eXtreme Ground OpenLobby documentation

OpenLobby by eXtreme Ground

Frequently Asked Questions

1) do I have to pay for OpenLobby by eXtremeGround?

No. The program is Free in every sense of the word. However, it does take resources to develop so people who find it useful are asked to donate to its development. While amounts are suggested, no one should feel obligated to donate any amount.

2) Why can't it handle the particular type of spreadsheet I use?

OpenLobby by eXtreme Ground depends on other Free/Libre software to read and write spreadsheets. As the other software develops, OpenLobby will be able to handle more types of files.

In the meantime, most spreadsheet programs allow you to save your sheets in a format that OpenLobby can handle.

3) What's the import menu option about?

It allows people to update the electoral district information used by OpenLobby.

4) And the Rebuild indexes option?

The electoral district and postal code information used by OpenLobby can actually be edited using a spreadsheet (although Excel is NOT recommended for this). If you do this, you must use the Rebuild indexes menu option after editing.

5) What does the "Update all records" check box do?

When checked (the default setting), OpenLobby will overwrite all existing electoral district information in your membership list. When unchecked, OpenLobby will only fill in missing information (i.e. blanks or zeros).

The reason you may want to do this is that the same postal code (which is how OpenLobby determines electoral district) sometimes is found in several electoral districts. If this happens, OpenLobby may put in the wrong information. If you manually correct it, you don't want OpenLobby later overwriting your correction.

6) Why can't OpenLobby always get the electoral district right?

In order to do that, OpenLobby would have to either maintain a huge database of all possible addresses or search the Internet for the correct information. The former is not feasible while the latter would make the program a lot harder to use

In other cases, there are errors in the database. While eXtreme Ground strives for accuracy, sometimes the sources we use contain mistakes.

There are very few postal codes that are ambiguous as to district so it is rare for this to be a problem. Matching on postal code is simple, straightforward and almost always accurate.

7) What about Public and Separate School districts?

While public school boards usually follow municipal wards in their elections, Separate School boards often do not. The development plan is to incorporate more municipal and regional municipality information, and other provinces, first.

School district information is not currently a priority.