Co-Dependents Anonymous, Inc. (CoDA)
Instruction for Using the Meeting Search/Update Functions
CoDA hopes that the instructions below will assist you in updating meetings in the Meeting Resource Center in the list below. If you do not, please e-mail your questions to meeting @ coda.org and we will respond as quickly as possible.• Update Meeting
• New Meeting Form
• Full Form Meeting Information
Clicking on this tab will bring up a form allowing you to submit a new meeting. The information required to submit a new meeting is grouped into several groups: Header Information, Facility Information, Primary Contact Information, and Secondary Contact Information.
Header Information
The fields in this section should be self-explanatory. We will look at just a few special ones. First, you may notice that there is no meeting Id. The meeting id will be assigned by the Fellowship Services workers once the information is submitted. If you desire more information on meeting types, click here. Each of the fields is to help people looking for meetings to find a meeting to attend.
Facility Information
The fields in this section should be self-explanatory. For newcomers, this can be the most important information provided because it details the location of the meeting. Please give information that is helpful in locating the meeting.
For U.S. meetings the Zip Code for the facility is used in the Proximity Search. Please enter 5-digits only.
For World meetings, the Postal Code interferes with the Proximity Search and should not be entered.
For an alternative meeting, select "Alternative" for the Country and State. Also, due to their unique nature the phone number, email address, internet site, etc. should be put in as the Facility Name.
For any type meeting, the "Special Instructions" memo field is provided to allow any special directions or instructions of how to find the meeting.
Primary Contact Information
This is intended to provide a primary contact for someone to contact if they want more information about the meeting. Please provide your first name and last initial. Your address is not made public but may be used by CoDA to contact you concerning meeting data. The other two pieces of information is for the fellowship to contact the Primary contact, phone and email. However, you have a choice whether you want this information to be shown to the public by unclicking the appropriate checkmark. CoDA encourages you to provide this information so that CoDA can contact you even if you do not share it with the public. Email and phone contact is a lot faster to contact you concerning meeting updates.
Secondary Contact Information
This is intended to provide a secondary contact for someone to contact if they want more information about the meeting. Many things can happen that the primary contact is unreachable. The secondary contact provides this need backup. Unfortunately CoDA gets many requests of more information on a meeting other than that on the website. As stated previously, we can only share that which you give permission to share. Please provide your first name and last initial. Your address is not made public but may be used by CoDA to contact you concerning meeting data. The other two pieces of information is for the fellowship to contact the secondary contact, phone and email. However, you have a choice whether you want this information to be shown to the public by unclicking the appropriate checkmark. CoDA encourages you to provide this information so that CoDA can contact you even if you do not share it with the public. Email and phone contact is a lot faster to contact you concerning meeting updates.
The remaining and most important information to be entered is the "Submitter's Email". This is required so that we can respond to you when the data is actually entered into the database. The program checks the email for a proper email and if you do not enter a proper email a warning message will be generated. To correct this, simply type in a proper email and click on the "Submit New Meeting" button.
Once all of the data has been entered and the "Submit New Meeting" button pressed (with a properly entered "Submitter's Email") the program will submit your meeting info to CoDA. You will receive an auto-response email message from meeting @ coda.org stating that your form has been received and will be processed shortly. It also gives the Web Coordinator's email address to contact if you do not hear from our Fellowship Services Worker in a reasonable time.
You may wonder why the data is not just placed into the database! In order to make sure that someone does not maliciously submit meetings that do not exist, the meeting is emailed to the Fellowship Services worker so that she may check the data, assign a meeting number and enter the data. If more data is required, she will let you know via the "Submitter's Email" address that you originally gave.
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Full Form Meeting InformationOnce the get your search results and view the preliminary data and want more details on a particular meeting, click on the meeting #/meeting name. This will bring up the full-form meeting information. This form breaks the information up into the following sections:
Header Section
This section gives the main info on the meeting such as its meeting number, group name and when the meeting occurs.
