IMPORTANT: This is for a Legacy Product. Please be sure you have a Legacy Product before reading this item.
The end result of this process is a Configuration file that you will open and use each time the group meets.
In this section of the user manual, we will describe how to configure each option in the system to match how your group deliberates as well as how to create and edit an agenda prior to a meeting. All of these options are on the Setup Tab of the application.
Configuration Files
When you enter a group roster and establish its meeting rules, you are creating a RollCall Pro Configuration file that you re-use each time that group meets. And on any given computer where you have RollCall Pro installed, you may create and use any number of configurations – one for each group.
To save a Configuration file, click the red Save button. If this is a new file you’ve just created, use the File Save dialog to enter a name for your configuration and save it. This name will be reflected in the Configuration File name field.
To load an existing Configuration file, click the green Load button and use the File Open dialog to select the configuration file you previously created and saved.
Roster
The Roster Tab contains all the settings related to the membership of the group and each member’s privileges:
The Roster Table has a row for each member of the group, which is controlled by the Number of Members setting. A group can have up to 72 members. Use the up/down controls on the Number of Members setting until it matches the size of your group. Keep in mind that a group might include non-voting members who need to participate in the request to speak process, such as an attorney, an administrator, or a deputy.
Once you have selected the appropriate group size, adjust the Quorum setting accordingly. The quorum should be based solely on the total number of voters. It is not affected by the number of non-voters in the group.
Each row in the table contains information about a single member of the roster:
The Name field holds the name of the member that is shown on the clerk’s display as well as on the Public Display.
The Login Id and Password fields hold the values the member will enter into the Member App in order to log into or connect to the Meeting Manager.
The Voter checkbox indicates whether a member is a voter or non-voter. If this box is checked, the member is a voter.
The Chair? selector is a radio button that – if selected – indicates that the member is the chairperson of the group.
The Keypad field is used in two ways:
- If you are using proprietary SideKeys keypads as member inputs, this field indicates which keypad a member is using in order to participate. This field is numeric and may contain any number from 1-72.
- If you are using our companion request to speak system, RTS Pro, this field is an index field. It doesn’t matter what number you put into a particular Keypad field. What does matter is that you put the same number into the Keypad field in both RollCall Pro’s roster and RTS Pro’s roster for the same member.
If you are using RollCall Pro standalone (not linked to RTS Pro), and your members are using tablet devices, the Keypad field may be left blank.
When you are finished entering your group’s membership information or when you change any setting on any tab, it’s a good idea to click the red Save button at the top of the Setup Tab to save your settings.
Voting
The Voting Tab contains all the settings related to voting, for example:
- Whether or not abstains are allowed
- How and when voting positions should be revealed
- Whether or not to capture motions & seconds in the system
- How voting buttons should be labeled on member devices
- How and where results should be saved
Meeting Rules
The Meeting Rules Tab holds the following options:
Under the heading of Who Votes, you will find the Chairperson Votes setting:
It has 3 possible options: Always, Never, and To Break Ties. If your chairperson is a regular voter, choose the “Always” setting. On the other hand, if your chairperson only votes in the case of a tie, choose the “To Break Ties” setting. And if your chairperson never votes but “only” presides over the meeting, choose the “Never” setting.
Under the heading of Treatment of Abstains, you will find the Allow Abstains settings:
If your group’s by-laws permit members to cast abstentions (a vote that is neither a yes nor a no), then choose the “Yes” setting for the Allow Abstains option. If not, choose the “No” setting.
If your chairperson only votes in the case of a tie, the Allow Chair to Abstain option controls whether or not the chairperson must break the tie by voting yes or no or whether the chair may abstain, preserving the tie.
Use the Default Voting Criteria option to select the default criteria to use on any roll call votes:
This setting has 8 possible options:
“Majority”, “2/3”, and “3/4” determine the pass/fail outcome based on the number of voters who are present, not the full membership.
If you select the “Custom” option, the Number of Yes Votes Needed option will activate and allow you to select the exact number of yes votes you need to pass an item.
Choose the setting that represents the voting criteria you typically use in roll call votes, keeping in mind that you can associate different voting criteria with different agenda items in an agenda. The agenda development process is discussed at the end of this section of the manual.
Under the heading of Vote Display, there are 2 settings:
The Display Vote Tally setting determines whether the voters’ positions will be revealed “Automatically, After Last Voter Registers” or “Manually, Initiated by Clerk”. Choose the setting that you prefer, given that the “Manual” option gives you the opportunity to ask if everyone is finished and satisfied with their voting positions prior to their being revealed.
