Getting Started with. Dynamic Committee Homepages. For ABA Members. Created: 12/2005. Last Updated: 12/2014

Transcription

1 Getting Started with Dynamic Committee Homepages For ABA Members Created: 12/2005 Last Updated: 12/2014

2 Table of Contents Introduction Creating Your DCH Pages Edit Mode and Standard Mode Editing a Module Adding & Deleting Modules Modules Who We Are More About Us Leadership Message From the Chair Programs, Meetings, and Events Related Products Sites of Interest Other Links of Interest Newsletters & Publications Related Resources Subcommittees Advanced Options Choosing a Layout Enrollment Options Join Us Module Questions & Answers 2

3 Introduction What are Dynamic Committee Homepages? Dynamic Committee Homepages are a means of enabling ABA staff and committee chairs to create and maintain committee website content without the knowledge of HTML. Once enabled, committee chairs, co-chairs and sub-committee chairs can be given access to post and edit all content present on their committee homepage. The contribution process consists of visiting the committee homepage, entering edit mode, making selections, providing desired content and submitting your changes. How do they work? DCH s (Dynamic Committee Homepages) combine information from the ABA s membership, committee, and meetings systems with text and files provided by you to display the final committee homepage. Edit permissions are determined by ABA staff. DCH harvests information from internal systems to display committee leadership and contact information, the committee roster, and the committee name. It also uses meeting information present in the meeting systems to display section meetings available in the online calendar, and link them to their respective registration pages. How do I know if Dynamic Committee Homepages would be useful for my section? Any section that is currently maintaining committee pages on the ABA website would most likely benefit from using DCH instead. DCH simplifies the web content contribution process by automatically posting information from internal systems, so that it does not need to be re-keyed to appear on the committee website. Also, allowing committee chairs to post their own content, eliminates the need to communicate desired changes to section staff. Turnaround time for posting committee materials to the web is greatly reduced, and the current person-toperson communication necessary to post materials is almost entirely eliminated. If you have any questions about getting started with DCH, contact your ABA Entity representative. Editing your DCH pages You must first have permissions from ABA Staff prior to being able to edit a DCH page. If you do not have contributor rights, please consult your ABA Entity representative. If you have contributor access, follow the steps below: 1. Navigate to your DCH page. 2. Sign in with your ABA website credentials. 3. After a successful sign in, a message at the top of the page will indicate you have access to edit this page. You will also be able to enter into Edit mode to modify your DCH page. 4. Click the Edit link to modify your DCH page. 3

4 Editing a Module Once in Edit mode, to edit any of the modules, select the Edit link under the module you wish to edit. Example: Let s start with making a change to the Who We Are module. You are brought to a screen that looks something like this The name of your section, as well as the name of the committee home page you are creating will appear across the top of the page. Next will be a dynamic salutation, welcoming the person who is logged in. In the welcome message under the salutation, the title of the logged in person will appear (in this example, section web contributor). At the end of this paragraph will be the address of a contact person that contributors may reach should any questions arise. Each module has a web enable checkbox to indicate whether or not to include that specific item on the final DCH page (a checked box means display, an unchecked box means do not display ). Let s try removing the Who We Are module from the DCH by un-checking the web enable box on the screen, and scrolling down to the bottom of the page, then hitting SUBMIT. Agree to the pop-up confirmation message. 4

5 You ll notice that the DCH page now no longer contains the Who We Are message. Adding & Deleting Modules You can also add and delete modules from the DCH page all at once by using the Add/Delete Module link located at the top of the screen. Click on the link. A screen similar to the following should result: 5

6 Notice that Who We Are (About The Committee Test) is unchecked. That s because we previously removed the web enable flag from the individual module. You can remove modules in bulk by un-checking boxes here. Or, you can enable modules not enabled by default, or that have previously been disabled by checking their respective box. Let s re-enable Who We Are (About the Committee Test) and SUBMIT. 6

