Documentation: Summons Creator

Summons Creator

The Summons Creator is a page-by-page designer for the summons you send before a meeting. You stack text, images, crests and columns on a true-scale canvas, and add Dynamic Content blocks that fill themselves in from The Working Tools: your Planner agenda, your officers, your forthcoming meetings and more. Save the layout as a lodge template once, and every future summons starts almost finished.

Open any event → click the Summons tab.

When you open an event's Summons tab for the first time and your lodge does not yet have a default template, you choose a layout from the gallery — designed starting points with a preview, a name and a short description. Designs tagged for your lodge type appear first and the top suggestion is highlighted, but every design is available. Start blank gives you empty pages in your Order's theme. After you pick one, you land in the editor with your live agenda and a crest placeholder. Use Set as default once you are happy, and later events seed silently from that template — the chooser does not appear again. You can always open the gallery from Lodge templates to start another design.

The canvas

The middle of the screen is a true-scale preview of each page: what you see is what prints. A red bar at the bottom of a page means the content is taller than the paper. Shorten it before you publish, or publishing will be blocked.

Pages on the left. Click a page to jump to it, drag to reorder, use the × to delete, and use Add page for another sheet. A5 booklets work in multiples of four pages; blank pages are added automatically at print time if needed.
Add Content on the right. Click it to open the block list, then click a block to add it to the current page, or drag it to exactly where you want it, including into a column. The list closes again after you add something, so the sidebar stays on settings. Hover a block and use the grip on the left to move it.
Settings appear in the sidebar when a block is selected, with Content and Styling tabs. Content holds the block's own fields (headings, offices, wording, Name format, and on Officers the contact-detail checkboxes). Styling holds font, size, colour, alignment, background and border. The last five colours you pick are kept beside each colour control so you can reuse them. Labels are for your own reference and never print.

Content blocks

Text and Memorial. Click in and type directly on the page. The floating toolbar covers bold, italic, lists, tables, point sizes from 8 to 36, a choice of fonts, and colour. Select some words to style just that passage, or use the toolbar or Settings to style the whole block.
Image and Crest. Choose from your lodge's asset library (upload once, reuse everywhere) and set the width. Gallery designs can include images too — ornaments and a sample crest stay on the page so you can see the layout; replace the crest with your lodge logo when you are ready.
Columns. Two or three columns; drop other blocks into each. Reducing from three to two keeps the extra column's content rather than deleting it.
Odes. A ready-made two-column pair for opening and closing odes.
Divider and Spacer. A rule or ornament, or a gap.

Dynamic Content

These blocks carry a Live data badge and fill themselves in from your records. They keep themselves up to date while you draft: change something in the Planner or your member records and click Refresh Dynamic Data to see it on the summons. Nothing you do on the summons ever changes the underlying records. Select a Dynamic Content block to change its font, size, colour and alignment from the floating toolbar or Settings — the same styling as a text block, applied to the whole block.

Agenda. Pulls every Planner Item you've marked For the Summons, in order, numbered automatically. It is read-only here by design, so your Summons, Minutes and Running Order always agree: use the Edit in Planner link to change the business.
Summons wording. The traditional "You are hereby summoned to attend…" text, with placeholders such as [[ lodge_name ]], [[ event_date ]], [[ event_venue ]], [[ wm_name ]] and [[ secretary_name ]] that fill in for each meeting. Edit the wording however you like; the placeholders do the dates and names for you. Use Name format in settings for how the Worshipful Master and Secretary names appear (see Name formats).
Officers. Your current office holders in a two-column list. Hide any offices you don't want shown, choose a Name format, and optionally tick Email, Phone or Home address to print those details under each name (see Name formats and officer details).
Past Masters. The roll of those who have held the chair, from your member records. Choose a Name format in settings. If your records don't go back far enough, switch the block to edit as text and maintain the roll by hand.
Forthcoming meetings. Your next events, excluding this one.
Dining notice. The date, venue and reply-by date from the event, plus your standing booking rules text, with an optional highlight so it stands out.
Contact. Name, address, phone and email for the office holders you choose, ideal for the back page. The same Name format setting as Officers and Past Masters applies to the name.
QR code. Turns any link into a printed QR code with a caption.

In the template designer these blocks show clearly-labelled specimen data ("Specimen Lodge No. 1234"), so you can design your layout without an event attached. The real data appears the moment the template is used on an event.

Name formats and officer details

Any Dynamic Content block that prints member names has a Name format setting: Officers, Past Masters, Contact, and Summons wording (for [[ wm_name ]] and [[ secretary_name ]] only). The choices are the same as dining lists and table plans, so a lodge can keep one style everywhere.

Known-As (Hiro Abiff) — the member's preferred name and surname. This is the default, and existing summons stay on it until you change the setting.
Masonic Name (WBro H Abiff) — prefix and initials, without rank.
Masonic Name with Rank (WBro H Abiff - PProvGSec) — the masonic name plus the member's rank, when they have one beyond EA, FC or MM.
Masonic Full Name (WBro Hiram Abiff) — prefix and given name, without rank.
Abbreviated Name (H Abiff) — initials and surname, no prefix.
Full Name (Hiram Abiff) — first name and surname, ignoring Known-As.

On the Officers block you can also tick Email, Phone and Home address. Each ticked field that the member has on their record appears as a smaller line under their name (for example wm@example.com · 01234 567890 · 1 High Street, Town). Empty fields are skipped. These start off, so a names-only list stays names-only until you turn them on. They do not change the separate Contact block, which is still the place for a fuller secretary-style address panel.