The Display Voting Positions setting has 3 options: All at Once, As Cast, and Anonymously. As the name implies, if you would like for all voting positions to be displayed or revealed at the same time, choose the “All at Once” setting. On the other hand, if you would like for voters’ positions to be revealed as soon as they are cast, choose the “As Cast” setting. The Anonymous setting will never reveal individual voters’ positions; it will only show a vote tally and a pass/fail outcome. This setting is appropriate for officer elections where the voting positions are Smith/Jones/Miller, for example, instead of Yes/No/Abstain.
Limit Voting Time, if set to “Yes” and given a value in terms of seconds, allows a group to limit voting to a specified time limit. This option, like the public speaker time, just be enabled on each agenda item for which voting time should be limited.
Motions & Seconds
The Motions & Seconds Tab contains 3 settings:
The first setting, Activate Motions/Seconds, indicates whether or not you wish to capture motions and seconds within the system. A “Yes” setting will allow the system to capture motions and seconds during deliberation, and they will automatically be recorded in the meeting’s results document.
The Confirm Motions/Seconds setting determines whether or not to display to the clerk a confirmation dialog after each motion and second is recorded. If you are planning to indicate motions and seconds by means of clicking on your screen next to members’ names, you may want a confirmation dialog to appear so that you can, for example, correct a mistake. If members are making motions and seconds using their tablet devices or keypads, this option can be set to “No”.
The possible ways in which motions and seconds are indicated to the system is determined by the Initiate Motions/Seconds setting. Its three options are “By Members or Clerk”, “Motion by Clerk, Second by Members”, or “By Clerk Only “. With “By Members or Clerk” and “By Clerk Only”, the clerk will be able to click on checkboxes labeled “Motion” and “Second” on the screen next to the names of the members who made them, but the “By Members or Clerk” option will additionally allow members to click a “Motion” or “Second” button on their devices’ screens to initiate them directly. The “Motion by Clerk, Second by Members” option restricts the indication of a motion to the clerk and allows only members to indicate seconds using app or keypad buttons.
The Chairperson Can Motion/Second checkbox controls whether or not the chairperson is allowed to motion and second. If checked, the chair will see motion and second buttons in the Member App whenever the group is discussion an agenda item – just like “regular” members.
Enable or Disable Amendments via the Member App
After an agenda item gets a motion and a second, an amendment might be proposed by one of your members. If you are using our default settings for motions and seconds, members can push an orange AMEND button on their Member App display to propose an amendment:
Since the proposal of an amendment forces the group to stop deliberating the original motion and turn its attention to a proposed amendment, some users prefer that members propose amendments verbally after being recognized to speak. To remove the Amend button from members’ app displays, select “No” as your setting for the Enable Amendments via App option on the Motions and Seconds tab:
Display
The Display Tab contains settings related to the group’s name and logo as well as to the text of button labels that will be shown on members’ tablets.
The group’s name and its associated logo as displayed on various public screen are entered or selected using these controls:
Enter the group’s name (for example, Johnson County Board) into the Group Name field, then click “Update” to publish this name throughout the system wherever it is used. This name is also used as the suffix of your text-based Results file.
To display a Group Logo, click the “Load” button. This action will display a File Open dialog that will allow you to navigate and point to a file that you wish to use. Valid file types are JPG, PNG, and BMP. A scrollable area toward the bottom of the Display Tab will display a preview of the logo you’ve selected.
The actual text labels displayed on member’s device buttons as well as the text that is shown on-screen and in results for things like “Yes” and “No” are established in the Voter Button Setup table:
Customize the values in the Button Label column to correspond to your group’s customs. Many groups, for example, use “Yea/Nay” rather than “Yes/No”, and this table allows you to record your own values.
Note: The last 3 items in this table are not like the others. EXCUSED, LATE, and RECUSED are 3 alternate forms of “ABSENT” that the RollCall Pro operator can choose to display instead of “ABSENT”, if needed.
The App Display settings allow you to control whether or not to display agenda item summaries and your group’s logo within the Member App:
Check the checkbox to the left of Show Summary In App to display each agenda item’s summary on the app. Though the item summary display area on the app is scrollable, you may not wish to use members’ limited display “real estate” in this way, especially if members can easily see the Public Display where this information is always visible.
Similarly, you may not want to utilize members’ device displays to Show (the group’s) Logo In App, in which case you’d want to uncheck this option.
The Discussion Display settings allow you to control whether or not you wish to display agenda item summaries in full screen mode as each item is brought up for discussion and for how long.
If you don’t want to Display Item Summaries on the Public Display, choose the “No” option. (“Yes” is the default.) Even if you choose not to display item summaries below item names on the Public Display, you may still use the Maximize/Minimize buttons on the Meeting Tab, if and when you wish to display the full wording of a resolution to the group.
