Meetup Tracker

The Meetup Tracker is a new tool that the Global Community Team will use to track all current Meetup.com groups, and new Meetup applications received via the new form for the Meetup Chapter Program.

This tool is hosted in the dashboard of central.wordcamp.org, and if you’re an active Community Deputy who has been vetting Meetup applications for the last 6 months, you should have received access to it already.

Reviewing Applications

For instructions and tips on how to vet Meetup applications, please check the Deputy’s Handbook page “Application Review”. This page shows how to use the new Meetup Tracker tool, and is not about vetting applications.

Custom Post Type: Meetups

We’ve imported all existing WordPress Meetup.com groups on September 7th, 2018 into the Meetup tracker. Any group that applied to the chapter before that date will not have application details in this new tool, but you will still be able to check their application details in HelpScout.

Any new Meetup application received from September 10th, 2018 will show up in the following page of the Meetup Tracker (see screenshot below):

If you’re going to vet Meetup applications, we recommend you to click “Needs Vetting” at the top of the page and then order by “Date”. That way, we always review applications from older to newest.

As you can see in the image above, you’ll be able to filter the list of Meetup groups by its status. In the next section, you’ll see all the different statuses available per Meetup custom post type.

Meetup Statuses

All Meetup applications can have assigned one of the following statuses:

• Needs Vetting
• Awaiting Feedback
• Needs orientation/interview
• Scheduling [the orientation/interview]
• Scheduled [the orientation/interview]
• Needs site [a new Meetup.com group]
• Needs transfer [to transfer the existing group into the chapter program]
• Needs to assign new owner [second step of the transfer]
• Changes requested
• Cancelled
• Declined
• Active in the chapter
  
• Dormant
• Removed from the chapter

When vetting an application

All Meetup applications are received and marked initially with the status “Needs vetting” (see image above).

After you’ve vetted an application by filling in the review checklist, you can copy/paste all that info into the “Add Private Note” textfield. Then, based on the outcome of your vetting, you have some options:

1. Change the status to “Needs orientation/interview”
2. Mark as waiting for more information by adding the Meetup Tag “More info requested” and changing the status to “Awaiting Feedback”. This way the “Needs vetting” queue is more accurate.
3. Use the status “Cancelled�? when it’s the applicant the one who doesn’t reply our emails, or if s/he step down and is no longer interested in organizing the Meetup group.
4. Change the status to “Declined” when the application has been declined by us for different reasons: CoC, GPL or Trademark violation, etc.

After that, click the blue “Update” button, and all your private notes, status change, and tags added/deleted will be updated in the “Log” section near the bottom of the page (see image below).

Note: we’ll keep using HelpScout to communicate with our users, so don’t forget to add the HS ticket link to the field “HelpScout link” under the “Meetup Information” section.

Application Information section

As we used to do in the “Meetup Status Doc” sheet, we’ll track the deputy who managed the vetting, as well as the date of vetting, orientation, and joining the chapter. This information is found near the middle of the page under “Application Information”.

So, don’t forget to add the date of the action, your WordPress.org username and to update the “Who contacted” fields! 🙂

Sending swag to a Meetup group

If you’re going to send swag to a Meetup group, don’t forget to check our documentation page with the instructions.

After ordering Swag, please add the date and order number of the shipment to the metabox “Swag notes”, found in the “Swag Information” section towards the bottom of the page.

Remember to add a new line with your shipment notes, but don’t delete the info of the previous shipments as we use that to check the frequency of packages sent. 

Ta-da! That is everything you need to do to help track Meetups. Thanks for all you do to keep Meetups around the world happy, healthy, and organized! 

Last updated: December 12, 2019