Several sites, shared rules

Many organisations work on more than one level: a headquarters and its regional commands, a university and its faculties, a national professional body and its local branches. Each site runs its own ceremonies, with its own guests. The rules ought to be the same everywhere, and often they are not.

The trouble with copies

It usually goes like this. Headquarters prepares a protocol and sends it to the sites as a file, and each site edits it on its own. Two years later there are five versions, and the same dignitary sits in different positions depending on who is organising. Anyone invited twice in the same month notices.

Separate data, shared rules

Keep two things apart. Guests, contact details and ceremonies belong to each site: a regional office should not see or change those of headquarters. The starting protocol, on the other hand, is written once, by the site responsible for it, and every site receives the same version at the outset.

In CerimoniereWeb several sites work in the same installation with their data kept separate, and a new site can start from the people and protocols of the shared template instead of from scratch.