Using the Meeting List

Using the Basic Search

Using the Advanced Search

Selecting the Advanced Tab

In order to enter the Advanced Search Screen, you need to click on the tab in the Search Screen that is labeled "Advanced Search." This will change the screen to the more complex one that is shown in Figure 1 (NOTE: The formats and Service Bodies in your server may be different from the ones illustrated here).

The choices made here tend to make the search more specific. That means that each choice you make narrows the search, and reduces the number of possible search results. Actually, it's not quite that simple. If you pick multiple weekdays or Service Bodies, the search actually widens (Monday OR Tuesday; Suffolk Area Service OR Bronx Area Service). However, picking multiple formats narrows the search (Look for all open meetings with wheelchair access). This is because that is the way that people expect the search to work. The search needs to be, first and foremost, useful.

There are three main choices that you can make: Weekdays, Format Codes and Service Bodies. You can also enter the same types of text in the "Search For" box that you can in the Basic Search.

This means that you could search for all meetings on Monday and Tuesday in the vicinity of Commack, NY, or all open meetings near Valley Stream, NY. NA Trusted Servants would probably appreciate being able to find all the meetings within a given Service Body's purview. (NOTE: If a Service Body in the database does not contain any meetings, and none of its constituent Service Bodies contain meetings, they will not appear here).

When you make a selection in the Advanced Search Screen, the results are considered a Filtered Search. This means that they do not represent every meeting possible; just the ones that meet the given criteria. It's quite possible that a regular "unfiltered" search might return twenty meetings, but a filtered search could return none, given the same location and search radius.

That's one reason why this is the "Advanced" search. The principal goasl of the Basic Meeting List Toolbox are usability and usefulness. Most people just want a quick search, based on the simplest of criteria. The Basic Search was designed to afford this. The Advanced Search was designed for the far smaller number of people that want to have more selection in their searches.

Examples

Let's show a couple of examples of using the Advanced Search to select only certain meetings. We'll use the same locality as we did for the Basic Search (Commack, NY). However, this time, we'll search for open meetings in and around Commack (Figure 2):

The search will return the following map (Figure 3):

Note the difference in the meetings returned. Compare this map with the one shown in Figure 4 of the Basic Search. There are fewer meetings. In particular, do you remember the red marker for a meeting called "Open to Suggestions"? It is immediately to the right of the center marker. In the Basic Search, it contained two meetings; an open meeting on Tuesday (Figure 9 of the Basic Search), and a closed meeting on Thursday (Figure 10 of the Basic Search). This time, the marker is blue, as only the open Tuesday meeting is included in the search results (Figure 4).

If you click on the center marker, the info window will show you the filtered search criteria (Figure 6). Note that the center marker now has a different appearance (Figure 5).

In Figure 5, the marker on the left (Solid Black) represents an unfiltered search, while the marker on the right (Green, with a red circle under the NA), represents a filtered search.

As with the Basic Search, clicking on the center marker opens a window that allows you to resize the search radius or view the search results as a list, but it now also indicates that the search is filtered, and shows the filtering criteria.

Getting More Specific

Now, let's try looking for closed meetings.

We'll do the same thing as before, except this time, we'll check the "C" checkbox (Figure 7).

Now, we see a slightly different search result (Figure 8). Note that, this time, the Open to Suggestions Marker indicates the Thursday meeting, which is closed.

Now, we'll get even more specific. One of the formats for the Thursday Open to Suggestions Meeting is that it has a Rotating Format (RF code). We'll select a closed, RF meeting (Figure 9).

Now, the search returns only one meeting (Figure 10). If we expand the search to ten miles, we find one other meeting, called High Hopes (Figure 11 and 12 -Note that the map has also been zoomed out, in order to show the expanded search radius).

You can also filter for meetings in a manner that won't return a map. In these cases, the search result will be a list. Let's look for meetings in all of the ASCs on Long Island. Long Island has 4 ASCs, in two different RSCs (Figure 13). Since there is no central geographic point to this search, the result will be a 7-page list, containing 200 meetings (Figure 14). Note that the filtering criteria are indicated at the top of the list.

New Feature: Advanced Map Search

As of Version 1.2.10, the Advanced Search Tab now has a map, exactly like the Basic Search. There is one key difference, however: The map does not react to a single click, as it does in the Basic Search. Instead, you place a marker, and you still need to click on "GO" at the bottom of the page.

When the map first appears, it will look exactly like the basic map. However, when you click in it, a black marker will appear (Figure 15). You can pick up and drag this marker (Figure 16).

Wherever this marker is, in the map, will restrict the search radius, which is chosen by the popup menu, visible at the bottom of Figure 15.

The "Auto" value behaves in exactly the same manner as it does in the Basic Search. The radius is chosen to deliver around 10 meetings or so. Remember that there may be less, or there may be more. This is not exact. The idea is to deliver a relevant and manageable number of meetings.

The other values may be in miles or kilometers (depending on the setup of the server), and may have different choices.

Summary

Hopefully, this document has given you enough information to start making use of the Basic Meeting List Toolbox in your own area. It's a constantly evolving project, and we're extremely interested in hearing from you, so please let us know what you think