Themes

Open Layout to restyle the whole document. The Theme picker changes headings, rules, ornaments and colours together: Classic, Craft, Royal Arch (including a red-and-black variant), Mark and Knights Templar. Adjust the Accent colour if your lodge has its own — a custom accent survives switching presets — and choose a Body font and Heading font from the typefaces available in the editor (EB Garamond, Cinzel, Playfair Display, Source Sans, Lato, Open Sans and others). Those same fonts can be applied to individual blocks, and they are embedded in the published PDFs so the printed summons matches the canvas. Your Order's theme is applied automatically when a new summons is created.

Templates

Templates are how you avoid rebuilding the summons every meeting. Design it once, then every new event summons starts from your default.

Save as Custom Template stores the current design for reuse.
Set as default makes a template the starting point for every new event summons.
Lodge templates lists your saved templates so you can edit them, and offers New template from gallery: ready-made starting layouts (a classic A5 booklet, a letter-style A4, a larger provincial booklet, and a flat A5 notice), all built with Dynamic Content blocks so they light up with your own information straight away.

View and Layout

View sets zoom and, for A5 booklets, switches between Reading order (page 1, 2, 3…) and As it prints (the imposed sheets exactly as they leave the printer, with any automatically-added blank pages labelled). You can select, type, and rearrange blocks in either view — stay in As it prints if you want to edit on the folded sheets.

Layout sets the paper format, a border around every page, the document theme, and the default body and heading fonts:

A5 booklet. Printed on A4 sheets, double-sided, folded in half. The traditional summons format.
A4 portrait. A flat, letter-style summons.
A5 landscape. A single flat sheet.
Clear Summons removes every page and block after a confirmation. Theme, fonts and paper size stay as they are, so you can start the layout again without losing the look.

Publishing

Editing autosaves your draft continuously, but a draft is not what members receive. Click Publish to produce the PDFs and file them on the event.

Changes since last publish means you have edited the summons after the last publish. The PDFs on the event stay as they were until you publish again, so the version you sent out never changes underneath you. Publishing takes a snapshot: if the Planner changes afterwards, the draft updates but the published PDFs do not.

Before publishing, the Creator checks the summons is actually ready: a page that overflows, a placeholder that can't be filled in (for example [[ wm_name ]] when no one holds the chair), or an empty Agenda block will stop the publish and tell you exactly which page to look at. An empty agenda can be published anyway if that is genuinely what you want.

In the Publish dialog you can also:

Include the how-to-print instruction page. On by default for A5 booklets; it explains the paper, duplex setting and fold. Turn it off once your printer routine is settled: the sheets still pair correctly either way.
Also create a book-view copy. An extra PDF of facing pages (cover on the right, then 2|3, 4|5) that reads like an open booklet on screen.

After publishing, download the print pack, digital copy and book view from the same dialog. All of them are stored on the event's Documents; publishing again replaces them.

Sending the summons

Once published, the digital PDF is ready wherever you invite people from the event's Attendance page: it appears under This event's summons in the attachment list and is pre-selected, so sending the summons with your invitations is the path of least resistance.

Contacts you have marked as requiring a summons (a Visiting Officer, your Provincial office, the hall) are labelled Summons contact and come pre-ticked on the Invite Contacts list. Untick anyone you don't want included in that particular send.

The previous Summons Creator, and Word users

Summons built with the previous creator remain readable, and each offers a one-click Convert that rebuilds it in the new editor while leaving the original untouched. Give converted pages a once-over, as older content doesn't always fit the true-scale pages exactly.

If you prefer to keep producing your summons in Word or another program, that is absolutely fine: upload the finished file to the event as you always have, and it gets the same treatment when inviting, including the pre-selected attachment and your summons contacts.

Common questions

Where does the agenda come from, and can I edit it here?

From the Event Planner: every Item marked For the Summons. It is deliberately read-only on the summons so the Summons, Minutes and Running Order can never disagree. Use Edit in Planner, then Refresh Dynamic Data.

Why is a placeholder highlighted, and why won't it publish?

A highlighted [[ token ]] couldn't be filled in: usually the event has no venue set, or no member currently holds the relevant office. Fix the source (the event's details, or the role on your members' records) and it resolves itself. Publishing is blocked until every placeholder resolves, so a summons never goes out with [[ wm_name ]] printed on it.

The Worshipful Master or Secretary name is blank. Why?

Those placeholders read from your lodge's roles. Make sure someone currently holds the chair and secretary roles on their member record. If your Order uses different titles (an Eminent Preceptor, a Scribe E, a Registrar), set which roles count as the chair and secretary in Settings → Defaults.

How do I change how members' names appear?

Select the Officers, Past Masters, Contact or Summons wording block and use Name format on the Content tab. The options (Known-As, Masonic Name, Full Name and the rest) are listed under Name formats and officer details. Each block has its own setting, so the officers list can use Masonic Name while the summons wording stays on Known-As.

Can the Officers list show email, phone or address?

Yes. Select the Officers block and tick Email, Phone or Home address in settings. Those details print as a small line under each name. They come from the member record; if a field is empty, that part is left off.

I published, then changed something. Do members see the change?

Not until you publish again. The canvas autosaves your draft; the files on the event stay as they were. That is what Changes since last publish is telling you.

Why is a page marked as overflowing?

The content is taller than the paper. Shorten text, reduce an image's width, or move a block to the next page.

How should I print an A5 booklet?

Use the print pack: A4 paper, double-sided, flip on the short edge, then fold and nest the sheets. The optional instruction page at the front explains it, and its reverse is deliberately blank so the pairing stays correct.

Do my block labels or the Live data badges print?

No. Labels and badges exist only in the editor, to help you find your way around a template. The PDFs contain only the summons itself.