If you wish to display item summaries in full screen mode manually (or perhaps not at all), select the “No” option for Auto-Display Item Summaries. This will allow you to use the Maximize/Minimize buttons on the Meeting Tab to display the full wording of a resolution to the group.
By default, User-adjustable name font sizes is unchecked, allowing RollCall Pro to auto-maximize the size of member names on the Public Display. On the other hand, if your group has members with extremely long names, RollCall Pro may re-size the text of those names to fit the space provided, causing member names to appear in different font sizes. If you wish to control member name font sizes manually, uncheck this option and use the Edit menu options to adjust member names manually.
Forcing Members to be in Sync with the Group
The Member App has two display modes: Full Featured and Lite:
In Full Featured mode, your members will be able to see all of the items in your agenda and be able to navigate to any item of their choice and read about it, which means members might not be – literally – on the same page as you are. If you want to disable members’ ability to navigate the meeting agenda on their own, click the checkbox next to Force Agenda Sync on the Display tab:
Note: If your members are in LITE mode in the Member App, they will automatically be in sync with where you are in the meeting’s agenda.
Viewing the Member App Display
The “dashboard” for the user of RollCall Pro is the Meeting Manager display, however, the actions taken on the Meeting Manager govern what’s being displayed on members’ app screens. To help the Meeting Manager user see what’s on members’ app screens, a Show Account login can be set up to allow for the display of the Member App screen on a spare tablet located near the Meeting Manager. To set up a login to be used for this purpose, fill in the Username and Password for the Show Account:
Results
The settings on the Results Tab control how and where RollCall Pro’s results are captured and/or saved:
Under the heading of Record Results, there are two settings. To ensure that RollCall Pro keeps a text record or journal of your group’s meeting outcomes, the Record Results option should be set to “Yes”, otherwise no text results are kept. The location of the results file is determined by the Results Directory setting. Click the “Browse” button to open a folder dialog and navigate to your desired results file(s) directory.
Under the heading of Print Results, there are also two settings or checkboxes that allow you capture each agenda item’s vote tally screen and Send Results to Printer or Send Results to JPG or both. The vote tally screen will show voters’ positions as well as the pass/fail outcome, so it is a useful file to have on hand in some form to refer back to later.
Under the heading of Swagit Controls, there are also two settings that allow you to communicate with a Swagit video encoder “in the background” automatically as you use RollCall Pro during a meeting. Enter the Connection Address for your video encoder in the field provided. Then click the Enable checkbox to Send Data to Encoder.
Request to Speak
The Request to Speak (or RTS) process is an electronic hand-raising option that is very useful to the group chairperson as well as to other group members and the audience. It enables members to request to speak without interrupting anyone (and without having to be seen by the chairperson), and it can place them in an ordered list or queue.
4 options govern how the RTS process will be managed in a meeting:
Enable Request to Speak Sequencing, if set to Yes, will display 2 buttons on members’ devices – one for requesting to speak and one for cancelling (or withdrawing) a request. The actual text of these buttons is controlled using the Voter Button Setup Table on the Display Tab under Voting (covered 2 topics earlier). If this option is set to “No”, then the RTS features of RollCall Pro are disabled and RTS-related buttons will not appear on member devices.
Display RTS Requests, if set to “Yes”, will cause members’ requests to speak to display on the clerk’s Meeting Manager screen and on the Public Display.
Number the RTS Queue, if set to “Yes”, will also number the members’ requests to speak on the clerk’s Meeting Manager screen and on the Public Display.
If you are using RollCall Pro in standalone mode without connecting it to RTS Pro (our separate microphone & camera control system), then these 3 options are the only ones that are relevant to the request to speak process.
On the other hand, if your chairperson is using RTS Pro to provide touchscreen control of microphones & cameras in the room, then RollCall Pro needs to be connected to RTS Pro so that requests to speak are “passed on” to RTS Pro.
The RTS Receiver IP value is the IP address of the computer where RTS Pro is running. After entering this value (which is shown on the chairperson’s RTS Pro screen), click “Connect” to establish a connection between the RollCall Pro PC and the chair’s RTS Pro PC.
The Request to Speak Tab also holds Public Timer controls:
The Show Public Timer option governs whether or not the public speaker timer is available for you to use in a meeting. If this option is set to “Yes”, it does not cause the timer to display on any given agenda item. You make the determination – item by item in your agenda (the following topic) – as to when the timer will be on display during your meeting, but if you wish to use it at all, you must set this option to “Yes”.
Though the amount of time available for speaking is adjustable on the fly on the Meeting Tab, the Default Time option sets the starting value for the timer, which is established via the dropdown menu in 15-second increments.
