.

The new meeting will be saved as an “unpublished” meeting. This means that you can see it and edit it, but it will not appear in searches by regular users.

If you select “Cancel”, then you will either be returned directly to the Editor Screen, or you will be shown this alert:

If you touch “Lose Changes”, then any changes that you made to the meeting will be discarded.

If you touch “Cancel”, then you will simply be returned to the Meeting Editor Screen.

If the right button says “Save”, then this means that you have made changes to the meeting. Touching this button will bring up this alert:

From here, you can either save the changes directly to the meeting, or save the meeting as a new, duplicate meeting (which will be unpublished, and you will go to that meeting’s Meeting Editor Screen).

THE VIEW MEETING CHANGE HISTORY BUTTON

If you touch this button, a gray screen will appear with a list of the last few changes made to this meeting (the number of changes can be set by the Server Administrator. In most cases, it is 5 changes).

Each item in the list will show when the change was made, and who made the change.

It will also have a “Revert” button at the bottom of the item. If you touch that button, it will immediately set the meeting to the state it was in BEFORE the change, and close the screen.

Usually, this will mark the meeting as having had changes, so the “Save” button will be visible. It is possible that no changes are made to the current meeting (for example, backing out a change may leave the meeting in the same state it was, because it is undoing another change).

NOTE: Not all changes are “revertable” (Like creating meetings, or restoring deleted meetings). In these cases, the “Revert” button will not be shown.

If you hit “Cancel” at the top of the screen, then nothing will be done, and you’ll simply be returned to the Meeting Editor Screen.

Each item in the list will also have an “Info” button on the right side. If you touch this, it will show another screen that describes what the change did:

THE “MEETING IS PUBLISHED” SWITCH

This switch controls whether or not the meeting is listed as “published.”

Published meetings are currently “live,” and visible to regular BMLT users in their searches. If a meeting is in a “Published” state, its Meeting Editor Screen has a yellow background, and its item in the main Editor Screen is green.

If a meeting is “Unpublished,” its background is orange:

Additionally, its row in the Main Editor List is also orange.

Unpublished meetings are listed in the database, are not reported as “Deleted” to NAWS, but don’t show up in regular BMLT searches. Only authorized Meeting List Administrators can see Unpublished meetings.

Unpublishing meetings is a convenient way to temporarily remove them from searches (such as seasonal meetings, or meetings in search of a new venue). You should not consider unpublishing a replacement for deleting.

THE SERVICE BODY SELECTION WHEEL

This will only appear if your login is authorized for more than one Service body, and you have selected more than one Service body in the Service Body Selection Screen.

If it is there, then you can assign the Service body to the meeting.

THE WORLD ID TEXT FIELD

This is where you enter the NAWS Committee Code for this meeting.

THE MEETING NAME TEXT FIELD

This is where you enter the name of the meeting

THE WEEKDAY SEGMENTED SWITCH

Use this to choose which weekday the meeting gathers on.

THE START TIME AND DURATION WHEELS

Use these to set the start time of the meeting and its duration.

THE MEETING LOCATION SECTION

This is a series of text fields and a map, allowing you to exactly set the location of the meeting.

You should always use abbreviations for states and nations (“NY” instead of “New York” or “N.Y.”, and “USA” instead of “United States”).

Below the map, you will see a button labeled “Set Map to Match Address”. What this does, is look up the address, and then set the black marker in the map to that address (unless there is a problem looking up the address).

You can drag the marker around the map to set its position explicitly.

Also below the map, you will see “Longitude” and “Latitude” text fields. These will contain the exact long/lat for the marker’s position. If you enter anything into these, the position of the marker will change. The address information will not change.

THE COMMENTS FIELD

Below the long/lat fields, is a “Comments” text entry. Add whatever comments may apply to the meeting here. Please keep it concise, as this is displayed whenever the meeting information displayed or printed.

THE FORMATS CHECKBOXES

This is merely a set of checkboxes that you can check, indicating what meeting formats apply to the meeting.

CREATING A NEW MEETING

In the Editor Screen list, if you touch the “+” button in the top, right of the screen, you will be given the opportunity to create a new meeting.

Touching this button will open a screen very similar to the Meeting Editor Screen, but with a pink background, and no “This Meeting Is Published” switch:

The top of this screen will only have two buttons: “Cancel” and “Save”.

If you touch “Cancel”, then you will simply be returned to the list, and nothing changes.

If you touch “Save” (assuming “Save” is enabled), then you will be given the following confirmation alert:

If you touch “Cancel”, you will be returned to the Create New Meeting Editor Screen, and nothing changes.

If you touch “Create New Meeting”, then a new, unpublished meeting is created, using the settings you entered, and you will be sent to the Meeting Editor for the new meeting.

RESTORING DELETED MEETINGS

A powerful capability of the app is the ability to restore meetings that have been deleted (as opposed to “unpublished”).

If you select the “Deleted Meetings” Tab, you will be presented with a “busy” screen that may last for some time (if you have a long history of deleted meetings):

Once the meetings have all been fetched, you are presented with a list, sorted in reverse chronological order:

If you tap on one of the meetings in the list, the following confirmation alert will appear:

If you touch “Cancel”, then you will simply be returned to the list.

If you touch “Restore Meeting”, then the meeting will be recreated in its entirety, but will be unpublished, and you will be taken to the Meeting Editor for the recreated meeting.

THE ABOUT SCREEN

In the Main Connection Screen, there is a small “Gear” icon in the bottom, right of the screen. Touching this brings in the “About This App” screen.

There’s not much here. If you tap on the “Beanie Button” in the middle of the screen, you will be brought to this page.

On the bottom of this page, is a button called “Remove All Saved Logins and URLs”. If you touch this, you will be given a confirmation prompt. If you answer in the affirmative, then all the stored logins, Root Server URLs and passwords will be removed. You’ll need to log in all over again.