Author malw
Date 01 Jan 07, 07:43
Views 3374 Keywords Description A technical explanation of the role assignment engine and the settings it uses. Article scope easy-Speak information |
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How the Automatic Role Assignment Works |
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Assigning members to meeting roles
If you have authority to assign members to roles for a meeting, the 'assign' button will be visible when you view the agenda screen prior to the meeting.
You are assigned to be the meeting manager for this meeting Please refer to this article for instruction on the use of the assignment screen: http://d71.org/kb.php?mode=article&k=33
In normal circumstances you will not need to understand the logic behind the automatic assignment process but, if you have problems assigning a new role that you have created specially for your club, or if you are just curious, you may be interested to read this technical description of how the automatic allocation engine works.
Some roles should be held back until the member has sufficient experience. All members should be assigned each of the roles over time. All members should be assigned a fair mix of roles at fair intervals. Some roles will always be delivered by the Club President or other Club officer. Some roles may be better held back from experienced members to give new members more opportunity to participate. After a major role, requiring significant preparation, a member should not be assigned another major role immediately. No member should be asked to repeat the same role too often. Evaluators should be assigned with the most experienced last (to fit with the convention of least experienced speakers first) The system must be able to double up on role assignments if there are only a few members available for the meeting. The system must allow manual role assignment in priority to any automatic processing. If members 'refuse' a role, or cannot attend the meeting, auto-allocation may be run again to fill the gaps. Auto allocation for each meeting must count speeches that have been made, or are scheduled to be made, prior to this meeting. All calculations for experience should be made by counting meetings rather than time (to allow for clubs that meet weekly, close for the summer or put an additional meeting into the schedule). Some members may be inactive for a period of time and should be excluded from the auto-allocation routine. Explanation of the easy-Speak Auto-Assign engine
Attendance is 'Yes' or 'Unknown' (Inactive members are only included if they have said that they WILL attend) Do not yet have a role at this meeting
How recently they took a 'Major' role How recently they took THIS role How many meetings they have attended How many speeches they have made To allow for an experienced Toastmaster being newly recruited into this club, any member with a CC or CL etc is recognised to have a minimum of 10 speeches and 20 meetings. Since the system may be used to assign roles several meetings in advance, any speeches or roles assigned between today's date and the meeting date are assumed to be accepted and are included in the calculations.
Minimum number of speeches delivered before a member should be assigned this role, The setting for 'do not repeat more often than ...' for the role The 'try not to assign to a member who has attended more than ... meetings' setting for this role Some roles are reserved for the Club President (President's Introduction, Club Business, Awards...).
The system then checks vacant roles against available members and calculates how often, on average, each member should be assigned a role. It then tries to assign each role, in the sequence defined in the Club Control Panel (easiest first), beginning with the least experienced member and anyone who has never taken this role.
If this is not possible it will try again - but without the 'try not to assign to experienced members' setting. If this is not possible it will try again - but ignore the 'average number of meetings between two roles' setting. If this is not possible it will try again - but ignore the 'do not repeat this role more often than' setting. If this is not possible it will try again - but ignore the required experience settings. If there are not sufficient members for all roles the program assigns the more difficult roles first, starting with the most experienced members. If this is the case a warning message is shown at the foot of the allocation panel to prompt the meeting manager to double-assign the easier roles by hand.
The format of the log is as follows:
The top section shows the Club name, date, time and member using the assignment screen.
The list of available members shows for each member:
M: (Meetings attended) S: (Speeches made) L-R: (Last took a role ... meetings ago) L-M: (Last took a major role ... meetings ago) The list of unassigned roles shows the allocation sequence and name for each role. The next section shows the process of assigning a member to each role:
In this example the Grammarian was assigned at the first attempt but evaluator 3 went through several attempts (see preceeding paragraph for an explanation of this). The meaning of the codes shown against each role name are:
MinS: (Minimum speeches) MinR: (Do not repeat more often than...) Max: (Try not to assign to a member who has attended more than .... meetings)
Check Repeat: (Do not repeat this role more often than ...) Check Average: (Do not assign any role more often than ...) Check Max: (Try to avoid assigning to a member who has attended more meetings than...) Each member's username is shown for each pass of the assignment process with a message, either saying that the role was assigned to them, or the reason why it was not.
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