Wise Words from the Webmaster

It has arrived!
It's been a long journey, but the day has finally arrived.  We are ready to reveal our new web page to the world!  It is still is a work in progress, but it is light years ahead of our former pages.

There will be some growing pains as our staff and constituents begin familiarizing themselves with a plethora (one of my favorite words) of new features and sections.  I was excited to use the new search on the front page to do my first search of the site, happily going down the list of relevant information! (Yes, I'll admit I geek out on this stuff.)

For my first posts, I'll be highlighting sections to help navigate new features.

Today's topic will be the document center.

Document Center
The Document (or Agenda) Center is our piece de resistance, and one of the most significant changes from our former site. 

Here you'll find the meeting agendas and packets from our current boards and committees.

The initial view, coming from our Meetings menu or the Agenda Center button (located at the bottom of each page) is a listing of all of our current document sections.  You'll see it's quite an extensive list!  Each section holds documents in date descending order, so you will find the most recent listings right at the top.  The list is for the current year, but you'll see towards the top right previous years that you can click on, taking you to that particular year's documents.

If you click on the links from the board or committee pages, you'll be brought to the listing for that particular group for the current year.  This can help to pair down the selection, making it easier to find what you are looking for. 

Here are some highlights that will help to navigate your way through this feature rich section.

1. The Finder - The finder is going to be your new best friend in the agenda center. That's the little magnifying glass on the top right of the 'Search Agenda's By' bar.  By choosing different options on the 'search bar', you can narrow down your selection to help find what you are looking for. After you make your selections, be sure to click on this to initiate your search.
   1. Select a Category - Here you can choose which Boards or Committees you'd like to show.  Checking off boxes will give you views for that particular Board or Committee. You can choose, one, two, or as many as you'd like to see.  They are listed in alphabetical order.
   2. Time Period - This gives you some generic choices for time periods to show, such as last week, last month, or last year. 
   3. Start Date and End Date - If you happen to be looking for a document for a specific date or time, you can enter the dates that you'd like to search for. 
   4. Word or Phrase - If you have a specific word in mind to search on, this would be where to enter it for your search.  Keep in mind it will do searches on partial words, and many times the less you type, the better chance you are to find what you are looking for!
2. Agenda / Document Listing - You'll notice each listing tells exactly what document you will find.  If you click on the document title, you will be taken directly to the document in question.  Depending on what kind of document, you will either have the PDF of the document, or you will find a page that lists the links to the specific documents you can download. 
   1. Download Button - This button has will have a few different selections depending on how the document is stored, and how many documents are available. 
      1. Agenda - If you just see this listed, clicking on it will take you straight to the PDF document, such as an Agenda, though this could be a Summary or Decision Agenda (Dependent on the description of the document).
      2. HTML - If there are multiple PDF's listed (such as a packet), this will bring up a web page that lists the PDF's of all the documents included, for instance a list of resolutions.  The awesome part of this feature is you can now download specific resolutions instead of having to download the entire packet, that way you look at only what you need. 
      3. PDF - This is the same as the HTML view, but it opens these links in a PDF document instead of a web page. 
      4. Packet - If you're interested all the documents, but don't feel like having to click every document, the Packet selection will put all the documents together for you so you can view, print, or download them all together with just a click (just like our old resolution documents). 
   2. Minutes - Once the minutes are available for a meeting, you will see the green page icon appear in the Minutes column.  Clicking on that icon will take you to the minutes for that particular meeting.

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Tim Millard is the Director of IT for the Town of Poughkeepsie.