We hope that you will find the answers to your questions
about the Meeting Resource Center in the list below. If you do not, please
e-mail your question to us and we will respond as quickly as possible.
We have broken this help into Tips, Instructions for each form, a
Frequently Asked Questions section.
Tips for Searching
Instructions
• Top Tabs
• Bottom Tabs
• U.S. Meetings
• World Meetings
• Alternative Meetings
• Update Meeting
• New Meeting Form
• Search Results
• Full Form Meeting Information
• Update a Meeting
Frequently Asked Questions
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Top Tabs
The top tabs consist of "Home", "Tips", "Instructions", "FAQs".
Home
Clicking on this tab will return you back to the main menu.
Tips
Clicking on this tab will carry you to the "Tips" section of this help.
Instructions
Clicking on this tab will carry to another section of this help.
FAQs
Clicking on this tab will carry you to the "FAQs" section of this help.
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U.S. Meeting Search
The U.S. Meeting tab has two different searches available on it:
(1) U.S. Meeting searches and
(2) Zip Code Proximity searches. Each will be addressed separately.
(1) U.S. Meeting searches
To use this search you must select at least the State that you are searching for. All the other information is optional. Of course, the more information you put in, the shorter the list will be. For instance, select the State of GA and click on "Search" button. You will receive a list of approximately 19 meetings. This is not a very long list to go through, but
if you were to select "California", you would get over 230 meetings. A list too large to review.
In order to shorten the list, you could add info like City, zip code, County or Language. Each is detailed below.
City
"City" is the City that the meeting meets in. To limit the search to only one city, type in the name of the City. Please note that the search engine searches for the City
as a 'Wild Card' search and non-case sensitive. That means that if you type in "LA" or "la", you will get the same results. But the results you get may not be what you expect. You would get: "Alamo", "La Mesa", "Chula Vista", etc. but you would not get "Los Angles". In some cases, CoDA has been asked to show the City name in various ways, for instance, "Fort Louis (FT
Louis )( Ft. Louis)." If you do not get the results you think you should, try typing in the whole name of the City or another format of the name.
Zip Code
"Zip Code" is the Zip Code of the City that the meeting is held in. All Zip Codes for meetings are entered as 5-digit zip codes, so if you type in a 9-digit zip code, you will not get any results. You can type in less than 5-digits to get a broader set of meetings in the event you find no meetings in your zip code. A better way to search by zip code is provided in the
Proximity Search.
County
"County" is the County that the meeting is held in. We are currently having a problem with the new database maintaining the County information. This should be fixed soon.
Language
"Language" indicates the language that is spoken in the meeting. In the U.S., there are two main languages that you can search for, "English" or "Spanish". In some areas you may find a "French" meeting, but they are very few. Select this option if you only want to limit your search. By default, the search engine will pull up all meetings of any language. However, if you do not want to see Spanish meetings, select "English". Thus you will be showed only meetings that speak "English".
Proximity Searches
The Proximity Search can be used to find meetings in your area across State lines. This search works only in the U.S. To use the search put in your 5-digit zip code and distance you are willing to travel from your home. The results will give you meetings and a distance to that meeting. The distance is the distance from center of your zip code to the center of the other zip code. So you may have to drive a little more or perhaps a little less to attend the meeting. The standard distance is measured in miles, but you can also select Kilometers.
Continue to "Search Results"
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World Meetings
The "World Meetings" tab allows you to search for meetings outside the U.S. To use this search you must select at least the Country that you are searching for. All the other information is optional. Of course, the more information you put in, the shorter the list will be.
To shorten the list, you may select the "Province/State", "City", "Postal Code" or "Language."
Province/State
You may select the Province/State you live in or wish to visit. In some cases, the meeting information was submitted without the proper Province/State. If you do not get any meetings or a short list of meetings, try just searching the Country only.
Certain Countries maintain their own list of meetings. For these
Countries, all of the Provinces/States are not provided. These
Countries are Australia, Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom.
City
Type in the City you are searching for. This is a non-case sensitive 'wild card' search. So you may type in only part of the City name.
Postal Code
If you enter in a postal code, it will make the search return no results. Due to a conflict with the Proximity Search for the U.S. only, all postal codes for World meetings were removed. We are trying to get this field removed from the search.
Language
"Language" indicates the language that is spoken in the meeting. Outside the U.S., there are many languages that you can search for. Depending on the Country, the
majority of the meetings will be the main language of the Country. Select this option if you only want to limit your search. By default, the search engine will pull up all meetings of any language.
Continue to "Search Results"
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Alternative Meetings
The "Alternative Meetings" tab will show you all the "Alternative Meetings." By "Alternative", it is meant any meeting that is not a face-to-face meeting. They can be by phone, internet, chat, email, etc. Due to the small number of these meetings and the fact that these meetings can have people from all over the world meeting in them, they are all automatically displayed.
Continue to "Search Results"
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New Meeting Form
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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Search Results
There are four different ways and formats of meeting results. The difference in the four search results are provided below.
U.S. Meetings
The Search Results for U.S. Meetings have the following headings:
Meeting # Day Time Facility City ST Zip
Notice that the results are sorted by State, City, Day.
Proximity Search
The Search Results for Proximity Search have the following headings:
Meeting # Day Time Facility City ST Zip Dist
Notice that the results are sorted by Distance from zip code.
World Meetings
The Search Results for World Meetings have the following headings:
Meeting # Day Time Facility City Province Country
Notice that the results are sorted by Country, City, Day.
Alternative Meetings
The Search Results for Alternative Meetings have the following headings:
Meeting # Day Time Location/Meeting Format
Notice that the results are sorted by Meeting number.
Now that you have the search results you may do several things, resort the list, move to a different set of 25 listings, or view full-form meeting info.
Resort
The search results for all meeting searches can be resorted except for the proximity search. To resort he list, click on the heading by which you would like the list to be resorted.
If you want to change this sort, click on another heading.
Move to Another Set of 25
If the results list is more than 25 meetings, it provides a way to move from one set of 25 to the next in the lower left-hand corner. Depending upon where you are in the sets, you may see:
PREV 25 1 2 3 NEXT 25
You can use the "PREV 25" to view the previous group of 25 or the "NEXT 25" to view the next group of 25. You can always click on the 1,2 or 3 to view that set of 25. Of course, if you are on the first group, the "PREV 25" will not be visible. If you are on the last group, the "NEXT 25"
will not be visible.
View Full-Form Meeting Information
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Full Form Meeting Information
Once 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 Meeting
To 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 Meeting
There 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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The CoDA World Fellowship 