Jan
30
Written by:
bbussiere
1/30/2012 10:27 AM
The reporting form that our District Deputies will be using between now and April has been replaced on this site with a replica using an earlier version of Word. Although there are widgets available for download that will enable older versions of Word to open the newer versions, and which work quite well, the "read only" documents with several blank spaces to fill in having been causing problems for some. Putting an older version has made that better, but we really can't say that it has fixed the issue completely. Some quirks are still being reported, but at least they’re serious enough to prevent the work from getting done.
As wonderful as all this technology may be, it's a constant battle to make things work across OS platforms, versions and ages of files and programs in the various environments. In the future, we may be looking into some alternatives for these reporting forms. PDF certainly offers us some options for form completion, but we're not ready to pull the trigger on anything just yet. We ask our District Deputies' indulgence in our endeavor to modernize and make things easier. Hopefully, we can all live with the way things stand at the moment.
On the subject of Deputies, this is a piece of old news, but it emerged before this blog began, so you may not be aware. Prior to early November, you could go the "OUR LEADERSHIP" drop down and find a list of District Deputies and Area Deputies, but you were not able to click on an email link for our Area Deputies. There weren’t any! This had been an oversight during the time during which our web site and its management changed and evolved. So when we updated the lists after October’s Grand Lodge session, it was decided to entirely overhaul these portions of the site. It was much more efficient to add and correct email links at the same time we were updating the names, than it would have been doing these operations separately.
The somewhat longer wait seemed worth it, because we were not only able to make all Area Deputies’ and Assistant Area Deputies' names "email clickable", we also added the names of the Blue Lightning Coordinators.
I'm saying all this not for bragging rights for the committee, but rather to lead up to a request of those whose names are listed in the sections mentioned here. Please conduct a test of your link to see if you can send yourself an email. While you’re at it, make sure we spelled your name correctly. Let the committee know of any discrepancies.
Thanks again for all your help and support. It’s appreciated.