Dear ODV, You should have already received an email from Sabrina via BoardEffect notifying you that meeting materials are now available. At this time the only documents available are the agenda the two motions previously distributed by the board. Please make sure that you can get into BoardEffect (arrl.boardeffect.com) and see the July 2023 Board Book. If you need assistance, please contact Sabrina for help. As we are preparing for the July Board meeting, we wanted to speak to the issues you have raised in using BoardEffect. Kristen was kind enough to compile a list of your issues for us to address. Most of the issues revolve around the use of the app rather than the web browser version. The BoardEffect app is not designed to do most of the things board members are trying to do on it, particularly during the board meeting when updates are happening. The app was designed to serve as a way to access documents on the go, but does not provide all the features found in the browser version. Downloading documents in the app is particularly time consuming. Because of this, please only use the browser version (arrl.boardeffect.com) during the board meeting. With JP's departure we are bringing back Cathy Curry to take the board meeting minutes to allow Sabrina to tend to the administrative logistics and provide real time assistance to anyone having trouble during the meeting. She will be stationed in the board room for you convenience should you need assistance. Below are all the issues that were provided to us by Kristen with how to address the concern. If you have any questions, please reach out to Sabrina directly for assistance. She is happy to help. Remember - use the browser version! Concerns: - It's painful to navigate the individual sub-documents, so I end up looking at the big PDF, defeating the purpose of subsections. A PDF viewer generally works better than the app. - BoardEffect is more effective when used on the web browser. The mobile app is a quick way to view documents but does not give access to all the features and takes a longer period of time to download documents. - Updates made by whomever is managing it (Sabrina ?) are often not reflected in the app until much later, even after refreshing. Why aren't updates live? -Updates to the board book are only available after the book is updated and re-published for view. If you are viewing the book live, you will need to refresh once the update is complete to see the new documents. If you have downloaded the board book before an update became available, you have to re-download the book again. The recommendation is to view the board book in the browser so once the new book is available all that is required is a refresh. The app is not designed to be used for on the fly updates to the board book. - The outline sidebar disappears after I tap on a section. This is highly annoying. I lose the context of what I'm looking for and it makes browsing very painful. - This only happens in the app, when using the web browser, the sidebar is always available. - Sometimes I need to kill and restart the app to see an updated document - Please use the web browser version to view updated documents more effectively. - Sometimes updates cause the entire document to be gone from the app (need to kill and restart) - Please use the web browser version to view updated documents more effectively. - On the web, sometimes the text is blocky in a strange way. It's not exactly low resolution, but instead incorrectly rendered (corroborated by Mike Ritz on both Windows and macOS) -The document is defaulted to a size that fits the screen. There is a zoom in and out feature at the top that will allow for the document to be clearer. - Searching the documents is not that useful. Search seems to be too precise and order dependent (e.g. search for "league the" and you get no results) - The "search" feature is best used in one-word increments and will go in order of the entire book. On the right of the page in the "Meeting Book Viewer" it gives you all the options where the word you are searching for has been used. [A screenshot of a computer Description automatically generated with low confidence] - The whole flow of the app is hard to understand (what is a Library? what is a Directory? Board of Directors is where the meeting book is? - The Library is where the meeting books are stored. The current book and old meetings books will be found here. For Board meeting books, you must select Board of Directors, then click on meeting books. - The Directory includes a list of all users who have a BoardEffect account. - I have to log in over and over. It should keep a token. - For security purposes, you do need to login to the platform when going back into the app. Please use the web browser version to view updated documents more effectively. This issue does not appear to happen the browser version. - Tapping on buttons or tabs gives little-to-no feedback. Sometimes tapping does nothing. Sometimes it does something. Sometimes it does something after a long delay. - These are issues in the app only. Please use the web browser version to view updated documents more effectively. - Why is downloading the meeting book a separate operation? Can't it page things in as needed and have an option for offline work? Why Download and then View. Of course I want to View right away. -To view the book offline, you need to download the book. The "Meeting Book Viewer" gives access to the book while online without needing to download. You are not required to download the board book. - It takes forever to download just 10 or 15 MB. That should be lightning fast. -To download at a faster speed, you please use the web browser version. The app version does take significantly longer. See you all soon, Diane Middleton, W2DLM Chief Financial Officer ARRL, The National Association for Amateur Radio(r) 225 Main Street Newington, CT 06111 (860)594-0225 [cid:image001.png@01D9AB2E.33473410]
