Differentiate ‘Inactive’ from Address/Conference Errors

[noodnik2]

Differentiate ‘Inactive’ from Address/Conference Errors

Background Context

We are considering replacing our current, home-grown "meeting finder" application with the 12-step-meeting-list Plugin configured to use the TSML-UI.

We have produced a .csv file containing the meeting information for all our 524 meetings in the format expected by the Plugin's "Import" facility, yet are blocked from deploying it since it incorrectly displays an Inactive status for meetings lacking complete conference attendance information. Many of our meetings include text in their "description" attribute describing how potential users can obtain that information, and that approach works for us.

Support Request

As discussed in #1720, we're looking for a way to prevent the 12-step-meeting-list plugin running TSML-UI from mistakenly labeling a meeting as Inactive due to missing "Conference" information, as depicted below. This is a follow-up discussion to that support ticket, which concludes with:

From: @SIA-WEBSUP
To: @noodnik2 ,

My recollection from Saturday is that several options were floated to address your concerns. Since this thread has gotten long, I > suggest opening a new discussion focused solely on:

• In-person meetings that geocode to an approximate address are currently shown as Inactive.
• Online meetings with invalid conf_url and invalid conf_phone are also shown as Inactive.

Your request: allow meetings in these two cases to be labeled as something other than “Inactive” (e.g., “Invitation Only” or “Additional Info”), while preserving Inactive for truly unavailable meetings (e.g., location temporarily closed).

In the new discussion, I’d propose:

• State the two scenarios above as the scope.
• Ask TSML/TSML-UI maintainers for recommended approaches.
• Prioritize the least invasive solution first.

To: Plugin & TSML/TSML-UI maintainers

As suggested above, please consider and suggest some recommended approaches for allowing us to import our data to the 12-step-meeting-list plugin - preferably in the same format we're using now, which is its .csv import format - and presumably trigger some new option that would cause it to substitute a more accurate "chicklet" / label instead of Inactive for these two cases?

One proposal that I recall being suggested at last Saturday's C4R meeting was to trigger this new behavior by including a new column in the .csv import file that provided some "guidance" to the import process, such as possibly a new label to use instead of Inactive for this situation.

[joshreisner]

i'm not sure i'd agree with the characterization of it being "inaccurate" or "mistaken" to label these meetings as inactive, since that's the way this plugin has always worked. labeling it this way may encourage these meetings to get past their reluctance to share definite information with the public, in furtherance of the third tradition.

we'll need to discuss the idea of adding a new field more. i described how this could potentially have unintended consequences in my reply to another program here: #1735 (comment)

that said, we do want to support you customizing the appearance of your meeting finder as much as possible. one option to explore is to use existing tools for customization, such as renaming the Inactive metatype, using the instructions here - in your WordPress theme, you can try add the following PHP code:

$tsml_ui_config = [
    'strings' => [
        'en' => [
            'types' => [
                'inactive' => 'Invitation Only'
            ],
        ]
    ]
];

this should fully remove the "inactive" nomenclature from the app - it will show up in the filter as "Invitation Only" and the URL for the filter will be type=invitation-only

additionally, you can customize the color of that chiclet with the instructions here by adding the following CSS:

#tsml-ui {
  --inactive: #666;
}

this is what it looks like before:

and after:

hopefully these suggestions will get you a little closer to your goal!

[noodnik2]

That sounds like a better workaround than any considered previously (e.g., a "fake address", etc.) - I'll try it!

It would be nice to be able to specify that a meeting is Inactive, though - we do have at least one case in our data. In order to accommodate that, perhaps we'd set the text on the chicklet to something more general, like: "See meeting notes" ...

I should be able to try this out tomorrow or over the weekend 🤞🏻 - I'll update with results. Thanks!

[noodnik2]

you can customize the color of that chiclet

#tsml-ui {
  --inactive: #666;
}

I've tried pasting that CSS property at the end of the style.css file of my current WP theme, but it didn't take effect. Is there another way to apply this new CSS for this chiclet?

[joshreisner]

hm, that should work! here's an example: https://demo.code4recovery.org/tsml-ui-meetings?type=inactive

[noodnik2]

Thank you for the additional demo & resulting encouragement. I persisted, and found a way to add the CSS and get it working now!

As a WordPress newbie, I'm not familiar with all the ways (let alone the best way) to inject custom CSS, but I found a "Customize CSS" page under the WordPress dashboard's "Appearance > Editor" that let me add that CSS you posted, above. It worked!

Support case closed! Thanks again 🙏🏼.