Today, we’re excited to unveil the all-new Trusted Servants Portal 0.3.0—a complete redesign with a fresh interface and streamlined organization to help our trusted servants access vital meeting documents faster and more efficiently. Every element has been rebuilt on a brand-new foundation, and we can’t wait to see it in action across our fellowship.

Document Finder

First, let’s talk about the new Document Finder sidebar. It’s now available on every page and dynamically pulls in all meetings from dccma.com. A simple click on any meeting will take you to a page displaying everything related to that meeting: scripts, readings, files, external links, meeting times and summaries, logos, and if it’s online, Zoom details—including the assigned Intergroup account. It’s all in one place, so no more searching across multiple pages. Plus, with our new sync function between the portal and dccma.com, everything stays up-to-date automatically.

Libraries

Next, we’ve consolidated all non-script documents into a single, unified Libraries page. From literature scans and readings to Intergroup documents and external links, it’s all here. A new sidebar with a dynamic Table of Contents lets you instantly navigate to the section you need. As new documents are added, the page and any related areas of the portal update seamlessly. For instance, CMA-approved books for the Sunday Morning Meeting are now automatically pulled from the library—eliminating extra navigation.

Mega Menu

We’ve also completely redesigned the mega menu for simplicity and ease of use. Each section now includes a dynamic summary, and we’ve merged previously separate pages to improve clarity. Additionally, we’ve integrated a feedback button, making it easier for our trusted servants to provide input as we continue to refine the portal.

Behind the Scenes

On the technical side, the login process has been enhanced for improved security, now requiring both a username and password. However, meeting PDFs remain publicly sharable, as before. We’ve rebuilt the entire site using Breakdance instead of Elementor, reducing the number of plugins and significantly boosting performance.

Zoom account information is now centralized, so updates made in one place are automatically reflected in all assigned meetings. We’ve also implemented a sync feature to pull meeting data directly from dccma.com, eliminating redundancy and ensuring everything stays in sync between the two sites. Nearly all static content has been replaced with dynamic elements, moving us closer to a fully responsive portal.

Our Biggest Release Yet

Trusted Servants Portal 0.3.0 is our most significant update ever, solving numerous issues while introducing faster, easier ways to access the information you need. We’re thrilled to see how it enhances meetings across the Intergroup.

As always, we value your feedback! Email [email protected] or use the Leave Feedback button directly in the portal.

In service,
Jason M.

Dynamic data

We are pleased to introduce some “under the hood” changes to the DC CMA web experience that will improve access to meeting information across all areas of the site. Until now, pages containing meeting information were static and had to be manually updated page by page which introduced risk of error as well as increased time and complexity for the admin. To mitigate this, we have moved all meeting information into the structured database and will pull this information dynamically. This way, we can make edits once and have all views on the site that use that data update concurrently. This increases maintainability of the site going forward and better aligns to common best-practices.

Today’s Meetings

Because of the efforts in converting the meeting information into structured dynamic data, we are pleased to introduce a new section to the home page entitled “Today’s Meetings.” This section automatically updates to show the current day’s meetings in chronological order. By doing this, we hope to deliver a faster way for users to find their next meeting without too many clicks/taps.

Meeting Card Pages

Finally, we are also introducing individual meeting card pages that can be shared with fellows using a simple URL. These are accessible by clicking the title of any meeting card either on the homepage’s Today’s Meetings, Meetings beta or one of our legacy pages like Online Meetings and In-Person Meetings. The URL is clean with dccma.com/meetings/meeting-title/ so you can simply copy, paste and send.

While the changes to the end-user experience may seem minor, the behind the scenes work makes this one of the biggest upgrades we’re done to the site since we launched over 3 years ago. As always feedback is encouraged! Simply email [email protected]

Today we are pleased to introduce a new beta feature we’re calling Hyperlist: an accessibility first meetings list specifically designed for ease of access and readability for users with visual impairments. Our existing card-based interfaces such as those on the Online Meetings or Meetings beta pages present challenges for users who rely on voice tools such as Apple’s VoiceOver or Microsoft’s Narrator. Hyperlist is an answer to those challenges. You can access Hyperlist by clicking the navigation link at the top left of the header (or on top of the header on mobile) . This is positioned to be the very first link for users when using voice navigation, easing access.

The structure of the page has been designed to facilitate clearer page navigation with meeting names, days of the week, meeting times and details uniformly structured line by line for better navigation with voice tools. The text is a bold sans-serif sized using REM units that easily scale up or down based on the user’s base font size setting in-browser. The layout also shifts for clear mobile viewing as well.

As with all beta features, we encourage our users to send us their feedback. We think Hyperlist is a great addition to dccma.com and look forward to improving it and all our beta features into 2024.

A faster way to find meetings on dccma.com

Today we’re introducing Meetings beta, an all new way to quickly and effortlessly find your next meeting on dccma.com. This technology preview will eventually become the primary way to browse our meeting directory and we’re really excited to launch it in beta form today. Simply navigate to dccma.com/meetings-beta, click on a weekday in the blue bar and that day’s meetings will dynamically populate from the right in chronological order. It’s that easy.

Our existing In-Person and Online meeting pages will remain unchanged until this page has come out of beta. We encourage all our users to try out the beta interface and leave us feedback. Become part of the process! Simply click the Leave Feedback link under the weekday buttons to get involved.

We think Meetings beta is going to improve user experience dramatically and we’re excited to see it put into service.