General
Use this dialogue to setup how Meeting Schedule Assistant will behave. It determines what information gets displayed on the schedules and how the schedule dates get calculated. All of these options also get saved with the schedules.
Learn more about the available Options by looking through the rest of this help topic. Or, as an alternative, click on the option you are interested in on the screenshot above.
Report Mode
You can select from several report modes.
This determines what dates get generated on the reports. The default mode is Meeting, so each row in the report represents one meeting. In Weekly mode, each row in the report represents one week.
First day of week
Use the dropdown list to choose which day is the first day of the week. The default is Monday.
The days of the week listed are determined from the language you have selected. It is important to set these to the correct days, as they are used to calculate the right dates to show on the schedule that gets created.
Date Format
Dates are normally displayed on the report using the short date format (this is managed by your computers Regional settings). But you have full control over how you want the dates to be displayed.
In order to use custom dates you must set the Use Custom Date option. This will enable the edit box and dropdown list. Use the edit box to specify the format string that you want to use or use the dropdown list to choose from 11 predefined date formats. You may alter a predefined format string after you have selected it from the dropdown list. If you do this, the dropdown list will automatically change to say User Defined. If the days of the week and months of the year format codes are used, they will show in the same language as the program interface. The format string can contain any number of special characters to represent parts of the date. Any other text simply gets displayed in the date.
Here is a list of the special characters:
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%a |
Abbreviated day of the week. |
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%A |
Day of the week. |
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%b |
Abbreviated month. |
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%B |
Month. |
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%d |
Day of the month as digits with leading zeros for single-digit days (01 - 31). |
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%m |
Month as digits with leading zeros for single-digit months (01 - 12). |
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%y |
Year represented only by the last two digits. A leading zero is added for single-digit years (00 - 99). |
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%Y |
Year with century. |
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%#d |
If the # character precedes these formatting codes then leading zeroes will be removed (if any). |
Since version 19.0.4 you can also use the following formatting codes.
The following languages should continue to use the aforementioned formatting codes instead: Amharic, Arabic, Aukan, Chinese Simplified, Gun, Haitian Creole, Saramaccan and Sranantongo.
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d |
Day of the month as digits without leading zeros for single-digit days (1 - 31). |
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dd |
Day of the month as digits with leading zeros for single-digit days (01 - 31). |
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ddd |
Abbreviated day of the week. |
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dddd |
Day of the week. |
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M |
Month as digits without leading zeros for single-digit months (1 - 12). |
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MM |
Month as digits with leading zeros for single-digit months (01 - 12). |
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MMM |
Abbreviated month. |
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MMMM |
Month. |
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y |
Year represented only by the last digit (0 - 9). |
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yy |
Year represented only by the last two digits. A leading zero is added for single-digit years (00 - 99). |
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yyyy |
Year represented by a full four digits. |
The application uses single quotation marks to mark characters to display exactly as specified. If the application must display a single quotation mark, it should place two single quotation marks in a row. For example, 'abc''bar', is displayed as "abc'bar".
Report Columns
If you never have to deal with the Platform or Platform Mike assignments, then they can be excluded from the schedule by setting these options.These options are checked by default.
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All the custom assignments that you have added into the program through the Custom Assignments manager are also listed here. |
You can exclude these assignments from any of the meetings on the schedule by using the drop-down list.
Number of users / assignments
Use these drop-down lists to select how many microphone users, sound users, attendant users and cleaning assignments you need.
You can choose from:
- 0 to 4 sound users
- 0 to 6 microphone users
- 0 to 4 attendants
- 0 to 2 cleaning assignments
This seems to be adequate for most congregations needs.
These setting determine how many columns are displayed on the schedule for the Microphone, Sound, Attendant and Cleaning assignments. The default settings are 2 microphone users, 1 sound user, 1 attendant and 1 cleaning.
Show Notes
Set this option if you want to have your notes shown by default for every new schedule you produce.
Offline Help Documentation
Meeting Schedule Assistant uses online help documentation by default. This is to keep the setup file size down. However this does mean that you will need a connection to the internet for using the help system.
Set this option if you prefer to make the help documentation available offline. The application will download a setup from the website and install the documentation (which is in CHM format).
Display Tooltips
Context help is provided through tooltips. These can be switched off using this option. They are displayed by default.
Tooltips are of limited use. Many new features do not have them. This was to keep the amount of translations to a minimum.
Schedule Types
These hold their own copy of the programs settings. They are designed to help you to quickly customise how Meeting Schedule Assistant behaves. These are also included when you perform a backup or restore of the Meeting Schedule Assistant settings.
Load
You must select a schedule type from the dropdown list (the default is always listed first) before you will be able to load it. Once it has been loaded, it becomes the active schedule type. All changes made to the program will be associated with this schedule type.
Save As
You must enter a description for the new schedule type before it can be saved. Saving a new schedule type will make it active. All changes made to the program will be associated with this schedule type. You are not allowed to duplicate a schedule type description.
Delete
Press this button to delete the currently selected schedule type from the program. Note that you are not allowed to delete the default schedule type. You are asked to confirm your actions because this operation can't be undone.
Set File Associations
Meeting Schedule Assistant is available as both 32 bit and 64 bit versions.
The software uses two types of files:
- MWB — Meeting Workbook Schedule (used by the Meeting Editor)
- SRR — Assignments Rota (used by the Assignments Editor)
If you decide to start using the other bit edition then you can click this button to update the file associations.
Make sure you press the OK button to save your changes to the application settings. They will be retained until you adjust them again.