There are two ways to add a new region or area to the zone’s BMLT server: either start with data from the NA World Service Office, or enter everything from scratch. In either case, first request a login for your area or areas. Then fire up the meeting editor at https://bmlt.wszf.org/main_server, and start editing or entering meetings. The BMLT documentation has details on how to use it. For special considerations regarding entering information for virtual and hybrid meetings, please see these blog posts: BMLT Root Server Release 2.16.0 and also BMLT, Virtual Meetings, and the Pandemic Part 2. Also see our WSZF tutorial videos.

Have a web page set up to display the meeting data for your area or region — then you can check that the meetings you are entering are showing up as you want them to. (Remember to refresh the display as you go.) See Displaying Meeting Data for how to set up the display.

In either case, once you start moving your meeting information to BMLT, don’t send meeting updates to NA World Services using your old data — this will now be handled via BMLT (see “NAWS Export” on the Maintaining Meeting Data page).

Method 1: Starting with data from the NA World Service Office

Our experience to date is that the best way to add a new region or area to the WSZF server is to start with data from the NA World Service Office. Later, this will also help NAWS in linking the meetings on our BMLT server with the meetings in their database.

To do this, we will get a spreadsheet from NAWS for your region or area, and import the data into the BMLT server. This will also automatically create logins for all the newly imported areas and for the region. Because of the pandemic and lots of closed in-person meetings, we suggest starting with all the imported meetings being “unpublished” — that means they will be in the database but won’t appear in a normal meeting search. Then you can go and publish meetings that are currently open, probably after fixing up the information.

As you are entering data for meetings, if the meeting you’re working on has been around for a while, use the “meeting search” button on the edit page to find it. Select that meeting and make edits as needed. One common situation here will be meetings that used to gather in person and are now virtual or hybrid meetings — see the blog post and videos linked above for how to store the information for such meetings. When you’re done entering meetings, delete any NAWS entries for meetings that are permanently closed, or just leave them as “unpublished” if they might reopen.

Method 2: Entering all the meetings from scratch

The other option is to just enter everything from scratch. Again, the BMLT documentation has details on how to use the meeting editor.