The Play Timer Expiration Sound option determines whether or not to play a sound when the timer reaches a zero value. If set to “Yes”, this option will cause a sound file named “TimerExpirationSound.wav” to play. This file is located in the program’s Sounds folder, along with other sample sounds. To change the sound that’s played when time expires, simply rename one of the sample sounds (or another .wav file you prefer) to “TimerExpirationSound.wav”.
The Display Timer Alert option determines whether or not to change the timer background color to red at some point in the countdown sequence. The value entered into the Seconds Remaining field determines the timer’s alert level.
The Play Alert Sound option determines whether or not to play a sound when the timer’s alert level has been reached. If set to “Yes”, this option will cause a sound file named “AlertSound.wav” to play. This file is also located in the program’s Sounds folder. To change the sound that’s played when the timer’s alert level has been reached, rename one of the sample sounds (or another .wav file you prefer) to “AlertSound.wav”.
Agenda
The Agenda Tab is your home base for creating and editing an agenda, possibly from your office a day or two in advance of the meeting:
When you first begin, you have no agenda loaded, so RollCall Pro gives you 2 choices for getting started quickly: Load an agenda you’ve previously saved or Import a text file that’s been generated outside the system, perhaps by saving a formal agenda in Microsoft Word as a text file.
Clicking the green Load button displays a dialog box that allows you to select any previously saved RollCall Pro agenda file, all of which are stored in your installation directory’s Agendas sub-folder.
Clicking the orange Import button opens a dialog box that allows you to navigate anywhere on your computer and select a text file to import as a starting point. In the text file, agenda items must be numbered, and elements of the consent agenda must be listed below the main item title and preceded with an asterisk as shown below:
Import files should be tab-delimited, not space delimited. Item numbers should be separated from Item Names by a tab. Likewise, if an agenda item has an Item Summary, there should be a tab between the Item Name and the Item Summary.
Alternatively, you can use the second row of buttons on the Agenda Tab to start from scratch and create your own agenda:
The green Add Item button opens the Agenda Item Editor dialog:
Enter the name for the new agenda item in the Item Name field or copy it from your Word or PDF agenda.
If this item is to be part of a consent agenda, click the Consent Agenda checkbox to the right of the Item Name.
If you wish to display and use the public speaker timer when this item is discussed, click the Display Timer checkbox to the right of the Item Name.
If you would like to limit voting time on an agenda item, click the Enable Countdown Voting checkbox to the right of the Item Name.
Choose the appropriate Voting Criteria for this item using the dropdown menu. If you choose Custom, another option will appear which will allow you to enter the Number of Yes Votes Needed to pass this item.
You also have the opportunity to enter an Item Summary. This text is shown on all display screens as the item is being deliberated, and it is also optionally displayed on members’ devices.
The Preview pane below the item summary entry field shows you how the summary will be shown on the Public Display. RollCall Pro auto-sizes the text to fit the display area available, so the longer the text you enter, the smaller the text will be. If you are going to display a lengthy text summary, use carriage returns (the Enter key) within the item summary entry field to “break” text up onto multiple lines that are as long as possible. You can also use the Maximize Summary button on the Meeting Tab to display a long item summary in full screen mode on the Public Display.
When you are finished entering a new agenda item, click the Ok button. This will add your new item to the agenda and display it in the Preview Pane:
Each new agenda item added in this way will be appended to (or added at) the end of the current agenda.
If you needed to enter an agenda item that was to be dealt with prior to this item, first click on the item to highlight it as the anchor point:
Then click the orange Insert Item button to open the Agenda Item Editor and describe the new item just as you did before. When you close the Agenda Item Editor, you will see that your new agenda item (in this case, Approval of Agenda) has been placed ahead of the first item you entered (Approval of Minutes):
It is also possible to click and drag an agenda item to a new position in the list.
If you need to change an entry, first highlight it and then click the yellow Edit Item button to open the Agenda Item Editor. Alternatively, you can simply double-click on the item you’d like to edit. If your editing goal is to remove an item from the Consent Agenda, just uncheck the box next to the Item Name once you’ve opened the Agenda Item Editor.
Similarly, if you want to delete an entry, first highlight it and then click the red Delete Item button. You will be asked to confirm the deletion.
To print the entire agenda, click the light blue Print Agenda button.
To save your agenda – either incrementally as you go or at the end once you’ve entered all the items – click the red Save button. This will open a dialog box that allows you to name your agenda file. While it is also possible to enter the agenda’s name directly into the Agenda Name field, that method does not allow you to navigate to an alternate directory – perhaps on a network drive – where you wish to save your agenda. For that reason, we recommend using the red Save button and enter your agenda name within a standard Windows Save As dialog box.