Facility Section
This section gives information on the meeting facility and how to find it. Sometimes special instructions are provided to assist in locating the meeting.
Primary Contact
This is the primary contact and consists of first name, last initial, phone and email. If the contact did not give permission to release the information to the public, you will see "Not Published". Please do not send an email to CoDA asking for more details on the contact. Even if we have a phone number or email, if it is not published, we cannot release it.
Secondary Contact
This is the secondary contact and consists of first name, last initial, phone and email. If the contact did not give permission to release the information to the public, you will see "Not Published". Please do not send an email to CoDA asking for more details on the contact. Even if we have a phone number or email, if it is not published, we cannot release it.
Update Meeting Button
The "Update Meeting" button allows you to update the meeting info by using the existing data.
Continue to Update a Meeting.
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Update MeetingTo use this update function, you must first search for your meeting. Simply type in the meeting number you want to view and/or update. Meeting numbers are made up of a combination of the Voting Entity (State inside the U.S. and the Country code outside the U.S.) and a three digit number.
U.S. meeting numbers use the two-digit Voting Entity or State abbreviation and the three-digit number. Currently there are two Voting Entities in California, but the meeting numbers still use the State code of "CA". There have been so many meeting in California that we are currently using a four-digit number for all of their meetings.
World meeting numbers consist of "W" and the two-digit Country Code and the three-digit number.
Alternative meeting numbers use "WW" for their Voting Entity Code and a three-digit number.This search is not case-sensitive and is not a 'wild card' search. The meeting number must match exactly what is in the database. If the meeting is inactive, you will receive notice of the same and a way to notify the Fellowship Services worker that the meeting should be reactivated. If the meeting number matches a meeting in the database, its information will be displayed for updating. Continue to Update a Meeting.
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Update a MeetingThere are two ways to get to this form.
(1) clicking on the "Update Meeting" button on the full-form meeting information or
(2) Using the "Update Meeting" tab.The Update form is divided into the Header Section, Facility Section, Primary Contact and Secondary Contact.
Header Section
This section gives the main info on the meeting such as its meeting number, group name and when the meeting occurs. You can edit any of these fields except the meeting number.
Facility Section
This section gives information on the meeting facility and how to find it. Sometimes special instructions are provided to assist in locating the meeting. You may edit any of these fields. Please note this block of information is used by the member to locate the meeting. The more complete the information, the easier it is to find the meeting.
Primary Contact
This is the primary contact and consists of first name, last initial, address, phone and email. Even if CoDA already has the address of the contact, it is not shown here. Anyone can edit a meeting and get to this point. To show the address of the contact for editing would either give anybody access to private information or require some type of login. There are checkmarks provided so that if you are the primary contact, you can choose whether you want your phone displayed and your email displayed. It is important to provide this information to CoDA for meeting update purposes even if you do not want to share it with the public.
Secondary Contact
This is the secondary contact and consists of first name, last initial, address, phone and email. Even if CoDA already has the address of the contact, it is not shown here. Anyone can edit a meeting and get to this point. To show the address of the contact for editing would either give anybody access to private information or require some type of login. There are checkmarks provided so that if you are the primary contact, you can choose whether you want your phone displayed and your email displayed. It is important to provide this information to CoDA for meeting update purposes even if you do not want to share it with the public.
The "Submitter's Email Address" & Position
The person editing the meeting MUST provide an email address. This is so that the Fellowship Services worker may respond and let you know that the meeting information has been updated. The person also should include his/her position. This assists the Fellowship Services worker to identify whether you area a main, Secondary or other contact for the meeting.
Submit Meeting Update
Clicking this button will do two things: (1) check to see if the submitter's email address is a proper email and (2) send the form data to meeting @ coda.org. The second will only occur if the submitter's email is in proper format. If it is not, you will receive an error.
Please notice that the data is sent to the Fellowship Services worker for input. You are not actually changing the database. We had to provide this intervention to prevent malicious meeting changes.
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