7 Modules: Who We Are To edit a module, click the EDIT button next to the module that you would like to modify. In this case, let s edit the Who We Are module again. This time, we are going to change the content of the Who We Are module to include our committee s mission statement. You can edit the Custom Title of any module by providing alternative text over the suggested text that appears by default. In this case, we re going to replace Who We Are with Mission Statement. We are also going to provide the text of our mission statement in the area provided. You also have the option of using the following text editing features. You might recognize them from Microsoft Word. You can mouse over the buttons for further explanation. Boldface, Italicize, or Underline Text by highlighting the text you wish to emphasize and clicking on the buttons provided. Align your text to the right, center, or left by highlighting the text you wish to align, and clicking on the buttons provided. Create ordered or unordered lists. Indent or outdent your text. Insert a horizontal line or rule. Insert special characters like Trademarks or Copyrights. Insert hyperlinks by highlighting the text that you want hyperlinked, and clicking the hyperlink button. Then, provide the destination address. You can also insert mailto: links by choosing from the link type drop-down. You are limited to 1,500 characters in the content area, including spaces, letters, line breaks, etc. 7

8 If you would like to add more complex HTML coding to the Who We Are area, or would just like to see what s going on behind the scenes, you can Switch to HTML Mode. Click on the link provided near the bottom of the content box. Note: Be careful when cutting and pasting text from other applications into the content area box. Applications like Word, or WordPerfect allow the user to utilize various character sets and special characters. These characters might not always function correctly when present in the DCH content areas. A good practice is to backspace over quotation marks, apostrophes and other special characters after you ve pasted in the text, and re-type those characters while inside of the DCH content area. Similarly, make sure to check any hyperlinks that you are taking over from Word, as they may not function in DCH until they are recreated using the DCH hyperlink tool. Modules: More About Us The More About Us content module is contains exactly the same functionality as the Who We Are module. It is intended to allow you another 1,500 character area to use at your discretion. As with all content areas, you can modify the sub-header to serve your own purpose for the module. The More About Us module does not appear on the DCH page by default, and must be enabled using the Add/Delete Modules link located at the top of the DCH edit mode screen. Modules: Leadership This area allows you the option of displaying your committee's current leadership positions. To display a position, the position must first be established in the Personify system. To add a new position, enter the position code separated by a comma. Example: 0450,0070,0150 8

9 The displayed names are also directly linked to the online member directory, allowing your users to click on any of the listed names, taking them directly to additional details about that member. You'll also notice a roster link on the final committee page, once it has been created. This link also utilizes the member directory to display all committee members. You can determine here whether or not you'd like the roster link to appear on the final committee page. Note: Access to the ABA Online Member Directory is restricted to ABA Members Only. Outside of ABA staff offices, members will be prompted to log in before accessing any member or roster information. The directory is updated on a nightly basis, so rosters and member profile information will not immediately reflect changes made by staff. Modules: Message From the Chair This area is used to display a general message from your committee s chair or co-chair(s). If you are using layout option 1, a link to read the chair s message will be located beneath the chair s name, in the leadership area. Clicking on this link will launch another window with the chair s message present. With layout 2, the chair s message will appear in the main portion of the page, just like the Who We Are and More About Us messages. Layout can be changed in Advanced Options. Modules: Programs, Meetings, and Events Custom Events Custom events can be entered manually in DCH. To add a custom event, follow these steps: 9

10 1.) Select the Display Custom Events checkbox, and indicate how many custom events you wish to display. 2.) Select the start and finish dates of your event by clicking in the respective boxes, and choosing a date from the calendar. 3.) Then, provide a title for your event. 4.) If you like, you can provide a URL link to a website that contains more detailed information. Note: Please be certain to use fully qualified URL s when entering web addresses (i.e. Don t forget the at the beginning. 5.) You can also provide a description (1,000 characters in length) telling more about your event, or how to sign-up. Modules: Related Products This area allows you to display a product from the ABA Web Store ( on your committee page. To display a product on your committee page, enter the product code of the product you would like to display in the product field. The product that you choose will appear on the committee page. The product must be an active product in Personify. This is a great way to highlight a publication that was authored by a member of your committee, or contains materials relevant to the committee s mission. 10

11 Please keep in mind if any products being highlighted are deactivated in Personify, they will not appear on your committee page. Modules: Sites of Interest/Other Links These areas allow you to enter links and upload files to appear in one list on the committee homepage. Links: Links can be either internal ABA links or external links to other websites. You can also provide a description for each link. These sections also use variable drop lists, allowing you to enter up to 10 separate links each. For each site you wish to display, please enter a description for that site, as well as a fully qualified URL (i.e. File Uploads: A drop list appears for you to select the number of files that you would like to upload to the server. You may enter up to 10 files at a time. For each file that you wish to upload, you will see a BROWSE button. Clicking on this button will display a select window that will allow you to choose a file from your local computer to upload. You may only select documents that have an extension type.doc,.zip,.xls,.ppt, or.pdf. All other extensions cannot be uploaded. Each file must also be 2 megabytes or less. Each committee can upload up to 10 megabytes of content in each of these areas. Once a file has been selected, you have the option of entering a brief (75 11

12 character) description of the file. Note: All files uploaded will be scanned with anti-virus software prior to being made available to the general public. Files found to have a virus will be deleted. Additionally, all files that contain spaces in the filename or exceed 2MB will not be uploaded. You will receive a pop-up message indicating that the upload did not succeed. The name of all uploaded files will display, as well as each file's size, the last modified date, the 12

13 description entered for that file, and a delete checkbox. To delete an uploaded file, just select the checkbox next to the file in question, and click the submit button at the bottom of the page. A running total of how much space you have available for any additional file uploads appears on the screen. Display Order To alter the display order of the uploaded files and links, you can specify an order number in the boxes provided. Modules: Newsletters & Publications/Related Resources These areas allow you to upload additional documents to the website for your website visitors to access. The instructions are the same as above. Modules: Subcommittees If a committee is set up in the committee system to be the parent of one or more subcommittees, task forces, or other types of child entities, you will be presented with an option to display those child entities on the DCH page. They are listed according to what class, or type, of child entity they are. As with other content areas, the sub-title is customizable. If DCH pages exist for those child entities, they will be automatically hyperlinked from the list. 13

14 Editing Your Committee Name This area allows you to modify the displayed committee name for the completed web page. Making any changes here will not change the committee name in the ABA s membership system. The edited name will only appear on your committee website. Advanced Options: Layout Option 2 should be selected for the Layout option. The module color should be set to ABA blue. Doing so will ensure your DCH page matches the rest of the ABA website design. Enrollment Options: Join Us Module In order to allow the Join Us module to display on your page, the Open Enrollment option must be checked in Personify. If this option is not enabled, this module will not display on your DCH page. 14

15 The Subtitle of this particular module cannot be modified. The module is user specific, as it will only display certain links for certain users. There are 3 possible links that this module might display. Join the ABA Join Our Section Join Our Committee Depending on who is logged-in to the website, the appropriate links will appear. If the user is not logged-in, all 3 links appear. If the logged-in user is already a member of the ABA, the first link will not be present. If the user is a member of the section, the first 2 links will not be present. And, if the user is a member of the committee, the entire module disappears. If your committee is not in part of a section, but rather a forum, or a division, you can edit the Join Our Section language accordingly in the provided text field. To enable online committee enrollment contact your section staff. Questions & Answers Q1: We have a new chair for our committee, and have entered this information into Personify. Do we have to update our final DCH page to include this change? A1: No. The leadership display pulls data directly from the committee system. Any changes in that system will be reflected in real time on your final DCH page. 15

16 Q3: Our committee chair s term expires in August. Once we have a new chair, what must I do to allow the new chair access rights to their committee page? A4: You need to do nothing. The DCH application pulls directly from the committee system, so new chairpersons will automatically have access rights, and outgoing leadership will have their rights suspended, automatically. Q5: I am having trouble uploading files. Some files are present as links on the DCH page, but don t function. Who should I contact? A5: Contact your section or committee staff to work with the information systems department on resolving the issue. Q6: I am not receiving copies of online enrollments. What should I do first? A6: Verify that the option to be cc d on enrollments is on. This functionality is present in the Enrollment Options area. Next, verify that the is not being sorted as spam before contacting section or committee staff. 16